Dr. D. B. Gavani
1.
The Good Morrow - John Donne
The good morrow by John Donne is considered to
be one of the best poems belonging to the metaphysical school of poetry. This
poem is the poet’s words to his beloved after a night of love making. This will
help the readers unravel the beautiful meaning behind the complex metaphysical
conceit in this poem and once that barrier is done away with; this poem will
come across as one of the most powerful love poetry of all times. I hope you’ll
enjoy going through the good morrow summary by John Donne
In the beginning of the
Good morrow poem, the poet asks his beloved how they used to spend their lives
before they had met each other. With his beloved in arms, the poet realizes how
empty his life was before. He considers that phase of their lives to be as
meaningless as the ones spent in slumber by the seven sleepers of Ephesus in
the den when they were trying to escape the wrath of the tyrant Emperor Decius.
Being without his beloved was as insignificant as those years which the seven
sleepers had spent sleeping. It means that those years bore no importance in
his life anymore. During those days when he was yet to discover true love, he
would make up for that emptiness by indulging in other pleasures of life but
now after understanding the meaning of love he realizes that those pleasures
were very artificial. Now it seems to the poet as if he was a small child
during those days who was being weaned on these materialistic pleasures of the
world in the absence of true love which was like mother’s milk to that child.
During those days all objects of beauty that he came across were nothing but
her beloved’s reflection. To the poet her beloved was like a beautiful dream
which was turned into reality. In the good morrow summary, it is worth
mentioning that through false pleasures the poet might be indicating towards
his various liaisons with other women which were just a reflection of the
beauty which his true lover filled him with.
Let maps to others, worlds
on worlds have shown,
Let us possess our world;
each hath one and is one.
In the second stanza of
“The good morrow poem summary” the poet sheds light upon the bliss which
envelops the lovers. He says that their souls rise in the light of the new
morning of love in their lives. Their hearts are devoid of any kind of fear of
commitment, misunderstanding or losing the one they love. Their presence in the
each others life means so much to them that nothing catches their attention
anymore. Donne proposes his loved one to turn their tiny room in which they
make love into their only world. He says that he does not care about how much
the sea discoverers expand the boundaries of the world with their discoveries.
During those times when maritime discoveries were given utmost importance, the new
inclusions to the map of the world meant nothing to the poet since his world
only comprised of his beloved and him.
Their respective worlds have now been fused into one. This drawing of an
intellectual parallel from astronomy and geography strengthens the metaphysics
of the poem.
If our two loves be one;
or thou and I
Love so alike that none do
slacken, none can die.
Next the poet talks about
the unique beauty of the love which he and his beloved share. Donne says that
that sometimes he and his beloved stare into each others eyes so longingly that
they can see their faces in the others eyes. This refection of faces in the
eyes reveals the true hearts of the lovers. Their hearts are true and spotless
in love. This means that their love for each other enables the lovers to get
rid of all their bad traits and harsh feelings towards the world which helps
them become better people. The poet further adds that unlike the world which is
divided in hemispheres, their world of love knows no boundaries. It does not
have a sharp cold northern hemisphere. Nor does it have a western hemisphere
which has to bid farewell to the sun. By drawing this reference to Geography
again, the poet tries to give us an insight into the unparalleled bliss of his
world of love where it is always warm and sunny.
The Good Morrow summary
will help the readers in understanding the link which Donne draws from medieval
alchemy towards the end of the poem to explain the immortality of the love
which he shares with his beloved. The poet says to his loved one that their
love is indestructible since it is pure. It is the hardest to relax the bonds
of pure substances. The mixing of two things causes impurity which threatens
the longevity of substances. The lovers do not feel this threat since their
love is not mixed with any selfish demands or intentions of any kind and is
perfectly pure. With such a strong bond of love between them the poet is
convinced that nothing can ever decrease or stop the stream of love which flows
between his beloved and him. We recommend you to skim through the following
links to have a better idea of the poem “The Good Morrow”
“Thus through “The Good morrow” we see that
love is capable of elevating a person to new heights from where he views his
love and the world around him in a different light. Hope, you’ve loved going
through the summary of Good Morrow and would like to read some more notes on
the same.
