Percy Shelley

English Romantic Period http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-new-national-anthem/ This poem by Percy Shelley takes an interesting view of the national anthem. It shows a time of branching out to alternate views. This poem brings attention to England's state of oppression at this time. The English people are working hard at this time, but the royalty and government are taking the power. The system was taking advantage of the people are taking all of their wealth, so Shelley wrote the poem in order to convey her thoughts of this matter. Shelley references Marxism and basically just expresses her views about politics through this poem in a fun way! It fits into the English Romantic Period and was published in 1819.

A New National Anthem

I.
God prosper, speed,and save,
God raise from England’s grave
Her murdered Queen!
Pave with swift victory
The steps of Liberty,
Whom Britons own to be
Immortal Queen.

II.
See, she comes throned on high,
On swift Eternity!
God save the Queen!
Millions on millions wait,
Firm, rapid, and elate,
On her majestic state!
God save the Queen!

III.
She is Thine own pure soul
Moulding the mighty whole,--
God save the Queen!
She is Thine own deep love
Rained down from Heaven above,--
Wherever she rest or move,
God save our Queen!

IV.
‘Wilder her enemies
In their own dark disguise,--
God save our Queen!
All earthly things that dare
Her sacred name to bear,
Strip them, as kings are, bare;
God save the Queen!

V.
Be her eternal throne
Built in our hearts alone--
God save the Queen!
Let the oppressor hold
Canopied seats of gold;
She sits enthroned of old
O’er our hearts Queen.

VI.
Lips touched by seraphim
Breathe out the choral hymn
‘God save the Queen!’
Sweet as if angels sang,
Loud as that trumpet’s clang
Wakening the world’s dead gang,--
God save the Queen! 

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Death by George Herbert

George Herbert (1593-1633) was one of the more renowned poets during the Metaphysical 

period of poetry. I chose to analyze his poem "Death" because of our recent study of

Hamlet and also because it seems like a great crossroads between the past Dark Ages and

the period of Spiritual Awakening that would follow. Here's the poem.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181062Death

By George Herbert

Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,

                           Nothing but bones,

      The sad effect of sadder groans:

Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.

For we considered thee as at some six

                           Or ten years hence,

      After the loss of life and sense,

Flesh being turned to dust, and bones to sticks.

We looked on this side of thee, shooting short;

                         Where we did find

      The shells of fledge souls left behind,

Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may extort.

But since our Savior’s death did put some blood

                           Into thy face,

      Thou art grown fair and full of grace,

Much in request, much sought for as a good.

For we do now behold thee gay and glad,

                           As at Doomsday;

      When souls shall wear their new array,

And all thy bones with beauty shall be clad.

Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust

                           Half that we have

      Unto an honest faithful grave;

Making our pillows either down, or dust.

The biggest thing I want to point out before moving onto the theme and "big picture" stuff is that there is a MAJOR shift right in the middle of this poem in between the third and fourth quatrains. The first three quatrain discuss the gruesome side of death that often resides within the forefront of both our mind and soul. This is very reflective of the Dark Ages and their impact on peoples' outlook of the world, with phrases such as "Flesh being turned to dust" (Line 8) or "The sad effect of sadder groans" (Line 3) gives this depressing feeling about life that was very characteristic of the centuries before and even during Herbert's life. However, that shift mid-way through gives way to a whole new outlook at the end of life. The fourth quatrain talks about how because of "our Savior's death" (Line 12), "Thou art grown fair and full of grace" (Line 15). This realization by Herbert is largely the same belief held by many Christians today, including myself. We believe that "at Doomsday" (Line 17), which in biblical terms would be the Day of Judgment when Christ descend to lead his kingdom to heaven, "souls shall wear their new array" (Line 18), which as a Christ follower, I believe to be the promise of eternal life in God's Kingdom. This leads me into the theme which I link to the rebirth of Christianity after the Dark Ages. Death isn't the ultimate ending of our existence, but rather a transition in our souls as we the Church join our creator in Heaven. 

Lastly, we can clearly see how this poem connects to the traits of Metaphysical poetry as it addresses the broad topics of Death and God in quite a united style as Herbert marks death as the stepping stone in one's journey to God and Heaven. While the wit may not be there essentially, I think it's absence creates a very uplifting message in a changing Western culture that was still trying to rewrite its identity. 

Hilda Doolittle "Moonrise"

http://www.alaskaphotoworld.com/alaska365/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Moonrise2.jpg

Moonrise by HD

Will you glimmer on the sea?
Will you fling your spear-head
On the shore?
What note shall we pitch?

We have a song,
On the bank we share our arrows—
The loosed string tells our note:

O flight,
Bring her swiftly to our song.
She is great,
We measure her by the pine-trees. 

(I wasn't able to open the page, so I researched on my own)
Hilda Doolittle (aka HD) was a leader in the Imagist Movement in the early 1900s. This movement is specifically characterized with "free verse and [devotion] to 'clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images'". Her poem "Moonrise" definitely fits this time period using verbs like "glimmer"  and "fling" personifies the moon as a being who has choices and thoughts. HD gives the moon a personality of a girl implying soft and comforting association unlike a male character that is generally associated with masculine and dominating strength/power. Also, HD describes our daily lives as a "song" and having the moon come into the night sky "Bring her swiftly to our song" exactly describes the people who would go camping and lay out and watch the moon rise. it creates the vivid image that fits in with the surging Imagist Movement of the time.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5658

http://captainkimo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/wpid17644-Full-Moon-Rise-Over-Pine-Tree-in-Palm-Beach-Florida.jpg

This is just some bio information on Hilda Doolittle:

