Alan Alexander Milne ( 1922 ) Photo : Featuring Winnie the pooh: 1 St Edition published in 1924. Milne with his son Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear, at Cotchford Farm, their home in Sussex. Photo by Howard Coster, 1926. : In 1921, Milne bought the 18-inch Alpha Farnell teddy bear for his son (who would name it Edward, then Winnie) from Harrods department store. : Milne was the father of bookseller Christopher Robin Milne, upon whom the character Christopher Robin is based. It was during a visit to London Zoo, where Christopher became enamoured with the tame and amiable bear Winnipeg, that Milne was inspired to write the story of Winnie-the-Pooh for his son. Milne bequeathed the original manuscripts of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories to the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge, his alma mater.
Spring Morning: : By A A Milne ( 1882 – 1956 ) Where am I going? I don’t quite know. Down to the stream where the king-cups grow- Up on the hill where the pine-trees blow- Anywhere, anywhere. I don’t know.
Where am I going? The clouds sail by, Little ones, baby ones, over the sky. Where am I going? The shadows pass, Little ones, baby ones, over the grass.
If you were a cloud, and sailed up there, You’d sail on water as blue as air, And you’d see me here in the fields and say: “Doesn’t the sky look green today?”
Where am I going? The high rooks call: “It’s awful fun to be born at all.” Where am I going? The ring-doves coo: “We do have beautiful things to do.”
If you were a bird, and lived on high, You’d lean on the wind when the wind came by, You’d say to the wind when it took you away: “That’s where I wanted to go today!”
Where am I going? I don’t quite know. What does it matter where people go? Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow- Anywhere, anywhere. I don’t know. — A A Milne : From allpoetry. com : For educational purposes only .
“Spring Morning”, A Morning Poem in a rhymical pace ( AABB in 2nd through 5 Th Stanzas , Same rhyme in 1 St & 6 Th Ones ) By Alan Alexander Milne ( 1882 – 1956 ) Well Known as Children ‘s Writings and for his ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ poems and stories ( He also served with British Army in both the World Wars. ) is About A Question ❓ Where am I going ⁉️ The Speakre’s life is reflected in a continued questioning of where this person is going. Throughout, the Morning and Spring-related images depict his world. This includes “high rooks” calling, clouds sailing by, and the sun coming up. : : “Spring Morning” is the 16 th poem of ‘When We Were Very Young’. Although responding to child-like questions, the lyrical voice reflects on different aspects of life. : : ” [‘Spring Morning’ was published in 1924. It was featured in a poetry book called When We Were Very Young, illustrated by E. H. Shepard. Several of the verses of these poems were set to music by Harold Fraser-Simson. When We Were Very Young is very well known for introducing the characters of Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh. The collection opens with Just Before We Begin, which suggests the figure of Christopher Robin, and, later in the book, Teddy Bear is the first appearance of Winnie-the-Pooh in A. A. Milne’s works. This poetry book contains 45 poems and it is a best-selling book.] ” : Information from website of poem analysis : :
Notes for each of the 6 Stanzas Pending visit this post again later on to enjoy the appreciation of the poem V Jayaraj Pune India July 14 , 2023 : : : :
Anglo-Irish poet, satirist, essayist, and political pamphleteer Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. He spent much of his early adult life in England before returning to Dublin to serve as Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin for the last 30 years of his life. It was this later stage when he would write most of his greatest works. Best known as the author of A Modest Proposal (1729), Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and A Tale Of A Tub (1704), Swift is widely acknowledged as the greatest prose satirist in the history of English literature.
Swift’s father died months before Jonathan was born, and his mother returned to England shortly after giving birth, leaving Jonathan in the care of his uncle in Dublin. Swift’s extended family had several interesting literary connections: his grandmother, Elizabeth (Dryden) Swift, was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of the poet John Dryden. The same grandmother’s aunt, Katherine (Throckmorton) Dryden, was a first cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great grandmother, Margaret (Godwin) Swift, was the sister of Francis Godwin, author of The Man in the Moone, which influenced parts of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. His uncle, Thomas Swift, married a daughter of the poet and playwright Sir William Davenant, a godson of William Shakespeare. Swift’s uncle served as Jonathan’s benefactor, sending him to Trinity College Dublin, where he earned his BA and befriended writer William Congreve. Swift also studied toward his MA before the Glorious Revolution of 1688 forced Jonathan to move to England, where he would work as a secretary to a diplomat. He would earn an MA from Hart Hall, Oxford University, in 1692, and eventually a Doctor in Divinity degree from Trinity College Dublin in 1702.
Swift’s poetry has a relationship either by interconnections with, or by reactions against, the poetry of his contemporaries and predecessors. He was probably influenced, in particular, by the Restoration writers John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester and Samuel Butler (who shared Swift’s penchant for octosyllabic verse). He may have picked up pointers from the Renaissance poets John Donne and Sir Philip Sidney. Beside these minor borrowings of his contemporaries, his debts are almost negligible. In the Augustan Age, an era which did not necessarily value originality above other virtues, his poetic contribution was strikingly original.