2.
THE PULLEY _ GEORGE HERBERT
In the poem, the central
idea posited by Herbert is that when God made man, he poured all his blessings
on him, including strength, beauty, wisdom, honor and pleasure. However, as in
Pandora's box, one element remained. We are told that God "made a
stay," that is, He kept "Rest in the bottome." We might, in
modern parlance, call this God's ace. God is aware that if He were to bestow
this "jewel" (i.e. rest) on Man as well then Man would adore God's
gifts instead of God Himself. God has withheld the gift of rest from man
knowing fully well that His other treasures would one day result in a spiritual
restlessness and fatigue in man who, having tired of His material gifts, would
necessarily turn to God in his exhaustion. God, being omniscient and prescient,
knows that there is the possibility that even the wicked might not turn to Him,
but He knows that eventually mortal man is prone to lethargy; his lassitude,
then, would be the leverage He needed to toss man to His breast. In the context
of the mechanical operation of a pulley, the kind of leverage and force applied
makes the difference for the weight being lifted. Applied to man in this poem,
we can say that the withholding of Rest by God is the leverage that will hoist
or draw mankind towards God when other means would make that task difficult.
However, in the first line of the last stanza, Herbert puns on the word
"rest" suggesting that perhaps God will, after all, let man
"keep the rest," but such a reading would seem to diminish the force
behind the poem's conceit. The importance of rest -and, by association, sleep-
is an idea that was certainly uppermost in the minds of Renaissance writers.
Many of Shakespeare's plays include references to sleep or the lack of it as a
punishment for sins committed. In Macbeth, for example, the central protagonist
is said to "lack the season of all natures, sleep" and both Lady
Macbeth and Macbeth are tormented by the lack of sleep. Even Othello is most
disconcerted by the fact that he is unable to sleep peacefully once Iago has
poisoned him with the possibility of his wife's infidelity with Cassio. Herbert's
Pulley, then, does not present a new concept. In fact, the ideas in the poem
are quite commonplace for seventeenth century religious verse. What is
distinctly metaphysical about the poem is that a religious notion is conveyed
through a secular, scientific image that requires the reader's acquaintance
with, and understanding of, some basic laws of physics.
Pulleys and hoists are
mechanical devices aimed at assisting us with moving heavy loads through a
system of ropes and wheels (pulleys) to gain advantage. We should not be
surprised at the use of a pulley as a central conceit since the domain of
physics and imagery from that discipline would have felt quite comfortable to
most of the metaphysical poets.
3.
TO HIS COY MISTRESS – ANDREW MARVELL
Andrew Marvell, an English
poet, politician, and satirist, probably wrote "To His Coy Mistress"
between 1650 and 1652. It was first published in 1681 (by his housekeeper!)
several years after his death. Since then, it has become one of the most famous
poems of its kind.
Marvell belongs to a group
commonly known as the "Metaphysical Poets." The group includes some
other poets we love: George Herbert, John Donne, and Richard Crashaw – all from
the 1500s and 1600s. Their poems are famous for the surprising (and, at times,
shocking and daring) use of language to explore BIG questions about love, sex,
the earth, the universe, and the divine. Time holds a huge fascination for
poets in Marvell’s era, and the phrase carpe diem (seize the day) has a special
significance. "Life is short, so live it to the fullest," is one way
to describe the carpe diem mindset.
The Metaphysical Poets
celebrated imagination and wit. Wit often involves a lot of wordplay. Like
"To His Coy Mistress," their poems often take the form of an argument
or a line of reasoning (similar to what a lawyer might use in court). Such
arguments are often parodies of actual arguments. The Metaphysical Poets also
would frequently use their work to critique aspects of society, politics, and
art that they see as flawed – kind of like the Simpsons, South Park, and Family
Guy. Satire. Parody. The Metaphysicals tend to poke fun at the super-serious
way that other poets write about love and God, preferring a more light-hearted
approach to weighty matters.
