Class Blog

Though Charlotte Smith takes inspiration from the original Italian form, her sonnet, “From Petrarch xv” has considerably different in tone. Smith reinterprets Petrarch’s sonnet 279, which the speaker says that if nature hears his lamentations about the loss of his love, then Laura will surely appear to him and reassure him. Because this is a translation, style conventions and literary devices do not match, but the self-pitying tone of Petrarch’s sonnet remains. 

Smith responds to Petrarch in an English sonnet form where her speaker is a first-person onlooker to the scene which carries a melancholy tone. Smith begins her reimagination much differently. Her speaker pays attention to the exact feelings of the natural scene, “Where the green leaves exclude the summer beam, / And softly bend as balmy breezes blow, / And where the liquid lapse, the lucid stream, / Across the fretted rock is heard to flow, / Pensive I lay:” (Smith l. 1-5). Smith’s speaker begins her musings in the middle of a sentence, as if she was slowly coming back to the present after a long meditation at one with nature. There are multiple occurrences of consonance in these lines, with the affective qualities of a soft beat in the “b,” a whisper, such as the repeated “l” and “f,” and the speaker is finally awoken with the slightly harder “p” sound from pensive. She delays the subject of the sentence until the end of the clause, after four enjambed lines to preserve that thought process, and in conjunction with hard punctuation of the colon in the middle of the line, the speaker’s attention is diverted toward the lover and his beloved. 

The female speaker then notices how Petrarch recalls Laura selfishly from the grave: “When she whom earth conceals,/ And pitying Heaven her angel form reveals, to say – Unhappy Petrarch, dry your tears…” (Smith l. 5-6). “Conceals” carries a much different weight than “hides” which is translated directly from Petrarch. To conceal is to safeguard and protect out of view, while hide carries the implication of a game, as if Petrarch thinks he has a right to find her and recall her whenever it is convenient to him. We get a hint of cynicism in the second line when the speaker remarks on Laura’s appearance recalled for Petrarch’s benefit and disrupting her rest.  Even though Laura is speaking literally to Petrarch, she likely had a more scathing tone understood by the female onlooker. She wants to be left alone, unobjectified by Petrarch’s poetry. 

Laura then makes biting remarks to Petrarch whose manifest content give the impression of abrupt comfort but have a different appearance to the female speaker. In the final couplet, Laura says, “But raise thine eyes to Heaven – and think I wait thee there” (Smith l. 13-14). The dash mimics the lover grabbing a part of her dress to try to stay her even though she only wants to rest. The only way she can shake him off is to promise him that she awaits him in the afterlife, to take comfort in the promises of religion is not enough for the selfish lover. This poem is an expression of romantic thought inaccessible to women because when women go to the forest for that sublime individualistic experience described by male romantics, their realization of self is in the collective. Instead of finding peace in nature, she recognizes herself in how Laura is beholden to this man after death. It is painful to realize that it is Laura who is the Petrarchan solitary wanderer in Smith’s retelling because she is still tied to the lover’s wishes. 

Something about this poem really interests me and I’m not sure what. The speaker of the poem is a listener of the voice of nature. This voice comes not from animals, the cattle, or the frogs and duck in Blake’s illumination, but inanimate objects. The clod and pebble speak in verse; the first and third stanzas are in quotation marks. The speaker of the poem is but a transcriber. I find the voice of the speakers in Blake’s poetry very interesting. He likes to take on the voice of different characters in his poems, whether the nurse, the children, the chimney sweeper, or an infant. Blake’s own voice is a lot of the times absent in his poetry, and in this case, Blake avoids the reference of the lyric “I.” The speaker here is a translator for nature. Unlike many other Romantic poets, Blakes positions himself here as a mediator and a messenger, instead of a God-like, solitary hero who contains the power of imagination and wisdom.

The relationship between the clod and the pebble here is also interesting. The “little” clod of clay that has to endure the weight of the cattle finds Love to be generous and selfless. It “sang” a praise for Love. But the pebble “Warbled out” in response that Love is in fact quite brutal. The clod of clay is immobile, stuck under the weight of the cattle (a massive herd actually, in the illumination), while the pebble of the flowing brook has freedom and the ability to travel. In the top half of the illumination, the page is crowded with the cattle; there isn’t much room. The lower half has motion and space for the frogs and the duck to move around. The pebble and the speaker so it seems, prize freedom over selfless Love. This argument between the clod and pebble evokes the sounds of frogs in the illumination. Also the personification of Love here is an early modern tradition (Petrarchan tradition?), together with the ballad form, is a demonstration of Romantic poetry adhering to poetic traditions.