In reading Swift’s poems, one is first impressed with their apparent spareness of allusion and poetic device. Anyone can tell that a particular poem is powerful or tender or vital or fierce, but literary criticism seems inadequate to explain why. A few recent critics have carefully studied his use of allusion and image, but with only partial success. It still seems justified to conclude that Swift’s straightforward poetic style seldom calls for close analysis, his allusions seldom bring a whole literary past back to life, and his images are not very interesting in themselves. In general, Swift’s verses read faster than John Dryden’s or Alexander Pope’s, with much less ornamentation and masked wit. He apparently intends to sweep the reader along by the logic of the argument to the several conclusions he puts forth. He seems to expect that the reader will appreciate the implications of the argument as a whole, after one full and rapid reading. For Swift’s readers, the couplet will not revolve slowly upon itself, exhibiting intricate patterns and fixing complex relationships between fictive worlds and contemporary life.
The poems are not always as spare in reality as Swift would have his readers believe, but he seems deliberately to induce in them an unwillingness to look closely at the poems for evidence of technical expertise. He does this in part by working rather obviously against some poetic conventions, in part by saying openly that he rejects poetic cant, and in part by presenting himself—in many of his poems—as a perfectly straightforward man, incapable of a poet’s deviousness. By these strategies, he directs attention away from his handling of imagery and meter, even in those instances where he has been technically ingenious. For the most part, however, the impression of spareness is quite correct; and if judged by the sole criterion of technical density, then he would have to be judged an insignificant poet. But technical density is a poetic virtue only as it simulates and accompanies subtlety of thought. One could argue that Swift’s poems create a density of another kind: that “The Day of Judgement,” for example, initiates a subtle process of thought that takes place after, rather than during, the reading of the poem, at a time when the mind is more or less detached from the printed page. One could argue as well that Swift makes up in power what he lacks in density: that the strength of the impression created by his directness gives an impetus to prolonged meditation of a very high quality. On these grounds, valuing Swift for what he really is and does, one must judge him a major figure in poetry as well as prose.
Swift suffered a stroke in 1742, leaving him unable to speak. He died three years later, and was buried at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.Jonathan Swift was prominent contributor to the Magazine “Tatler'”Four Times of the Day, a series of paintings by William Hogarth, was inspired by “A Depiction of the Morning”, among other works.
A Description of the MorningBy Jonathan Swift ( 1667 – 1745 ) : : : : : : : : : :
Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach Appearing, show’d the ruddy morn’s approach. Now Betty from her master’s bed had flown, And softly stole to discompose her own. The slip-shod ‘prentice from his master’s door Had par’d the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor. Now Moll had whirl’d her mop with dext’rous airs, Prepar’d to scrub the entry and the stairs. The youth with broomy stumps began to trace The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place. The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep; Till drown’d in shriller notes of “chimney-sweep.” Duns at his lordship’s gate began to meet; And brickdust Moll had scream’d through half a street. The turnkey now his flock returning sees, Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees. The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands; And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.
“Description of the Morning”, Written in 1709 By An Irish Poet Jonathan Swift ( 1667 – 1745 ) first published in October 1710 in British Magazine ‘The Tatler’ with a title ,”Description of a City Shower”( discussing the artificiality of life in the city and existence.), is About contemporary social state of London City development of commerce and business and the effect the latter had on the common people and their lifestyle in England. Fairer, David; Gerrard, Christine (2004), 18 th Century Poetry : An Annotated Anthology ) referred to the text as an early example of the oxymoronic ( e. g. ‘deafening silence’ : conjoining contradictory terms ) “town eclogue,” ( short poem of pastoral/rural life ) or “urban georgic”( rural poem about cultivating land / husbandry ) : Swift himself liked as his best poem that he ever wrote : “They think ’tis the best thing I ever writ, and I think so too.” It was an inspiration for other works, including English artist William Hogarth’s series of four paintings, Four Times of the Day, among other works and texts, such as John Gay’s “Trivia”, as well as Swift’s own “A Description of a City Shower”: Look at the photos of the paintings , HERE In ABOVE : : “A Description of the Morning” is written in heroic couplets: iambic pentameter rhyming couplets. The couplets are closed one couplet does not flow into the next, but is instead concluded : : : :
Notes for each of the Couplets pending visit this post again later on to enjoy the appreciation of the poem V Jayaraj Pune India July 13 , 2023 : : : :
Robert Lowell ( 1917 – 1977 ) America’s most influential modern poet. Robert Lowell (1917–1977) was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Life Studies, For the Union Dead, and The Dolphin are among his many volumes of verse. He was a co-founder of and contributor to The New York Review of Books. Lowell created in his serious prize-winning book Lord Weary’s Castle, 1947. Lowell was jailed for being a conscientious objector for radically changing his views on religion,. He was on lithium for years . He underwent for a treatment of manic attack , etc. between 1949 & 1964 . Lowell wrote in a letter to fellow poet Elizabeth Bishop:
“Everyone’s tired of my turmoil…..These things come on with a gruesome, vulgar, blasting surge of “enthusiasm”, one becomes a kind of man-aping balloon in a parade – then you subside and eat bitter coffee-grounds of dullness, guilt etc.” Lowell wrote:
“I became sorely aware of how few poems I had written, and that these few had been finished at the latest three or four years earlier. Their style seemed distant, symbol-ridden and willfully difficult…I felt my old poems hid what they were really about, and many times offered a stiff, humorless and even impenetrable surface….I was reading what I no longer felt.I felt that the best style for poetry was none of the many poetic styles in English, but something like the prose of Chekhov or Flaubert.’
