English 2 Reader

Dr. Driscoll

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Week One: RENAISSANCE

1. William Shakespeare: Sonnets

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When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,I all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon my self and curse my fate,Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,With what I most enjoy contented least,Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,Haply I think on thee, and then my state,(Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

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Not marble, nor the gilded monumentsOf princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,But you shall shine more bright in these contentsThan unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.When wasteful war shall statues overturn,And broils root out the work of masonry,Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn:The living record of your memory.'Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmityShall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,Even in the eyes of all posterityThat wear this world out to the ending doom.So till the judgment that your self arise,You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

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Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

(M) Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments, love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixed mark

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That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come,

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun,

Coral is far more red, than her lips red,

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks,

And in some perfumes is there more delight,

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,

That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

I grant I never saw a goddess go,

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,

As any she belied with false compare.

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That time of year thou mayst in me behold,When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou seest the twilight of such day,As after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self that seals up all in rest.In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,Consumed with that which it was nourished by.This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

2. John Donne: ‘The Flea’ (M)

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is ;

It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.

Thou know'st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;

And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

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O stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.

Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,

And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that self-murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?

Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou

Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.

'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;

Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,

Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

SONG.

by John Donne

GO and catch a falling star,

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Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me where all past years are,

Or who cleft the devil's foot,

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy's stinging,

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,

Things invisible to see,

Ride ten thousand days and nights,

Till age snow white hairs on thee,

Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,

All strange wonders that befell thee,

And swear,

No where

Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,

Such a pilgrimage were sweet;

Yet do not, I would not go,

Though at next door we might meet,

Though she were true, when you met her,

And last, till you write your letter,

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Yet she

Will be

False, ere I come, to two, or three.

THE SUN RISING by John Donne

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late school-boys and sour prentices,

Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,

Call country ants to harvest offices ;

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong

Why shouldst thou think ?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long.

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Look, and to-morrow late tell me,

Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine

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Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ;

Nothing else is ;

Princes do but play us ; compared to this,

All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,

In that the world's contracted thus ;

Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;

This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING by John Donne (M)

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,      And whisper to their souls to go,  Whilst some of their sad friends do say,     "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."                     

So let us melt, and make no noise,                                       5     No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ; 'Twere profanation of our joys      To tell the laity our love. 

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;     Men reckon what it did, and meant ;                              10

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But trepidation of the spheres,      Though greater far, is innocent. 

Dull sublunary lovers' love      —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit  Of absence, 'cause it doth remove                                     15     The thing which elemented it. 

But we by a love so much refined,     That ourselves know not what it is,  Inter-assurèd of the mind,      Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.                           20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,      Though I must go, endure not yet  A breach, but an expansion,      Like gold to aery thinness beat. 

If they be two, they are two so                                          25     As stiff twin compasses are two ;  Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show      To move, but doth, if th' other do. 

And though it in the centre sit,      Yet, when the other far doth roam,                                30 It leans, and hearkens after it,      And grows erect, as that comes home. 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,     Like th' other foot, obliquely run ; Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                    35     And makes me end where I begun. 

A NOCTURNAL UPON ST. LUCY'S DAY,BEING THE SHORTEST DAY. (M)

by John Donne

'TIS the year's midnight, and it is the day's,Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;    The sun is spent, and now his flasks    Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;            The world's whole sap is sunk ;The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,

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Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers beAt the next world, that is, at the next spring ;    For I am every dead thing,    In whom Love wrought new alchemy.            For his art did expressA quintessence even from nothingness,From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;He ruin'd me, and I am re-begotOf absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;    I, by Love's limbec, am the grave    Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood            Have we two wept, and soDrown'd the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,To be two chaoses, when we did showCare to aught else ; and often absencesWithdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;    Were I a man, that I were one    I needs must know ; I should prefer,            If I were any beast,Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,And love ; all, all some properties invest.If I an ordinary nothing were,As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am none ; nor will my sun renew.You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun    At this time to the Goat is run    To fetch new lust, and give it you,            Enjoy your summer all,Since she enjoys her long night's festival.Let me prepare towards her, and let me callThis hour her vigil, and her eve, since thisBoth the year's and the day's deep midnight is.