The use of sarcasm and satire word choices in Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce by William Cowper allows readers to view the poem through simpler ideas despite the underlying theme being such a societally heavy topic. This poem calls out society’s acceptance to slavery and more importantly, their ignorance in understanding the evil in slavery because of their choice to be oblivious to them. I want to hone in on the first stanza. The use of the word “trader” is used with double meaning. This word draws the reader into understanding the speaker’s occupation, but in reality, also is a note to the speaker’s character. “Trader” is also interpreted as “traitor”, showing how the reader is so disloyal to the African shore that they are harming it. The word “traitor” holds deeper levels of betrayal, especially because you can’t betray something without already having an established trust or responsibility to it. Although the speaker may not be from the African shore, the pre-established trust or responsibility there is to the people of the African shore. That pre-established responsibility is there because the speaker (a human) has the pre-established responsibility to other human beings. 

There is also heavier irony in the third line, “I’ll sing you a song which you ne’er heard before.” (619). This line has elements of sarcasm that play into the intentional irony in this poem. The messages of this poem being reduced to the simple expression of a “song” conveys this childlike naivety. This feeling is significant because it exaggerates an assumed stupidity for the audience that the speaker is talking to, and by doing this, the speaker is also calling the audience (the society that accepts slavery) stupid (for lack of a better word). 

The most recurring showcase of sarcasm/satire is the repetition at the end of each stanza that says, “Which nobody can deny, deny, | Which nobody can deny!” There is a tune to these lines that plays into the theme of childlike naivety, and similar to line 3, the concept of song being used as a tool to convey this childlike naivety. This use of repetition is also used to engrave this naivety into every section of the poem. This is important because it shows how the structure of this poem is set to express the contrast from childlike naivety to inhumane ignorance.

“The Echoing Green” by William Blake deals mainly with themes of life and death, and the inevitable passing of time. The poem depicts the blissful play of young children on the “echoing green,” as well as the memories of the old people watching as they recall their days of play. Then, the sun sets, and the description of the green as “echoing” changes to the “darkening green,” indicating the inevitability of death, but not exactly the ending of life – the repetition used in the poem points to a cyclical way of reading that imitates the cyclical nature of life and death. This repeating of the title phrase, as well as the very simple yet effective rhyme scheme, lets the reader know that there is more to the poem than just the juxtaposition of the old and new generation. Furthermore, the choice to describe the “green” as “echoing” reinforces the imagery of life and memories indefinitely cycling through the same place, never ending.  

The poem uses one day, one cycle of the sun moving across the sky, to describe a lifetime. The end of the play on the field is inevitable, yes, but Blake sees death as a natural part of life, one that is as demanding as sleep and as peaceful as night. In the last stanza of “The Echoing Green,” he states, “The sun does descend, And our sports have an end. Round the laps of their mother/Many sisters and brothers, Like birds in their nest, Are ready for rest/And sport no more seen/on the darkening green.” The “darkening” of the green is a peaceful deviation from the other endings of the stanzas, the word “seen” is still rhymed with “green,” it’s just this one word that has been changed. The ending is family focused as well, and the lines about reuniting with mothers could be referencing seeing loved ones who have already passed on when you yourself also do so. The imagery of birds in a nest has comforting connotations as well, suggesting that death is not seen as a futile battle against a great enemy, but rather simply as a phase of life, as illustrated by the descriptions of different generations having similar experiences.

A part of the wonderous collections of poetry in William Blake’s The Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the poem within Songs of Experience titled “The Tyger” critiques the malicious and devious nature of man as surely not being created by the like of an abstractly concrete “he” (l. 19-20). This “he” can be assumed to be a religious figure rather than a man walking the Earth, based solely on line 20 of the poem: “[d]id he who made the lamb make thee?”. The “lamb” refers directly back to a poem found in The Songs of Innocence portion of the collection called “The Lamb,” in which Blake writes about the heavenly-made lamb that is a product of God [using “He” as the reference]. These two related and contrary poems comment on the inculcation of sublime ideals within human nature and that human nature is constantly life-changing. Therefore, with a psychological lens applied to these poems, “The Tyger” tears away from that sublime association with fresh experiences and presents humans, as they gain experience and age, as complex creatures that are no longer sublimely connected to the world but enact on their own volition and knowledge.