‘Prose is less cut off from life than poetry is…I couldn’t get my experience into tight metrical forms.”: : In a correspondence with Elizabeth Bishop he admitted being influenced by her poem Armadillo, which he ‘replied to’ by writing Skunk Hour, a classic Lowell poem. He admitted,” The dedication is to Elizabeth Bishop, because re-reading her suggested a way of breaking through the shell of my old manner.” : : Lowell wrote in his confessional free flowing poems, as a sort of self-help therapy. His poems are attempts to understand how to survive in the world, how to mix fact & fiction : : : : Robert Lowell underwent treatment for manic attacks, a symptom of his bipolar disorder (schizophrenia) which he was diagnosed with in 1954.
His mental and emotional fragility stayed with him all his adult life—he was in the hospital a dozen times between 1949 -1964—which caused havoc with his relationships. The Poem, “Waking In The Blue” Travels into the surreal world of the mental health institute, specifically the McLean Hospital, Belmont, just outside Boston where he went for treatment. : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : Robert Lowell ‘s “WAKING IN THE BLUE“: : “The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore, rouses from the mare’s-nest of his drowsy head propped on The Meaning of Meaning. He catwalks down our corridor. Azure day makes my agonized blue window bleaker. Crows maunder on the petrified fairway. Absence! My heart grows tense as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill. (This is the house for the ‘mentally ill.’)
What use is my sense of humor? I grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties, once a Harvard all-American fullback, (if such were possible!) still hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties, as he soaks, a ramrod with the muscle of a seal in his long tub, vaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing. A kingly granite profile in a crimson golf-cap, worn all day, all night, he thinks only of his figure, of slimming on sherbet and ginger ale’ more cut off from words than a seal.
This is the way day breaks in Bowditch Hall at McLean’s; the hooded night lights bring out ‘Bobbie,’ Porcellian ’29, a replica of Louis XVI without the wig’ redolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale, as he swashbuckles about in his birthday suit and horses at chairs. These victorious figures of bravado ossified young.
In between the limits of day, hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts and slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle of the Roman Catholic attendants. (There are no Mayflower screwballs in the Catholic Church.)
After a hearty New England breakfast, I weigh two hundred pounds this morning. Cock of the walk, I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor’s jersey before the metal shaving mirrors, and see the shaky future grow familiar in the pinched, indigenous faces of these thoroughbred mental cases, twice my age and half my weight. We are all old-timers, each of us holds a locked razor.”
“Waking Early Sunday Morning” : : By Robert Lowell ( 1917 – 1977 ) : : : :
O to break loose, like the chinook salmon jumping and falling back, nosing up to the impossible stone and bone-crushing waterfall – raw-jawed, weak-fleshed there, stopped by ten steps of the roaring ladder, and then to clear the top on the last try, alive enough to spawn and die. Stop, back off. The salmon breaks water, and now my body wakes to feel the unpolluted joy and criminal leisure of a boy – no rainbow smashing a dry fly in the white run is free as I, here squatting like a dragon on time’s hoard before the day’s begun!
Fierce, fireless mind, running downhill. Look up and see the harbor fill: business as usual in eclipse goes down to the sea in ships – wake of refuse, dacron rope, bound for Bermuda or Good Hope, all bright before the morning watch the wine-dark hulls of yawl and ketch.
I watch a glass of water wet with a fine fuzz of icy sweat, silvery colors touched with sky, serene in their neutrality – yet if I shift, or change my mood, I see some object made of wood, background behind it of brown grain, to darken it, but not to stain.
O that the spirit could remain tinged but untarnished by its strain! Better dressed and stacking birch, or lost with the Faithful at Church – anywhere, but somewhere else! And now the new electric bells, clearly chiming, “Faith of our fathers,” and now the congregation gathers.
O Bible chopped and crucified in hymns we hear but do not read, none of the milder subtleties of grace or art will sweeten these stiff quatrains shoveled out four-square – they sing of peace, and preach despair; yet they gave darkness some control, and left a loophole for the soul.
When will we see Him face to face? Each day, He shines through darker glass. In this small town where everything is known, I see His vanishing emblems, His white spire and flag- pole sticking out above the fog, like old white china doorknobs, sad, slight, useless things to calm the mad.
Hammering military splendor, top-heavy Goliath in full armor – little redemption in the mass liquidations of their brass, elephant and phalanx moving with the times and still improving, when that kingdom hit the crash: a million foreskins stacked like trash …
Sing softer! But what if a new diminuendo brings no true tenderness, only restlessness, excess, the hunger for success, sanity or self-deception fixed and kicked by reckless caution, while we listen to the bells – anywhere, but somewhere else!
O to break loose. All life’s grandeur is something with a girl in summer … elated as the President girdled by his establishment this Sunday morning, free to chaff his own thoughts with his bear-cuffed staff, swimming nude, unbuttoned, sick of his ghost-written rhetoric!
No weekends for the gods now. Wars flicker, earth licks its open sores, fresh breakage, fresh promotions, chance assassinations, no advance. Only man thinning out his kind sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind swipe of the pruner and his knife busy about the tree of life …
Pity the planet, all joy gone from this sweet volcanic cone; peace to our children when they fall in small war on the heels of small war – until the end of time to police the earth, a ghost orbiting forever lost in our monotonous sublime.