 

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Week Two: The Enlightenment and Romanticism

Alexander Pope ‘An Essay on Man’Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,The proper study of mankind is man.Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,A being darkly wise, and rudely great:With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast;In doubt his mind or body to prefer;Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;Alike in ignorance, his reason such,Whether he thinks too little or too much:Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;Still by himself abus'd or disabus'd;Created half to rise, and half to fall;Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Samuel Johnson on ‘The Metaphysical Poets’The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. 

If the father of criticism [Aristotle] has rightly denominated poetry “techne mimetic” ( i.e. an imitative art) these writers will, without great wrong, lose their right to the name of poets, for they cannot be said to have imitated anything; they neither copied nature nor life,

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neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect. 

Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit, but maintains that they surpass him in poetry. 

If wit be well described by Pope, as being “that which has often thought, but was never before so well expressed,” they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be singular in their thoughts and were careless of their diction. But Pope’s account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language. 

If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be considered wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledge to be just; if it be that which he that never found it wonders how he missed, to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found. 

But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased

RomanticismWilliam Blake (1757-1827)

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‘London’ (M)I wandered through each chartered street,

Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

A mark in every face I meet,

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,

In every infant's cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry

Every blackening church appals,

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And the hapless soldier's sigh

Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear

How the youthful harlot's curse

Blasts the new-born infant's tear,

And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

‘The Sick Rose’

O Rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

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Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

(this will help to unravel the poem: it is a quote from Blake’s poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “As the caterpillar lays its eggs on the fairest leaves, so the Priest lays his curses on the fairest joys.”)

The Garden of Love

I went to the Garden of Love,And saw what I never had seen:A Chapel was built in the midst,Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;

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So I turned to the Garden of Love,That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,And tombstones where flowers should be;And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,And binding with briers my joys and desires.

The Chimney Sweeper (M)

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue,

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Could scarcely cry weep weep, weep weep,

So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head

That curled like a lambs back was shav'd, so I said.

Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,

You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair

And so he was quiet. & that very night.

As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight

That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack

Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black,

And by came an Angel who had a bright key

And he open'd the coffins & set them all free.

Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run

And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind.

They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.

And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,

He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark

And got with our bags & our brushes to work.

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Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm

So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

THE TYGER

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art. Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

From one of Blake’s Letters: Blake on Art and Imagination: “To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are

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addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and but mediately to the understanding or reason?”

Week Three: William Wordsworth and John Keats

"The world is too much with us" (M) 

THE World is too much with us; late and soon,  

  Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:  

  Little we see in Nature that is ours;  

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!  

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,          5

  The winds that will be howling at all hours  

  And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,  

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;  

It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be  

  A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,—   10

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,  

  Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;  

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;  

  Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.  

LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798 (M)

FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.--Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,

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Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone. These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:--feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,-- Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft-- In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart-- How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,

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How often has my spirit turned to thee! And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all.--I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.--That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompence. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

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A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. Nor perchance, If I were not thus taught, should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay: For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee: and, in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance-- If I should be where I no more can hear

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Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence--wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together; and that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came Unwearied in that service: rather say With warmer love--oh! with far deeper zeal Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget, That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake! 1798.

John KeatsOde to a Nightingale (M)

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains     My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains    One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,    But being too happy in thine happiness,--        That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees            In some melodious plot    Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,        Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been    Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,Tasting of Flora and the country green,    Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!O for a beaker full of the warm South,    Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,        With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,            And purple-stained mouth;    That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,        And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget    What thou among the leaves hast never known,

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The weariness, the fever, and the fret    Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,    Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;        Where but to think is to be full of sorrow            And leaden-eyed despairs,    Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,        Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,    Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,But on the viewless wings of Poesy,    Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:Already with thee! tender is the night,    And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,        Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;            But here there is no light,    Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown        Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,    Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet    Wherewith the seasonable month endowsThe grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;    White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;        Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;            And mid-May's eldest child,    The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,        The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time    I have been half in love with easeful Death,Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,    To take into the air my quiet breath;        Now more than ever seems it rich to die,    To cease upon the midnight with no pain,        While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad            In such an ecstasy!    Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--          To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!    No hungry generations tread thee down;The voice I hear this passing night was heard    In ancient days by emperor and clown:

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Perhaps the self-same song that found a path    Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,        She stood in tears amid the alien corn;            The same that oft-times hath    Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam        Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell    To toll me back from thee to my sole self!Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well    As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades    Past the near meadows, over the still stream,        Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep            In the next valley-glades:    Was it a vision, or a waking dream?        Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?