In essence, the idea of the sublime is, roughly, about experiencing something that is overwhelming beautiful that it changes the person involved on a spiritual basis and is thought to be a good spiritual awakening—in other words, “the echo of the great soul” as the Longman Anthology writes, incidentally, “The Tyger” doesn’t present the human experience as completely sublime but rather haunting. The third stanza of the poem tells about the tyger’s heart and the coldness that is freezing within it: “[a]nd what shoulder, and what art,/Could twist the sinews of thy heart?/and when thy heart began to beat,/What dread hand? And what dread feet?”. (l. 9-12). The heart is empty and cold, as seen by the imagery of the shoulder, which is typically used to rely on in any hard situation, a steady presence in a person’s life. However, given that the speaker questions what shoulder “could twist” the tyger’s heart sinews imply that the sublime relation to human nature has dissolved and had changed the tyger’s thought on human relations. Also, the consistent use of “dread” throughout the poem feels antithetical to the concept of the sublime, and the speaker makes it known that the tyger is a dreadful creature with much life experience outside of the sublime that makes them a terror and wonder to view.

So forth, there’s implicit fear within the speaker that the tyger is what real people are like during the Industrial age, and they, the speaker cannot fathom this change. Blake uses industrial and mechanical imagery when describing the tyger, leading me to this conclusion. In the fourth stanza, the tyger is being asked what and how were they created: “what the hammer? What the chain?/In what furnace was thy brain made?/What the anvil?…” (l. 13-15). These images strictly contrast those of the sublime, which focuses on the picturesque and the beauty found within the world. So instead of being associated with “suitable for painting,” the tyger is the opposite, or the real version, of the sublime context that isn’t intrinsically positively life-altering (Longman anthology, 34; l. 20). This entirely tears apart from the rapid association typically found in describing people or objects as inherently sublime, even sparking the speaker to reflect upon their fear by repeating the opening stanza as the final stanza. They question whether something immortal could have made something terrifying, just as it could create something so beautiful, like the lamb.

Ever since we discussed it in class, I’ve been wanting to explore how William Wordsworth’s “The Thorn” looks from a psychological/social perspective, due to the fact that the whole poem operates on gossip! The speaker of the poem’s perspective stems from both their own brief observations of the setting and woman in question, Martha Ray, as well as what others have told them about Martha. The first six stanzas alone communicate a depth to the poem’s central characters and symbols.

The poem begins with an intricate description of nature, establishing the setting and main subject of the poem’s title: the old tangle of thorns, “wretched,” “overgrown” (lines 1-11). The second stanza continues to describe the thorn, but also surrounding nature trying to “bury” the “melancholy crop” (lines 15-22). The landscape’s view itself is eerie: the third stanza’s extended description of setting mentions “thirsty suns and parching air” (line 33). The elaboration on this view and the detail of what surrounds the thorn goes on for five stanzas before Martha Ray is ever mentioned—yet the specific language the speaker uses has already set the tone for the gossip that is about to unfold. The diction is heavy and sinister, painting a beautiful, but certainly haunting, picture of the poem’s setting. The introduction of Martha herself is not by name: added to the landscape in the sixth stanza or part is a “Woman,” and though all she does in her introduction is sit by a pond and cry “oh misery,” readers are already on edge. The setting she resides in has already been established as mysterious in nature—despite all of the detail that has been poured into describing its appearance, particular word choice has given readers the impression that something sinister lurks there. So although all readers are introduced to is a grieving woman, they are inclined to believe that something about her is amiss, consistent with the speaker’s belief and setup. Prior to introducing her, it seems, the narrator of “The Thorn” has pointed out the thorn, representing her supposed murder of her child, as well as setting readers up for a scare through setting before they ever introduce Martha, a woman in clear emotional distress (regardless of how strong the evidence for or against her is). They do not give her a name yet, either—the speaker’s mindset regarding Martha is immediately clear for all of these reasons: they are, at the least, highly suspicious of her. Later stanzas confirm, of course, that this train of thought is consistent with the wider community of the poem, but I especially found it interesting that before readers even realize it, the speaker has taken on a role of not only a storyteller, but an observer and gossip-teller. 