— Robert Lowell: : From blueridgejournal.com : For Educational Purposes only
“Waking Early Sunday Morning ” A confessional Poem Of 96 lines in 12 Stanzas each of 8 Octaves, Written in the late winter of 1958 and published in the book Life Studies in 1959, a seminal work By Robert Lowell is About The current Godless, Moral State of Earth and the Future of Humankind.
The Poet Speaker remembers from his childhood when there was no reason to worry about waking up in the Sunday Morning or what life would bring. They were ” free to chaff around” , that is, having a silly jolly time of teasing one another. : : However, his current state of being is hard to strive for. He pities for the planet earth where “all joys have gone” and for the ways the worth has reduced. The “Godless Ways” lacks in true passion or dedication to worship. “The Bible is chopped and crucified” , that is, shredded or sliced by cutting in hymns that they don’t read to understand but they sing in peace and preach despair. Only death is the reward. : : The speaker states that if things continue the way they are in which he thinks that this way the generations will suffer in future. He sees “the children fall in small war on the heels of small war.” : : The earth will become “a ghost orbiting forever lost in monotonous sublime”for the style of the population as they are not eager to lift up or set high on to the bigger questions of life. : : : :
Notes for each of the lines in 12 Stanzas Pending visit this post again later on to enjoy the appreciation of the poem V Jayaraj Pune India July 12 , 2023 : : : :
Sylvia Plath ( 1932 – 1963 ) Bettmann / Getty Images. : : From POETRY FOUNDATION : :
Sylvia Plath was one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the 20th century. By the time she took her life at the age of 30, Plath already had a following in the literary community. In the ensuing years her work attracted the attention of a multitude of readers, who saw in her singular verse an attempt to catalogue despair, violent emotion, and obsession with death. In the New York Times Book Review, Joyce Carol Oates described Plath as “one of the most celebrated and controversial of postwar poets writing in English.” Intensely autobiographical, Plath’s poems explore her own mental anguish, her troubled marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes, her unresolved conflicts with her parents, and her own vision of herself. On the World Socialist web site, Margaret Rees observed, “Whether Plath wrote about nature, or about the social restrictions on individuals, she stripped away the polite veneer. She let her writing express elemental forces and primeval fears. In doing so, she laid bare the contradictions that tore apart appearance and hinted at some of the tensions hovering just beneath the surface of the American way of life in the post war period.” Oates put it more simply when she wrote that Plath’s best-known poems, “many of them written during the final, turbulent weeks of her life, read as if they’ve been chiseled, with a fine surgical instrument, out of arctic ice.” Plath has inspired countless readers and influenced many poets since her death in 1963.
Morning Song : : BY SYLVIA PLATH : Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I’m no more your mother Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow Effacement at the wind’s hand.
All night your moth-breath Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral In my Victorian nightgown. Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square
— Sylvia Plath, “Morning Song” from Collected Poems.: : The Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial matter ,1981 by Ted Hughes. Source: Collected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1992) : From poetryfoundation.org : For Educational Purposes only.
“Morning Song”,1961 Poem By Sylvia Plath is About A mother waking in the night to tend to her crying baby, and so doesn’t celebrate the beauty of the sunrise or an aesthetically pleasing landscape as seen at dawn. Plath herself a mother to a small child when she penned this poem. She writes, “I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral in her Victorian nightgown. Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square.” : “A baby’s bald cry Took its place among the elements.” The attendent mother attends to the need of her child and displays warmth and affection out of tender loving care 💅😘
Notes for each of the lines of 5 Stanzas Pending visit this post again later on to enjoy the appreciation of the poem V Jayaraj Pune India July 11 , 2023 : : : :
Henry Reed ( 1914 – 1986 ) Born in Birmingham, England, poet Henry Reed was the son of a master bricklayer. He earned a BA and an MA at the University of Birmingham and wrote his thesis on Thomas Hardy. Reed served in naval intelligence during World War II. He contributed poetry, criticism, plays, and adaptations of older works to British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio from 1944 to 1979. Reed published only one volume of poetry during his lifetime: A Map of Verona (1946), which includes his much-anthologized poem “Naming of Parts.” His Collected Poems (1991), edited by Jon Stallworthy, includes a significant selection of previously unpublished work. Reed’s poems are often marked by a sharp wit and occasionally elements of satire or parody. Reviewing Reed’s Collected Poems for the Guardian, Adam Phillips observed, “Reed has a plain eloquence for what goes wrong and for what then holds absurdity at bay.” Discussing Reed’s poem “The Door and the Window,” Phillips noted that “Reed wants to show us, without melodrama, how disoriented we are by what language lets us do, what language lets us notice.” Reed’s verse dramas and radio plays are collected in The Streets of Pompeii and Other Plays for Radio (1971) and Hilda Tablet and Others (1971). He is also the author of the critical study The Novel Since 1939 (1946). A selection of his papers and manuscripts is held at the University of Birmingham library. : : : : : 😦 From poetryfoundation.org )
Look, my love, on the wall, and here, at this Eastern picture. How still its scene, and neither of sleep nor waking: No shadow falls from the tree or the golden mountain, The boats on the glassy lake have no reflection, No echo would come if you blew a horn in those valleys.