Week Four: The VictoriansG.M. Hopkins: ‘God’s Grandeur’ (M)

 THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oilCrushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;         5

  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;  And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soilIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent;  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;         1

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And though the last lights off the black West went  Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—Because the Holy Ghost over the bent  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. 

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Lewis Caroll: ‘Jabberwocky’ from Alice Through the Looking Glass (M)

 ’T WAS brillig, and the slithy toves  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,  And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!         5

  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun  The frumious Bandersnatch!” He took his vorpal sword in hand:  Long time the manxome foe he sought—         1

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So rested he by the Tumtum tree,  And stood awhile in thought. And as in uffish thought he stood,  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,         1

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  And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!He left it dead, and with its head  He went galumphing back.         2

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 “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”  He chortled in his joy. ’T was brillig, and the slithy toves         2

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  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,  And the mome raths outgrabe. 

Humpty Dumpty’s (failed) interpretation of the poem!

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`You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,' said Alice. `Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called "Jabberwocky"?'

`Let's hear it,' said Humpty Dumpty. `I can explain all the poems that ever were invented -- and a good many that haven't been invented just yet.'

This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:

`'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,   And the mome raths outgrabe.'

`That's enough to begin with,' Humpty Dumpty interrupted: `there are plenty of hard words there. "Brillig" means four o'clock in the afternoon -- the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.'

`That'll do very well,' said Alice: `and "slithy"?'

`Well, "slithy" means "lithe and slimy". "Lithe" is the same as "active". You see it's like a portmanteau -- there are two meanings packed up into one word.'

`I see it now,' Alice remarked thoughtfully: `and what are "toves"?' `Well, "toves" are something like badgers -- they're something like lizards -- and they're something like corkscrews.' `They must be very curious-looking creatures.' `They are that,' said Humpty Dumpty; `also they make their nests under sun-dials -- also they live on cheese.' `And what's to "gyre" and to "gimble"?' `To "gyre" is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To "gimble" is to make holes like a gimlet.' `And "the wabe" is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?' said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity. `Of course it is. It's called "wabe" you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it --' `And a long way beyond it on each side,' Alice added. `Exactly so. Well then, "mimsy" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's another portmanteau for you). And a "borogove" is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round -- something like a live mop.' `And then "mome raths"?' said Alice. `I'm afraid I'm giving you a great deal of trouble.' `Well, a "rath" is a sort of green pig: but "mome" I'm not certain about. I think it's short for "from home" -- meaning that they'd lost their way, you know.' `And what does "outgrabe" mean?' `Well, "outgribing" is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you'll hear it done, maybe -- down in the wood yonder -- and, when you've once

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heard it, you'll be quite content. Who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you?' `I read it in a book,' said Alice.

Charles Dickens: from Hard Times

Chapter I — The One Thing Needful

“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders, — nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was, — all helped the emphasis.

“In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!”

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

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Emily Bronte: from Wuthering Heights

While leading the way upstairs, she recommended that I should hide the candle, and not make a noise; for her master had an odd notion about the chamber she would put me in, and never let anybody lodge there willingly. I asked the reason. She did not know, she answered: she had only lived there a year or two; and they had so many queer goings on, she could not begin to be curious.

Too stupefied to be curious myself, I fastened my door and glanced round for the bed. The whole furniture consisted of a chair, a clothes-press, and a large oak case, with squares cut out near the top resembling coach windows. Having approached this structure, I looked inside, and perceived it to be a singular sort of old- fashioned couch, very conveniently designed to obviate the necessity for every member of the family having a room to himself. In fact, it formed a little closet, and the ledge of a window, which it enclosed, served as a table. I slid back the panelled sides, got in with my light, pulled them together again, and felt secure against the vigilance of Heathcliff, and every one else.

The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled up in one corner; and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small - Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton.