The speaker of the poem
expresses a similar experience in this angst-y poem, which might just make you
feel a little better about things. It’s also really funny, when you start to
look at it closely. See, here are a few lines we love:
"To His Coy
Mistress" is divided into three stanzas or poetic paragraphs. It’s spoken
by a nameless man, who doesn’t reveal any physical or biographical details
about himself, to a nameless woman, who is also biography-less.
During the first stanza,
the speaker tells the mistress that if they had more time and space, her
"coyness" (see our discussion on the word "coy" in
"What’s Up With the Title?") wouldn’t be a "crime." He
extends this discussion by describing how much he would compliment her and
admire her, if only there was time. He would focus on "each part" of
her body until he got to the heart (and "heart," here, is both a
metaphor for sex, and a metaphor for love).
In the second stanza he
says, "BUT," we don’t have the time, we are about to die! He tells
her that life is short, but death is forever. In a shocking moment, he warns
her that, when she’s in the coffin, worms will try to take her
"virginity" if she doesn’t have sex with him before they die. If she
refuses to have sex with him, there will be repercussions for him, too. All his
sexual desire will burn up, "ashes" for all time.
In the third stanza he
says, "NOW," I’ve told you what will happen when you die, so let’s
have sex while we’re still young. Hey, look at those "birds of prey"
mating. That’s how we should do it – but, before that, let’s have us a little
wine and time (cheese is for sissies). Then, he wants to play a game – the turn
ourselves into a "ball" game. (Hmmm.) He suggests, furthermore, that
they release all their pent up frustrations into the sex act, and, in this way,
be free.
In the final couplet, he
calms down a little. He says that having sex can’t make the "sun"
stop moving. In Marvell’s time, the movement of the sun around the earth (we
now believe the earth rotates around the sun) is thought to create time.
Anyway, he says, we can’t make time stop, but we can change places with it.
Whenever we have sex, we pursue time, instead of time pursuing us. This fellow
has some confusing ideas about sex and time. Come to think of it, we probably
do, too. "To His Coy Mistress" offers us a chance to explore some of
those confusing thoughts.
4.
ON HIS ARRIVING – JOHN MILTON
This exists in manuscript
and was printed twice during Milton's lifetime (in the Poems of 1645 and 1673),
was most likely written in 1632 at a crucial time in Milton's life, just after
his graduation from Cambridge. Milton here acknowledges that he may not seem as
mature as some of his contemporaries but expresses a desire to use his talents
well and his trust in God's will for him over time. One thing to understand
about Milton's sonnets is their topical range. Not a writer of love sonnets in
English (although the sonnets he wrote in Italian are love sonnets), Milton
writes political sonnets, occasional sonnets, elegiac sonnets, and sonnets of
personal meditation, like this one.
These lines introduce the
poem's theme and create a metaphor of Time as a bird flying away with
("stol'n on his wing") Milton's youth. Here, the poet expresses his
sense of how quickly time passes: "hasting days" and "full
career." The poet here uses a seasonal metaphor to express that his time
of life is a "late spring" but that so far, it has not shown any
"bud or blossom," in other words any promise of fruit or achievements
in his life. The poet remarks that he does not seem as old as he is (his look
"deceive[s]" the truth that he is practically a man). "Inward
ripeness" continues the natural metaphor of "bud" and
"blossom" in line 4; the poet has more maturity or ripeness inside
than he shows outside, and more than some other young people, the "more
timely-happy spirits" have. But, note the various possibilities in the
word "endur'th." The lines are grammatically inverted and could be
paraphrased, "and inward ripeness, that imbues / clothes some others,
appears less in me." The phrase "timely-happy spirits" can be
understood to refer to those who are more comfortable with their age or whose
age reflects more happily their inner being.
"It" may refer
to the appearance of inward ripeness of line 7; whether ripeness appears less
or more, now or later, it shall be just right according to his destiny, the
"lot … / Toward which Time leads" him. Where the octave found
dissonance between his inner and outward states of maturity, the sestet's
answer is that time and the will of heaven will even things out according to
plan. Note the multiple puns in this line: "measure" could mean a
musical measure or a line of verse; "even" may be an adjective
modifying "measure" or may lead the reader into the next line,
"even to that same lot." Milton often places adjectives both before
and after nouns, and he likewise often lets the word at the end of a line work
in two different ways in each line. Critics have differed as to the precise
interpretation of these lines, but, in general, they suggest that whatever the
outcome of the speaker's life, it will be with God's knowledge and in
accordance with His world. The "great Task-Master" is God.