And look away, and move. Or speak, or sing: And voices of the past murmur among your words, Under your glance my dead selves quicken and stir, And a thousand shadows attend where you go.
That is your movement. There is a golden stillness, Soundless and fathomless, and far beyond it; When brow on brow, or mouth to mouth assembled, We lie in the calm of morning. And there, outside us, The sun moves on, the boat jogs on the lake, The huntsman calls. And we lie here, our orient peace awakening, No echo, and no shadow, and no reflection.
“Morning” 17 lines Morning Poem , in 3 stanzas , one of 5 lines, one of 4 , and a final stanza of 8 linesin free verse, By British poet, journalist, radio dramatist, and translator Henry Reed, is About speaker’s ideal world together with his “love” in peace and awakening without shadows, reflections, and echoes. The Poet Speaker draws an image of future happiness. That is about laying together with his listener – “love” 💕 in a World that carries no part of the past. : : : :
Stanza 1 : : “Look, my love, on the wall, and here, at this Eastern picture. 1 How still its scene, and neither of sleep nor waking: 2 No shadow falls from the tree or the golden mountain, 3 The boats on the glassy lake have no reflection, 4 No echo would come if you blew a horn in those valleys.” 5 : : lines 1 To 5 : : : :
About The Poet Speaker’s addressing his Listener “love,” The two lovers are together in a room and he is drawing her attention to a picture on the wall of some Eastern country side picture to describe the emotional, spiritual, and physical space where the two dwell together. The reader has to locate stillness without 💤 sleep , or without wake up ; No shadowof tree or the golden mountain existing with a Morning scene ; No reflection of the boats on the glassy (smooth , shiney , slick ) surface that is normal in the lake ; And No echo off the valley if horn is blown. They perhaps like to seek stillness in time with no effects of the distancing features, and without any disturbance which they see and describe as explained of the picture. : : : :
Stanza 2 : : ” And look away, and move. Or speak, or sing: 6 And voices of the past murmur among your words, 7 Under your glance my dead selves quicken and stir, 8 And a thousand shadows attend where you go.” 9 : : lines 6 To 9 : : : :
About returning to the real world and the way a the speaker and his listener – “love” lives in the present situation which is contrasting the one they depicted figuratively , in the picture of some eastern countryside of the world. Followed by their own personal history , the second Stanza projects itself onto the life of the couple who is attempting to lead together. : : When the listener “speak[s], or sing[s]” they call up all the “voices of the past murmur” He has to hear them in everything his “love” speaks. He would not seek to bring back the past of his “love” : : Her words under her brief look (“glance”) can “quicken” his “dead selves.” If he brings various feelings for the past back in to their present situation, ” a thousand shadows attend where she goes.” ( line 9 ) So , better he would rather forgetit. : : : :
Stanza 3 : : “That is your movement. There is a golden stillness, 10 Soundless and fathomless, and far beyond it; 11 When brow on brow, or mouth to mouth assembled, 12 We lie in the calm of morning. And there, outside us, 13 The sun moves on, the boat jogs on the lake, 14 The huntsman calls. 15 And we lie here, our orient peace awakening, 16 No echo, and no shadow, and no reflection.” 17 : : lines 10 To 17 : : : :
About laying the couple in the “calm of morning.” which is an ideal picture 🖼️ of happiness in the Oriental landscape in Eastern Hemisphere. ( Where the sun moves on , the boat ⛵ jogs on the lake, that is , their life together moves at a moderately Swift pace as he explains , ” brow on brow, or mouth to mouth assembled, ” ( line 12 ), that is, the closest for ever , as there is no distancing between them and as they have come to closeness to orient with their circumstances , and the adjusted surrounding ( without echo , shadow , and without any reflection.” ( line 17 ) in what they would live with an ” awakening to peace.” ( line 16 ) : : A world made of “golden stillness” just like “Oriental” landscape which “bathed in the constant sun”, without “shadows and reflections”, and where the beloved duo set out on the “Soundless and fathomless” and “beyond.”( lines 10 & 11 ) in the motionless world of tranquil silence. : : : :
“Morning” 🌅🌄 , A Morning Poem By Henry Reed Information Appreciation and poem Analysis Presented by V Jayaraj Pune India July 10 , 2023 : : : : : : : :
Henry David Thoreau ( 1817 – 1862 ) was born in Concord, Massachusetts, U S , on July 12, 1817. : : From ( poets.org ) : : : : He was introduced to the countryside at a young age, and this first contact with the natural world sparked a lifelong fascination. Although his family lived in relative poverty, subsisting on the income from their small pencil-making business, Thoreau was able to attend Harvard University, where he gained an early reputation as an individualist. After graduating in 1837, he assisted his father with the family business and worked for several years as a schoolteacher.
In 1841, Thoreau was invited to live in the home of his neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. There, he began meeting with the group now known as the Transcendentalist Club, which included A. Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and George Ripley. Thoreau passed his time at the Emerson house writing essays and poems for the Transcendentalist journal “The Dial” and doing odd jobs, like gardening and mending fences. In 1845, he began building a small house on Emerson’s land on the shore of Walden Pond, where he spent more than two years “living deep and sucking out all the marrow of life.” His experiences there formed the basis for two books, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and his masterpiece, Walden, which advocated a lifestyle of self-sufficiency and simplicity. The main idea of “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau is to find the meaning of life. He set out to contemplate life and himself and to find out man’s role in the world.