In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and continued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw - Heathcliff - Linton, till my eyes closed; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started from the dark, as vivid as spectres - the air swarmed with Catherines; and rousing myself to dispel the obtrusive name, I discovered my candle-wick reclining on one of the antique volumes, and perfuming the place with an odour of roasted calf-skin. I snuffed it off, and, very ill at ease under the influence of cold and lingering nausea, sat up and spread open the injured tome on my knee. It was a Testament, in lean type, and smelling dreadfully musty: a fly-leaf bore the inscription - 'Catherine Earnshaw, her book,' and a date some quarter of a century back. I shut it, and took up another and another, till I had examined all. Catherine's library was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it to have been well used, though not altogether for a legitimate purpose: scarcely one chapter had escaped, a pen-and-ink commentary - at least the appearance of one - covering every morsel of blank that the printer had left. Some were detached sentences; other parts took the form of a regular diary,

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scrawled in an unformed, childish hand. At the top of an extra page (quite a treasure, probably, when first lighted on) I was greatly amused to behold an excellent caricature of my friend Joseph, - rudely, yet powerfully sketched. An immediate interest kindled within me for the unknown Catherine, and I began forthwith to decipher her faded hieroglyphics…

…I began to nod drowsily over the dim page: my eye wandered from manuscript to print. …I began to dream, almost before I ceased to be sensible of my locality. I thought it was morning; and I had set out on my way home, with Joseph for a guide. The snow lay yards deep in our road; and, as we floundered on, my companion wearied me with constant reproaches that I had not brought a pilgrim's staff: telling me that I could never get into the house without one, and boastfully flourishing a heavy-headed cudgel, which I understood to be so denominated. For a moment I considered it absurd that I should need such a weapon to gain admittance into my own residence…..

This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavoured to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple: a circumstance observed by me when awake, but forgotten. 'I must stop it, nevertheless!' I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in - let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton) - 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes: still it wailed, 'Let me in!' and maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear. 'How can I!' I said at length. 'Let me go, if you want me to let you in!' The fingers relaxed, I snatched mine through the hole, hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramid against it, and stopped my ears to exclude the lamentable prayer. I seemed to keep them closed above a quarter of an hour; yet, the instant I listened again, there was the doleful cry

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moaning on! 'Begone!' I shouted. 'I'll never let you in, not if you beg for twenty years.' 'It is twenty years,' mourned the voice: 'twenty years. I've been a waif for twenty years!' Thereat began a feeble scratching outside, and the pile of books moved as if thrust forward. I tried to jump up; but could not stir a limb; and so yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright. To my confusion, I discovered the yell was not ideal: hasty footsteps approached my chamber door; somebody pushed it open, with a vigorous hand, and a light glimmered through the squares at the top of the bed. I sat shuddering yet, and wiping the perspiration from my forehead: the intruder appeared to hesitate, and muttered to himself. At last, he said, in a half-whisper, plainly not expecting an answer, 'Is any one here?' I considered it best to confess my presence; for I knew Heathcliff's accents, and feared he might search further, if I kept quiet. With this intention, I turned and opened the panels. I shall not soon forget the effect my action produced. Heathcliff stood near the entrance, in his shirt and trousers; with a candle dripping over his fingers, and his face as white as the wall behind him. The first creak of the oak startled him like an electric shock: the light leaped from his hold to a distance of some feet, and his agitation was so extreme, that he could hardly pick it up.

'It is only your guest, sir,' I called out, desirous to spare him the humiliation of exposing his cowardice further. 'I had the misfortune to scream in my sleep, owing to a frightful nightmare. I'm sorry I disturbed you.'

'Oh, God confound you, Mr. Lockwood! I wish you were at the - ' commenced my host, setting the candle on a chair, because he found it impossible to hold it steady. 'And who showed you up into this room?' he continued, crushing his nails into his palms, and grinding his teeth to subdue the maxillary convulsions. 'Who was it? I've a good mind to turn them out of the house this moment?'

'It was your servant Zillah,' I replied, flinging myself on to the floor, and rapidly resuming my garments. 'I should not care if you did, Mr. Heathcliff; she richly deserves it. I suppose that she wanted to get another proof that the place was haunted, at my expense. Well, it is - swarming with ghosts and goblins! You have reason in shutting it up, I assure you. No one will thank you for a doze in such a den!'