The crisis created by
Milton's awareness of the passage of time is one that can be resolved by the
poet's choice to put his future in God's hands. In the first eight lines of the
poem, Milton worries that time has passed too quickly. He has been at Cambridge
studying, but has had little time to fulfill what he sees as his destiny.
Milton is aware he is a talented poet, but instead of writing poetry, he has
been studying. This precipitates a crisis of faith for the poet, who worries he
has wasted precious time. But maybe the poet's talent, which "be it less
or more," will be less when he is mature. He worries, although he is still
confident of his future. In the final six lines of the sonnet, Milton
acknowledges that time, whether "soon or slow," will still inevitably
lead him to God. This is the same future that all men will face, "however
mean or high." Time will lead Milton to God, if he can accept the
limitations of earthly time. In these final lines, Milton finds the answer to
his problem in giving control over his life to God and, as a result, his crisis
of faith is resolved.
Milton uses this sonnet to
symbolize the poet's journey from doubt to self-discovery. He feels guilty
about his time spent studying when he has not published anything. He is slow to
mature, and by "late spring no bud or blossom shew'th." But, in line
9, the pronoun "it," whose antecedent is unclear, but which is
usually thought to refer to the poet's maturity, might suggest that the poet's
talents will ripen with maturity, that rather than having wasted his youth, the
poet has been marking time until he is mature enough to create the kind of
poetry he feels destined to create. As he nears age twenty-four, the poet feels
he is at the border between youth and manhood, a time to which he has
"arrived so near."
5.
THE RAPE OF THE LOCK –
ALEXANDER POPE
Alexander Pope is one the
finest poets that we come across in English literary world. He is dwarf and
physically deformed person who is fallen in love with Arabella Fermer. We may
presume that she is none other than Queen Anne whose beauty and physical
firmament bewitched the hearts of men in those days. That is why he ridicules
the mannerisms of his age in this mock epic.
The Rape of the Lock
begins with a passage outlining the subject of the poem and invoking the aid of
the muse. Then the sun (“Sol”) appears to initiate the leisurely morning
routines of a wealthy household. Lapdogs shake themselves awake, bells begin to
ring, and although it is already noon, Belinda still sleeps. She has been
dreaming, and we learn that the dream has been sent by “her guardian Sylph,”
Ariel. The dream is of a handsome youth who tells her that she is protected by
“unnumber’d Spirits”—an army of supernatural beings who once lived on earth as
human women. The youth explains that they are the invisible guardians of
women’s chastity, although the credit is usually mistakenly given to “Honour”
rather than to their divine stewardship. Of these Spirits, one particular
group—the Sylphs, who dwell in the air—serve as Belinda’s personal guardians;
they are devoted, lover-like, to any woman that “rejects mankind,” and they
understand and reward the vanities of an elegant and frivolous lady like
Belinda. Ariel, the chief of all Belinda’s
protectors, warns her in this dream that “some dread event” is going to
befall her that day, though he can tell her nothing more specific than that she
should “beware of Man!” Then Belinda awakes, to the licking tongue of her
lapdog, Shock. Upon the delivery of a billet-doux, or love-letter, she forgets
all about the dream. She then proceeds to her dressing table and goes through
an elaborate ritual of dressing, in which her own image in the mirror is
described as a “heavenly image,” a “goddess.” The Sylphs, unseen, assist their
charge as she prepares herself for the day’s activities.
The opening of the poem
establishes its mock-heroic style. Pope introduces the conventional epic
subjects of love and war and includes an invocation to the muse and a
dedication to the man (the historical John Caryll) who commissioned the poem.