Although Thoreau thought of himself primarily as a poet during his early years, he was later discouraged in this pursuit and gradually came to feel that poetry was too confining. It is as a prose writer that Thoreau made his most meaningful contributions, both as a stylist and as a philosopher. A tireless champion of the human spirit against the materialism and conformity that he saw as dominant in American culture, Thoreau’s ideas about individual resistance, as set forth in his 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience,” have influenced, among others, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.; and his mastery of prose style has been acknowledged by writers as disparate as Robert Louis Stevenson, Marcel Proust, Sinclair Lewis, and Henry Miller. Largely ignored in his own time, the self-styled “inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms” has emerged as one of America’s greatest literary figures.
Thoreau died of tuberculosis on May 6, 1862, in his native Concord.
The Inward Morning : : By Henry David Thoreau ( 1817 – 1862 ) : : : :
Packed in my mind lie all the clothes Which outward nature wears, And in its fashion’s hourly change It all things else repairs.
In vain I look for change abroad, And can no difference find, Till some new ray of peace uncalled Illumes my inmost mind.
What is it gilds the trees and clouds, And paints the heavens so gay, But yonder fast-abiding light With its unchanging ray?
Lo, when the sun streams through the wood, Upon a winter’s morn, Where’er his silent beams intrude The murky night is gone.
How could the patient pine have known The morning breeze would come, Or humble flowers anticipate The insect’s noonday hum,—
Till the new light with morning cheer From far streamed through the aisles, And nimbly told the forest trees For many stretching miles?
I’ve heard within my inmost soul Such cheerful morning news, In the horizon of my mind Have seen such orient hues,
As in the twilight of the dawn, When the first birds awake, Are heard within some silent wood, Where they the small twigs break,
Or in the eastern skies are seen, Before the sun appears, The harbingers of summer heats Which from afar he bears.
— Henry David Thoreau : : “The Inward Morning” was published in Poems of Nature (Houghton, Mifflin & Co, 1895) and is in Public domain.
“The Inward Morning” A philosophical poem in 9 Stanzas Morning Poem in Quatrains , thus 36 lines in a simple rhyme scheme of ABCB, ( changing end sounds from stanza to stanza ) , By Henry David Thoreau is About knowledge , intuition , and unity between all living beings. The various natural phenomenon that he mentions is all connected, just as he is connected to them, considering of what the world is like and how one goes well together in one’s concordance with another. This is a man’s congruous quality( of agreeing ; being suitable and appropriate. : : : :
Stanza 1 : : “Packed in my mind lie all the clothes 1 Which outward nature wears, 2 And in its fashion’s hourly change3 It all things else repairs.” 4 : : lines 1 To 4 : :
About transcendentalism , “”Packed in my mind” ( line 1 ) ( A philosophical movement in the 1820s. It emphasized the importance of nature to one’s true self and the larger world ) : Nature reflects Humanity. Nature’s Clothes which she ,”wears outward” is a Metaphor. She is very fashionable , as she hourly changes for notice ( line 3 ) : : : :
Stanza 2: “In vain I look for change abroad,5 And can no difference find, 6 Till some new ray of peace uncalled 7 Illumes my inmost mind.” 8 : : lines 5 To 8 ::
About “change abroad” sought to by Nature without finding difference. ( lines 5 & 6 ): Human intuition “illumes ( his ) / my inmost mind” ( line 8 ) formed of (sun)rays ☀️comes to bring a “change” which has a peaceful spread in the world. : : : :
Stanza 3 : : “What is it gilds the trees and clouds, 9 And paints the heavens so gay,10 But yonder fast-abiding light11 With its unchanging ray? 12 : : lines 9 To 12
About bright mysterious light spreading quickly. “It gilds the trees” , earh- ward that is , it decorates the goldleaf and skyward “clouds.” ( line 9 ); and is sunshiny , showy, and joyous as it “paints heavens so gay.” ( line 10 ) : : The darkness emerging everyday is removed everyday. In this way Life 🧬 Cycles are 🔁 repeated. No change in the sunrays. The Earth / World Around looks “yonder”(ly) : that is, distant , yet within 😔 sight. Such is the nature of “fast abiding ( Staying Permanently ) light 🚨 ( line 11 ) “With its unchanging ray?” ( line 12 ) that gives the same warmth and life. : : : :
Stanza 4 : : “Lo, when the sun streams through the wood, 13 Upon a winter’s morn, 14 Where’er his silent beams intrude 15 The murky night is gone.” 16 : : lines 13 To 16 : : : :
About “winter morn”ing ( line 14 ) : “when the sun 🌞 streams” , that is, flaws freely and abundantly “through the wood,”( line 13 ) and warms up the cold air amidst Humanity 🥶❄️🥶 ❄️ “wherever his / Poet Speaker’s silent beams intrude” ( line 15 ) : Meaning the sunlight enters uninvitedly as if searching 🔍🔎 “The murky ( 🌑 dark 🕶️ gloomy ) night 🌃 shaded in a bad way 😞 😔 is gone.” (line 16 ) 🌉 : This is 🚥🚦 signal received in a narrow pathway of darkness maybe felt temporarily yet regularly , and the sameway the gloom in life is cleared up in the natural world. : : : :