'What do you mean?' asked Heathcliff, 'and what are you doing? Lie down and finish out the night, since you are here; but, for heaven's sake! don't repeat that horrid noise: nothing could excuse it, unless you were having your throat cut!'

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Matthew Arnold: ‘Dover Beach’ (M)

The sea is calm tonight, The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Agean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

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Week Five: Modernism (1880-1939)Thomas Hardy: ‘Channel Firing’ (1914) (M)

That night your great guns, unawares,Shook all our coffins as we lay,And broke the chancel window-squares,We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisomeArose the howl of wakened hounds:The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, 'No;It's gunnery practice out at seaJust as before you went below;The world is as it used to be:

'All nations striving strong to makeRed war yet redder. Mad as hattersThey do no more for Christés sakeThan you who are helpless in such matters.

'That this is not the judgment-hourFor some of them's a blessed thing,For if it were they'd have to scourHell's floor for so much threatening....

'Ha, ha. It will be warmer whenI blow the trumpet (if indeedI ever do; for you are men,And rest eternal sorely need).'

So down we lay again. 'I wonder,Will the world ever saner be,'Said one, 'than when He sent us underIn our indifferent century!'

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And many a skeleton shook his head.'Instead of preaching forty year,'My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,'I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.

Again the guns disturbed the hour,Roaring their readiness to avenge,As far inland as Stourton Tower,And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

The Ruined Maid

"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?""O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.

"You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!""Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.

-"At home in the barton you said 'thee' and 'thou,'And 'thik oon,' and 'theäs oon,' and 't'other'; but nowYour talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!""Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.

"Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleakBut now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek,And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!""We never do work when we're ruined," said she.

"You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seemTo know not of megrims or melancho-ly!""True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she. 

"I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!""My dear a raw country girl, such as you be,Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she.

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A. E. Housman: ‘To An Athlete Dying Young’ (M)

THE time you won your town the race  

We chaired you through the market-place;  

Man and boy stood cheering by,  

And home we brought you shoulder-high.  

  To-day, the road all runners come,          

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Shoulder-high we bring you home,  

And set you at your threshold down,  

Townsman of a stiller town.  

  Smart lad, to slip betimes away  

From fields where glory does not stay,   10

And early though the laurel grows  

It withers quicker than the rose.  

  Eyes the shady night has shut  

Cannot see the record cut,  

And silence sounds no worse than cheers   15

After earth has stopped the ears:  

  Now you will not swell the rout  

Of lads that wore their honours out,  

Runners whom renown outran  

And the name died before the man.   20

  So set, before its echoes fade,  

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,  

And hold to the low lintel up  

The still-defended challenge-cup.  

  And round that early-laurelled head   25

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,  

And find unwithered on its curls  

The garland briefer than a girl's.

XIII from A Shropshire Lad

When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say,

"Give crowns and pounds and guineas

 

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But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies

But keep your fancy free." But I was one-and-twenty,

No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty

I heard him say again, "The heart out of the bosom

Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty

And sold for endless rue." And I am two-and-twenty

And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

 

Wilfred Owen ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ (M)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf outstripped 5-9’s that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;But someone still was yelling out and stumblingAnd floundering like a man in fire or lime.--Dim, through the misty panes and thick green lightAs under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

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Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

Siegfried Sassoon: ‘They’

The Bishop tells us: "When the boys come back They will not be the same; for they’ll have fought In a just cause: they lead the last attack On Anti-Christ; their comrades’ blood has bought New right to breed an honourable race, They have challenged Death and dared him face to face." "We’re none of us the same!" the boys reply. "For George lost both his legs; and Bill’s stone blind; Poor Jim’s shot through the lungs and like to die; And Bert’s gone syphilitic: you’ll not find A chap who’s served that hasn’t found some change." And the Bishop said: "The ways of God are strange!"

T.S.Eliot: from ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1922)

Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, "tradition" should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

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  No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is

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created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.  In a peculiar sense he will be aware also that he must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to be as good as, or worse or better than, the dead; and certainly not judged by the canons of dead critics. It is a judgment, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other. To conform merely would be for the new work not really to conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of art.