Yet the tone already indicates that the high seriousness of these traditional
topics has suffered a diminishment. The second line confirms in explicit terms
what the first line already suggests: the “amorous causes” the poem describes
are not comparable to the grand love of Greek heroes but rather represent a
trivialized version of that emotion. The “contests” Pope alludes to will prove
to be “mighty” only in an ironic sense. They are card-games and flirtatious
tussles, not the great battles of epic tradition. Belinda is not, like Helen of
Troy, “the face that launched a thousand ships”, but rather a face
that—although also beautiful—prompts a lot of foppish nonsense. The first two
verse-paragraphs emphasize the comic inappropriateness of the epic style (and
corresponding mind-set) to the subject at hand. Pope achieves this discrepancy
at the level of the line and half-line; the reader is meant to dwell on the
incompatibility between the two sides of his parallel formulations. Thus, in
this world, it is “little men” who in “tasks so bold... engage”; and “soft
bosoms” are the dwelling-place for “mighty rage.” In this startling juxtaposition
of the petty and the grand, the former is real while the latter is ironic. In
mock-epic, the high heroic style works not to dignify the subject but rather to
expose and ridicule it. Therefore, the basic irony of the style supports the
substance of the poem’s satire, which attacks the misguided values of a society
that takes small matters for serious ones while failing to attend to issues of
genuine importance.
With Belinda’s dream, Pope
introduces the “machinery” of the poem—the supernatural powers that influence
the action from behind the scenes. Here, the sprites that watch over Belinda
are meant to mimic the gods of the Greek and Roman traditions, who are
sometimes benevolent and sometimes malicious, but always intimately involved in
earthly events. The scheme also makes use of other ancient hierarchies and
systems of order. Ariel explains that women’s spirits, when they die, return
“to their first Elements.” Each female personality type (these types correspond
to the four humours) is converted into a particular kind of sprite. These
gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and nymphs, in turn, are associated with the four
elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The airy sylphs are those who in their
lifetimes were “light Coquettes”; they have a particular concern for Belinda
because she is of this type, and this will be the aspect of feminine nature
with which the poem is most concerned.
Indeed, Pope already
begins to sketch this character of the “coquette” in this initial canto. He
draws the portrait indirectly, through characteristics of the Sylphs rather
than of Belinda herself. Their priorities reveal that the central concerns of
womanhood, at least for women of Belinda’s class, are social ones. Woman’s “joy
in gilded Chariots” indicates an obsession with pomp and superficial splendour,
while “love of Ombre,” a fashionable card game, suggests frivolity. The erotic
charge of this social world in turn prompts another central concern: the
protection of chastity. These are women who value above all the prospect marrying
to advantage, and they have learned at an early age how to promote themselves
and manipulate their suitors without compromising themselves. The Sylphs become
an allegory for the mannered conventions that govern female social behaviour.
Principles like honour and chastity have become no more than another part of
conventional interaction. Pope makes it clear that these women are not
conducting themselves on the basis of abstract moral principles, but are
governed by an elaborate social mechanism—of which the Sylphs cut a fitting
caricature.
And while Pope’s technique
of employing supernatural machinery allows him to critique this situation, it
also helps to keep the satire light and to exonerate individual women from too
severe a judgment. If Belinda has all the typical female foibles, Pope wants us
to recognize that it is partly because she has been educated and trained to act
in this way. The society as a whole is as much to blame as she is. Nor are men
exempt from this judgment. The competition among the young lords for the
attention of beautiful ladies is depicted as a battle of vanity, as “wigs with
wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive.” Pope’s phrases here expose an
absurd attention to exhibitions of pride and ostentation. He emphasizes the inanity
of discriminating so closely between things and people that are essentially the
same in all important (and even most unimportant) respects.
Pope’s portrayal of
Belinda at her dressing table introduces mock-heroic motifs that will run
through the poem. The scene of her toilette is rendered first as a religious
sacrament, in which Belinda herself is the priestess and her image in the
looking glass is the Goddess she serves. This parody of the religious rites
before a battle gives way, then, to another kind of mock-epic scene, that of
the ritualized arming of the hero. Combs, pins, and cosmetics take the place of
weapons as “awful Beauty puts on all its arms.”
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