Stanza 5 : : “How could the patient pine have known 17 The morning breeze would come, 18 Or humble flowers anticipate 19 The insect’s noonday hum,—” 20 : : lines 17 To 20 : : : :
About the dark removing light 🚨 alongside “The morning breeze” ( lines 17 & 18 ) comes , “Or humble ( modest and not arrogant ) flowers 🌺🌹 anticipate(s)/ that is, the flowers expect morning light coming up to them ( line 19 ) and “The 🐝🦋 insects’s noonday hum(s) “,( line 20 ), that is, the insects noisily becomes engaged in their daily activities right from the morning.The three examples furnished for their clever intuitions that the Natural World would be set for them accordingly. It’s a routine they follow for their proliferations. : : : :
Stanza 6 : : “Till the new light with morning cheer 21 From far streamed through the aisles,22 And nimbly told the forest trees 23 For many stretching miles?” 24: : lines 21 To 24 : : : :
About the Questions , same as in Stanza 5 , How do the Natural World stretching / covering for many miles know “the new 🆕 light”of sunrays, “with morning 🌅🌄 cheer ” ( line 21 ) flawing freely and abundantly / “streamed through aisles, ( passageways / narrow pathways , such as woods -ways,) ; “And nimbly told the forest trees”( line 23 ) : that is , forest trees are told about this, in an agile manner that is, with quickness , lightness, and ease.” The answer to the aforesaid questions are followed in the next Stanza 7 : : : :
Stanza 7 : : “I’ve heard within my inmost soul 25 Such cheerful morning news, 26 In the horizon of my mind 27 Have seen such orient hues,” 28 : : lines 25 To 28 : : : :
About “cheerful morning news” ( line 26 ) , “In the horizon of (his)/ my mind ( line 27 ) of the Poet Speaker who has heard within his “inmost ( deepest / innermost within his self ) soul ( line 25 ) : He just knows these news. His intuitions of the morning 🌅🌄 which ought to be cheerful. He is just oriented to such directions that take on Intel of such show happening in the natural world. : : : :
Stanza 8 : : “As in the twilight of the dawn, 29 When the first birds awake, 30 Are heard within some silent wood, 31 Where they the small twigs break,” 32 : : lines 29 To 32 : : : :
About the intuitive Intel taken up by all living beings in the natural world which happens sameway( as explained for the Poet Speaker ) with the “first birds of the twilight of the dawn” becomes “awake,”( lines 29 & 30 ) “heard within some silent ( inferred from the awakened birds first activity happened un- sounded way ) among “wood” , ( line 31 ) ,”Where they ( such intuitions ) the small twigs break,” ( with cheerful chirping ) ( line 32 ) : : : :
Stanza 9 : : “Or in the eastern skies are seen,33 Before the sun appears, 34 The harbingers of summer heats 35 Which from afar he bears. 36 : : lines 33 To 36 : ; : :
About reiteration of what has been exemplified in the natural world ; about how the things of change are occurring. All the living beings behaves unitedly, in the same intuitive manners as the Poet Speaker bears , the “summer heats” that they will have to hold, contain and move on with , towards their proceedings routinely and that could be approaching each such day , but would be annunciated “from the eastern skies seen” and experienced “Before the sun appears” ( lines 33 & 34 ) : : The changing season could be presaged by the living beings in the natural world intuitively as they somehow , notice the foreshadowing of the change , in the eastern direction. Such is their impression and suspicion coming to as to be true known to them by their instinctive knowing. The Poet Speaker and everyone among others ; Each living beings connected with one another in natural harmony, is an integral part of the ecosystem of ‘know and foretell.’ : : : :
“The Inward Morning “, Transcendental philosophical Thoughts of A Morning Poem By Henry David Thoreau Information Appreciation and poem Analysis Presented by V Jayaraj Pune India July 9 , 2023: : : : : : : :
Aubade : : By Philip Larkin : I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse – The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused – nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear – no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anasthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house. — Philip Larkin : From allpoetry.com for educational Purposes only.
“Aubade” One of the BEST Morning Poem written by Philip Larkin ( is great last ) , is About The Poet’s fear of death in his humane realisation everyday on waking at four to soundless dark he stares that kept him awake by a frightful thought that each morning brings him closer to death. Stephen Fry says that reading again and again, this Poem by Larkin, reassures him in his depression – and us – that great art can come out of very dark moods and thoughts.