Charlotte Smith’s “Beachy Head” is an ode to the beauty and power of nature. This poem’s excerpt immediately establishes themes of natural grandeur by both personifying and deifying Nature; the narrator states they were “An early worshipper at Nature’s shrine / I loved her rudest scenes” (lines 346-347). These lines not only establish the immense importance of Nature, but also the beauty of Nature in its wildest state. As the narrator goes on to describe “unfrequented lanes,” “wild roses,” “uncultured flowers,” and numerous other natural miracles, they emphasize the beauty of Nature when it is untamed (lines 349, 350, 359). The narrator’s listing of wild flora culminates with the declaration that these flowers and grasses were “Fit crown for April’s fair but changeful brow” (line 367). The comparison of these natural elements to a crown emphasizes the beauty of Nature while also restating the royal or godlike importance of it. Additionally, by referencing April as a representation of Nature, the narrator links Nature to seasons and the passing of time – which is further reinforced by the mention of April’s “changeful brow” (line 367). Allusions to royalty continue throughout the poem; the narrator details “purple tassels,” “purple clouds,” and “purple haze” (line 351, 366, 487). The repetition of the color purple, which is commonly associated with royalty, carries connotations of majesty that reinforce the narrator’s belief in the power and importance of Nature.  

The power and importance of Nature are themes that are expanded further, especially in relation to time. After discovering seashells on cliffs far above the sea, the narrator wonders at possible changes the landscape could have undergone that could explain this phenomenon. The narrator muses on natural changes that would have taken centuries to develop, though they eventually dismiss these theories as simple “conjecture,” seemingly concluding that Nature works on timelines that are too extensive to ever fully comprehend (line 393). The narrator’s deference to the power of Nature is further emphasized through their depictions of common people, each of whom are reliant on Nature for their livelihoods. These people work, “unheeding such inquiry” into Nature’s power, and not considering the “remains of men” that rest “deep beneath them” (lines 396, 402, 401). Rather than trying to comprehend the great power of Nature, they are simply grateful for what it gives them. This contrast between the working people and the bones and fossils buried deep beneath them reinforces Nature’s power and introduces the idea that everything will return to Nature eventually. While the contrast of humanity’s short lives to Nature’s long reign may seem bleak, the narrator seems to find this return to the natural world humbling and comforting.  Though this poem exalts the beauty and power of Nature, it also understands that the passing of time will inevitably return everything to its wildest, most natural, and most beautiful state. 

Dear readers,

Imagine walking down the streets of London. A city that’s been described to be vibrant and bustling with rich interaction and spectacular sights. Would you see it this way? Well, William Blake doesn’t. Sorry (Blake isn’t sorry). Blake’s poem London is organized in 4 short stanzas consisting of quatrains and an ABAB rhyme that aid in the sights and sounds being described in the poem that is a commentary on society and the government.

Through the figure of a traveler and literary lens, Blake describes wandering through his surrounding setting which is “each chartered street” (1) where he sees faces of passing people that have “marks of weakness, marks of woe.” (4) In establishing this bleak setting of streets that are chartered into systems for order , Blake also introduces the poetic voice that has a sorrowful tone in this face of society’s misery that is displayed by the people’s facial expressions as they walk in these streets. I would like to postulate a question to my beloved readers: With this detailed observance, is it possible society is being described as miserably suffering due to the control as imposed upon them by the power hungry upper class/ government?? Because Blake hints at this control through the “chartered” streets. Someone had to charter them and it most certainly wasn’t the lower class who had no money or power to charter streets in the first place. 

In stanza 3, Blake transitions from sight to sound. Curious, Curious. Who is this “chimney-sweeper” (9) that cries? And why is the church “blackening”(10)? How do these two completely opposite subjects relate? Upon research, you will find that a chimney-sweeper during this time period in London was the lowest of lowest in class as being a chimney-sweeper was a low paying and thankless job. Oh and did I mention a lot of young orphaned children were working as chimney-sweepers and churches were responsible for them? We just love exploitation and abuse. But with this background context, I think the chimney-sweeper and church are directly connected due to class and power. Hence, the chimney-sweeper cries from being forced to perform hard labor and the church blackens for its lack of humanity towards the chimney-sweeper. 