T.S. Eliot: ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917) (M)

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosseA persona che mai tornasse al mondo,Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondoNon torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherized upon a table;Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,The muttering retreatsOf restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question . . .Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes

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Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,And seeing that it was a soft October night,Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be timeFor the yellow smoke that slides along the street,Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;There will be time to murder and create,And time for all the works and days of handsThat lift and drop a question on your plate;Time for you and time for me,And time yet for a hundred indecisions,And for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be timeTo wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"Time to turn back and descend the stair,With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]Do I dareDisturb the universe?In a minute there is timeFor decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:--Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;I know the voices dying with a dying fallBeneath the music from a farther room.So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

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When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,Then how should I beginTo spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--Arms that are braceleted and white and bare[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]Is it perfume from a dressThat makes me so digress?Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.And should I then presume?And how should I begin?. . . . .Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streetsAnd watched the smoke that rises from the pipesOf lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged clawsScuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!Smoothed by long fingers,Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,Would it have been worth while,To have bitten off the matter with a smile,To have squeezed the universe into a ballTo roll it toward some overwhelming question,To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the deadCome back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--If one, settling a pillow by her head,

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Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,Would it have been worth while,After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along thefloor--And this, and so much more?--It is impossible to say just what I mean!But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:Would it have been worth whileIf one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,And turning toward the window, should say:"That is not it at all,That is not what I meant, at all."

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;Am an attendant lord, one that will doTo swell a progress, start a scene or two,Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,Deferential, glad to be of use,Politic, cautious, and meticulous;Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuseAt times, indeed, almost ridiculous--Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . .I grow old . . .I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the wavesCombing the white hair of the waves blown backWhen the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the seaBy sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brownTill human voices wake us, and we drown.

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(1) A passage from Dante Alighieri's Inferno (Canto 27, lines 61-66) spoken by Guido da Montefeltro in response to the questions of Dante, who Guido supposes is dead, since he is in Hell:. The flame in which Guido is encased vibrates as he speaks: "If I thought that that I was replying to someone who would ever return to the world, this flame would cease to flicker. But since no one ever returns from these depths alive, if what I've heard is true, I will answer you without fear of infamy."(2) Anesthetized with ether; but also suggesting "made etherial," less real.(3) Cheap bars and restaurants used to spread sawdust on the floor to soak up spilled beer, etc.(4) The great Renaissance Italian artist.(5) Cookies and ice cream.(6) Like John the Baptist (see Matthew 14: 1-12)(7) A man raised from death by Jesus (see John 11: 1-44).(8) Early form of slide projector.(9) Shakespeare's sensitive hero known for procrastination.

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, whenWe whisper together

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Are quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry grassOr rats' feet over broken glassIn our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossedWith direct eyes, to death's other KingdomRemember us -- if at all -- not as lostViolent souls, but onlyAs the hollow menThe stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreamsIn death's dream kingdomThese do not appear:There, the eyes areSunlight on a broken columnThere, is a tree swingingAnd voices areIn the wind's singingMore distant and more solemnThan a fading star.

Let me be no nearerIn death's dream kingdomLet me also wearSuch deliberate disguisesRat's coat, crowskin, crossed stavesIn a fieldBehaving as the wind behavesNo nearer --

Not that final meetingIn the twilight kingdom

III

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This is the dead landThis is cactus landHere the stone imagesAre raised, here they receiveThe supplication of a dead man's handUnder the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like thisIn death's other kingdomWaking aloneAt the hour when we areTrembling with tendernessLips that would kissForm prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not hereThere are no eyes hereIn this valley of dying starsIn this hollow valleyThis broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting placesWe grope togetherAnd avoid speechGathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unlessThe eyes reappearAs the perpetual starMultifoliate roseOf death's twilight kingdomThe hope onlyOf empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pearPrickly pear prickly pearHere we go round the prickly pearAt five o'clock in the morning.

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Between the ideaAnd the realityBetween the motionAnd the actFalls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conceptionAnd the creationBetween the emotionAnd the responseFalls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desireAnd the spasmBetween the potencyAnd the existenceBetween the essenceAnd the descentFalls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine isLife isFor Thine is the

This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.