Further notes for each of the lines Pending visit this post again later on to enjoy the appreciation of the poem V Jayaraj Pune India July 8, 2023 : : : :
Aubade : : By William Empson ( 1906 – 1984 ) : Aubade (1940) Hours before dawn we were woken by the quake. My house was on a cliff. The thing could take Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row. Then the long pause and then the bigger shake. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
And far too large for my feet to step by. I hoped that various buildings were brought low. The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
It seemed quite safe till she got up and dressed. The guardest tourist makes the guide the test. Then I said The Garden? Laughing she said No. Taxi for her and for me healthy rest. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
The language problem but you have to try. Some solid ground for lying could she show? The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
None of these deaths were her point at all. The thing was that being woken he would bawl And finding her not in earshot he would know. I tried saying Half an Hour to pay this call. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
I slept, and blank as that I would yet lie. Till you have seen what a threat holds below, The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
Tell me again about Europe and her pains, Who’s tortured by the drought, who by the rains. Glut me with floods where only the swine can row Who cuts his throat and let him count his gains. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
A bedshift flight to a Far Eastern sky. Only the same war on a stronger toe. The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
Tell me more quickly what I lost by this, Or tell me with less drama what they miss Who call no die a god for a good throw, Who say after two aliens had one kiss It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
But as to risings, I can tell you why. It is on contradiction that they grow. It seemed the best thing to be up and go. Up was the heartening and strong reply. The heart of standing is we cannot fly. — William Empson : Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of the estate of W.H.M. Empson : From poetrybyheart.org.uk : For Educational Purposes only : : : :
“Aubade”Meaning A Song of Lovers parting in the Morning , Written in 1933 Tokyo Japan, A Morning Poem / Dawn Song By William Empson, is About description of the ( Earth) quake ( which woke up the Poet and his Japanese lover ) , here , symbolic of the Crises of War between Britain and Japan in offing , may it be impacting , on the two lover’s Relationship and the latent emotional strain which possibly emerge also with the connexion of links between the two nation’s languages and cultures. : : Biographers of the Poet suggest that his lover was employed as a nanny and, in the Poem, she feels the need to return to the house where she works in order to comfort the child she is looking after. : “Aubade” means A Morning Love Song of Greetings Or Evoking the Dawn. Here in this poem , the said Love Song appears as a Parting Song. : :
Notes for each of the lines Pending visit this post again later on to enjoy the appreciation of the poem V Jayaraj Pune India July 7, 2023.
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 : William Wordsworth : : Sonnet : : London as viewed from the West Minster Bridge at the time of Sunrise in the 🌅🌄 Morning Of September 3, 1802. : : : :
Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!
This poem is in the public domain.
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 , A Petrarhan Sonnet ( 14 ) is About London and the River Thames, viewed from Westminster Bridge in the early morning. It was first published in the collection Poems, in Two Volumes in 1807. The sonnet was originally dated 1803, but this was corrected in later editions and the date of composition given precisely as 31 July 1802, when Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy were travelling to Calais to visit Annette Vallon and his daughter Caroline by Annette, prior to his forthcoming marriage to Mary Hutchinson.
The sonnet has always been popular, escaping the generally excoriating reviews from critics such as Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review when Poems in Two Volumes was first published. The reason undoubtedly lies in its great simplicity and beauty of language, turning on Dorothy’s observation that this man-made spectacle is nevertheless one to be compared to nature’s grandest natural spectacles. Cleanth Brooks analysed the sonnet in these terms in The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. ( Brooks, Cleanth (1956). : Page 5 , The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. Mariner Books.
Stephen Gill remarks that at the end of his life Wordsworth, engaged in editing his works, contemplated a revision even of “so perfect a poem” as this sonnet in response to an objection from a lady that London could not both be “bare” and “clothed” (an example of the use of paradox in literature). : ( Gill, Stephen (1989). William Wordsworth: A Life. pp. 389, 4186n..,Oxford University Press. : )
That the sonnet so closely follows Dorothy’s journal entry comes as no surprise because Dorothy wrote her Grasmere Journal to “give Wm pleasure by it” and it was freely available to Wordsworth, who said of Dorothy that “She gave me eyes, she gave me ears” in his poem “The Sparrow’s Nest”. ( Wordsworth, William. “The Sparrow’s Nest”. Bartleby.com. Retrieved 30 May 2012. Bostridge, Mark (9 March 2008). & “The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, By Frances Wilson”. The Independent. London. Retrieved 30 May 2012. )
[…] we left London on Saturday morning at 1⁄2 past 5 or 6, the 31st July (I have forgot which) we mounted the Dover Coach at Charing Cross. It was a beautiful morning. The City, St pauls, with the River & a multitude of little Boats, made a most beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge. The houses were not overhung by their cloud of smoke & they were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly with such a pure light that there was even something like the purity of one of nature’s own grand Spectacles
— Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journal, 31 July 1802.
The above Informations are as from the Wikipedia’s Article. : : Notes for each of the 14 lines Pending visit this post again later on to enjoy the appreciation of the poem V Jayaraj Pune India July 6, 2023 : : : : : : : : : : :
Posted byJayaraj VyasApril 29, 2023Posted inMonths PoemsTags:1802, London as viewed from the West Minster Bridge at the time of Sunrise in the morning, Nature Poems, Occasional Poems, September 3, September Poems, William Wordsworth
5. Morning At The Window : : By T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) : : Prufrock and Other Observations. 1920.
THEY are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along thelevel of the roofs.
“Morning At The Window”Written in 1914, By T S Eliot is About Starkly Realistic SmallScale Observationsof An Urban Life in London City at the start of 20 Th Century. The Observations include the sound of dirty plates being rattled in basement kitchens, the housemaids moving around with desperation in large numbers ( “Sprouting despondently”) “at area gate.”of their employment, the brown fog of London. : : : :
Notes for each of the lines Pending visit this post again later on to enjoy the appreciation of the poem V Jayaraj Pune India July 5 , 2023
MADHU MALTI 