Sincerely, Alucard

Upon first reading Agnes Craif McLehose’s “Ae Fond Kiss,” I interpreted the parting of the lovers as the two being forced to separate as a result of death. However, after reading the sections of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men, I realized another possible interpretation of the poem. At one point Wollstonecraft describes how many parents were often very controlling of their children’s lives, especially when it came to marriage (126).  Wollstonecraft wrote, “Girls are sacrificed to family convenience, or else marry to settle themselves in a superior rank, and coquet, without restraint, with the fine gentleman whom I have already described,” (126). This section made me wonder if the separation of the lovers in “Ae Fond Kiss” could be a result of one being forced to marry another by parents or society.

One thing that I noticed was that all twenty-four lines of “Ae Fond Kiss” end with some type of punctuation. As a result of this added punctuation at the end of each line, the poem is slowed down. For example McLehose wrote, “Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest! / Fare-thee-weel, thou best and dearest!” (17-18). Not only are there exclamation points at the end of each line, but each also has a comma and the broken up “Fare-thee-weel.” When I think of a goodbye between lovers who are being forced to marry someone else, it’s not a quick process, it’s long and emotional. McLehose’s decision to include the punctuation helps convey that long, drawn out goodbye because they force the reader to stop and slow down while reading. Another element that McLehose incorporates into “Ae Fond Kiss” is an aabb rhyme scheme. This is a very simple rhyme scheme and allows the reader to focus on the rest of the poem and pay attention to things like the punctuation that help the poem stand out.

In William Blake’s poem, “Infant Sorrow,” the speaker describes the memories that he has of a time when he was a small child and fought against the restraints of his parents. While this seems like a fairly innocuous poem, I argue that it actually serves a far more complicated purpose. The speaker works to draw a comparison between the actions of a small babe and the Romantic poets of the eighteenth-century, and he does so in this way: The Romantics, much like the baby in the story, are fighting against the imposed rules and structures of the older generations of society and working to create a new world in which different and revolutionary ideas can be explored. The musical quality of the poem, which is reflected in its rhyme scheme, allows the words of the poem to truly pervade the minds of readers and the frustrated language that the speaker uses stresses the importance of the ideas that he wishes to share and his feelings of disgruntlement when he is not being properly understood. 

Blake’s lyric poem follows an AABB rhyme scheme, which offers a sing-song-like quality to the work, making it accessible to both adults and children. It is almost reminiscent of a nursery rhyme, which is befitting a story that is all about the struggles of a small child. The speaker states: “Into the dangerous world I leapt —/ Helpless, naked, piping loud” (l. 2-3). A baby, of course, would come into the world this way. While the Romantic poets would enter into society in much less dramatic fashions, the same level of vulnerability is shared between both a newborn baby and the Romantics. The ideas that the Romantics were sharing—such as those that promoted a deeper connection with nature and forced individuals to reassess the ways in which they interacted with the world around them—were revolutionary, and thus, controversial. The world is “dangerous” for the Romantics who wish to go against the status quo. The commas that are used in line three represent the frustrations that the Romantics felt towards those who misunderstood their ideas and refused to acknowledge what they were trying to say. They also mimic the gasping cry of a baby, as the breaks in the line offer a sense of choppiness to the words and add a sense of urgency to the poem. The speaker shares his struggles as an infant, admitting to “struggling in [his] father’s hands,/ Striving against [his] swadling bands” (l. 5-6). The speaker’s father is an oppressing force, and if this is read in a larger, metaphorical context, the argument could be made that the Romantics are fighting against many of the patriarchal social structures that English society was firmly built upon. The speaker’s rhyming of the words “bands” and “hands” also adds to the emphasis that he places upon the oppressive nature of those that are older than him. The speaker states that he is “bound and weary” from the fight that he is putting up against his father, much like how the Romantics grew tired of old ways and wished to refashion the ideas of the past.  

Blake’s speaker offers an alternative view to that of Wordsworth’s, in the fact that Blake’s speaker seems to hold the young in high regard, as there are endless possibilities for a child that has yet to be corrupted by the prejudices and beliefs of older generations. Wordsworth, on the other hand, states in “Old Man Travelling” that he believes the old should be “envied” because they have been able to acquire “perfect peace” with their aging. While the poets value different things, they emphasize a similar idea: it is necessary to work towards eliciting change, no matter who you are.