James Joyce : ‘Eveline’ (from Dubliners)

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was

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tired.

Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it -- not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field -- the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.

Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:

"He is in Melbourne now."

She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. O course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.

"Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting?"

"Look lively, Miss Hill, please."

She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.

But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married -- she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence. She knew it was that that had

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given her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother's sake. And no she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages -- seven shillings -- and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn't going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday's dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to hr charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work -- a hard life -- but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him.

"I know these sailor chaps," he said.

One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her lover secretly.

The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest had been her favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day,

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he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mothers bonnet to make the children laugh.

Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother's illness; she was again in the close dark room at the other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ-player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her father strutting back into the sickroom saying:

"Damned Italians! coming over here!"

As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother's life laid its spell on the very quick of her being -- that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother's voice saying constantly with foolish insistence:

"Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!"

She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.

She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer.

A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:

"Come!"

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.

"Come!"

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No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.

"Eveline! Evvy!"

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

James Joyce : ‘Araby’ (1914) (M)

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.

The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant, and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of which I found the late tenant’s rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.

When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown somber. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street, light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner, we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan’s sister came out on the

1

doorstep to call her brother in to his tea, we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan’s steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed, and I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body, and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.

Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: ‘O love! O love!’ many times.

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At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar; she said she would love to go.

‘And why can’t you?’ I asked.

While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps, and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.

‘It’s well for you,’ she said.

‘If I go,’ I said, ‘I will bring you something.’

What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read. The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised, and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few questions in class. I watched my master’s face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play.

On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-brush, and answered me curtly:

‘Yes, boy, I know.’

As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at the window. I left the house in bad humour and walked slowly towards the school. The air was pitilessly raw and already my heart misgave me.

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When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was early. I sat staring at the clock for some time and, when its ticking began to irritate me, I left the room. I mounted the staircase and gained the upper part of the house. The high, cold, empty, gloomy rooms liberated me and I went from room to room singing. From the front window I saw my companions playing below in the street. Their cries reached me weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the cool glass, I looked over at the dark house where she lived. I may have stood there for an hour, seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched discreetly by the lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below the dress.

When I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the fire. She was an old, garrulous woman, a pawnbroker’s widow, who collected used stamps for some pious purpose. I had to endure the gossip of the tea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond an hour and still my uncle did not come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry she couldn’t wait any longer, but it was after eight o’clock and she did not like to be out late, as the night air was bad for her. When she had gone I began to walk up and down the room, clenching my fists. My aunt said:

‘I’m afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.’

At nine o’clock I heard my uncle’s latchkey in the hall door. I heard him talking to himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had received the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these signs. When he was midway through his dinner I asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten.

‘The people are in bed and after their first sleep now,’ he said. I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically: ‘Can’t you give him the money and let him go? You’ve kept him late enough as it is.’My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed in the old saying: ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ He asked me where I was going and, when I told him a second time, he asked me did I know The Arab’s Farewell to his Steed. When I left the kitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my aunt.I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham Street towards the station. The sight of the streets thronged with buyers and glaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of my journey. I took my seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train. After an intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept onward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river. At Westland Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the porters

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moved them back, saying that it was a special train for the bazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage. In a few minutes the train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed out on to the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes to ten. In front of me was a large building which displayed the magical name.I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar would be closed, I passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a shilling to a weary-looking man. I found myself in a big hall girded at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a service. I walked into the centre of the bazaar timidly. A few people were gathered about the stalls which were still open. Before a curtain, over which the words Café Chantant were written in coloured lamps, two men were counting money on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins.Remembering with difficulty why I had come, I went over to one of the stalls and examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the stall a young lady was talking and laughing with two young gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to their conversation.

‘O, I never said such a thing!’

‘O, but you did!’

‘O, but I didn’t!’

‘Didn’t she say that?’

‘Yes. I heard her.’

‘O, there’s a... fib!’

Observing me, the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to the stall and murmured:

‘No, thank you.’

The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back to the two young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two

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pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark. Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

Magill will look like this:

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