"On September 10, 1886, Hilda Doolittle was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She attended Bryn Mawr, as a classmate of Marianne Moore, and later the University of Pennsylvania where she befriended Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams.
She travelled to Europe in 1911, intending to spend only a summer, but remained abroad for the rest of her life.
Through Pound, H. D. grew interested in and quickly became a leader of the Imagist movement. Some of her earliest poems gained recognition when they were published by Harriet Monroe in Poetry.
Her work is characterized by the intense strength of her images, economy of language, and use of classical mythology. Her poems did not receive widespread appreciation and acclaim during her lifetime, in part because her name was associated with the Imagist movement even as her voice had outgrown the movement's boundaries, as evidenced by her book-length works, Trilogy and Helen in Egypt.
As Alicia Ostriker said in American Poetry Review, "H.D. by the end of her career became not only the most gifted woman poet of our century, but one of the most original poets—the more I read her the more I think this—in our language."
Neglect of H. D. can also be attributed to her times, as many of her poems spoke to an audience which was unready to respond to the strong feminist principles articulated in her work. She died in 1961." -http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/234

Allusion Blog: Perseus and Medusa

Perseus has a long and complicated story. He is one of the many human sons of Zeus, but he and is mother were cast out to sea by his grandfather, who according to prophecy would be killed by his grandson. They end up on the island of Seriphos, ruled by King Polydectes, and Perseus grew up there. Now, Polydectes wanted to marry Perseus's mom against her will, but couldn't do that with an overprotective, now-adult Perseus in the way. So he pretended to be offended by Perseus and challenged him to fetch the head of the snake-haired gorgon Medusa. Perseus agreed and set out on his quest. Early in his journey, he met Hermes and Athena, who offer to help him because he's the son of Zeus. He receives a pair of winged sandals, the sickle of Cronos, and a reflective shield so that he won't be turned to stone by Medusa's gaze. He then seeks out the Nymphs of the North, who give him the Cap of Darkness (basically an invisibility cloak) and tell him where to find the gorgons' lair. Perseus arrives and finds all of the gorgons sleeping. Using the invisibility cloak and looking through the shield's reflection, he sneaks in and cuts off Medusa's head with the sickle of Cronos. The other gorgons wake up and attack him, but he escapes with the winged sandals. On the way back to Seriphos, he finds a hot girl tied to a rock to be sacrificed to a sea monster. He uses Medusa's head to turn the monster to stone, and basically scoops up the chick and takes her with him. They make one more stop before Seriphos, because Perseus was itchin' to show off his athletic prowess to his new woman by competing in a sports tournament. But a stray discus of his flies into the crowd and kills an old man (spoiler alert: it was his grandfather. Prophecy fulfilled, weeee). FINALLY they get back to Seriphos, where Perseus learns that it was all an attempt on his life by Polydectes. In a fit of rage, he whips out the Medusa head and turns Polydectes to stone. He and his lady then proceeded to have lots of babies that are vaguely important in Greek mythology.

Hair? I don't really have much to say about my hair. It's fluffy, and annoyingly voluminous. I really don't do anything with it. It sits there atop my head, largely untouched by the hands of mortals. I cut it sometimes??? I dunno man, it's not the world's most interesting hair. It literally does nothing I tell it to. I can't comb it. I can't make it hold. If I end up with a cowlick, too bad; it's not going away. It can only be altered with scissors, and yet it always seems to grow back to the same thing, no matter how I get it cut. There are no amusing anecdotes involving my hair. I'm sorry.

Jesus and Lazarus - Resurrection

A man named Lazarus from Bethany was dangerously sick, so his concerned sisters called to Jesus for help for their brother. When he hears the news of Lazarus being sick, He commands that his sickness will not end in death, and Jesus talked about how it was in God's will for his Son to be glorified to it. When Jesus gathers his disciples to return to Judea, they try to change His mind as the last time He was there, the Jews has tried to stone him. Basically, Jesus doesn't care about this and He continues on to resurrect Lazarus from his death (meanwhile His disciples believed Lazarus was just asleep). 

Jesus meets Lazarus' distressed sisters at his tomb where he had already been for 4 days, after confirming their belief in Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus comforts them with the news that Lazarus will rise again. Jesus wept, and after talking with the Jews, He goes to the tomb after protest from the sisters about the foul odors. After re-confirming their belief in Him, Jesus tells God that He has to talk to Him in order for the people to believe it. He then calls in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!". And out Lazarus come from the tomb, still in his grave clothes, to which Jesus commands the Jews and sisters take off his grave clothes and let them go.

While I don't know anyone personally who has been resurrected, I do know that the concept of resurrection is important in my faith. In the same book (John) that Lazarus' resurrection was in, Jesus was also resurrected 3 days after dying for our sins. This is absolutely amazing to me to know that my Lord died for me and then rose fro the dead to show his love for all of us. 

Sweeney Among the Nightingales

I selected T.S. Eliot's (didn't select that part) "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," a modernist poem from 1919. On first reading, the poem is a bizarre and unclear story; it turns out to be chock-full of illusions I would absolutely have missed were it not for these two sources: http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides6/Sweeney.html and http://poetry.rapgenius.com/Ts-eliot-sweeney-among-the-nightingales-annotated.

The plot of the story, as best I understand follows here. First, the poem quotes the Greek drama Agamemnon, "Alas, I am struck deep with a mortal blow" (an allusion that recurs). A man, Sweeney, sits on a chair. He looks unflatteringly like an animal, and he guards the gate to another world. The night sky is dark. A caped woman tries to sit on Sweeney's knees but falls to the ground, taking his tablecloth with her. She sprawls and yawns on the floor (suggesting drunkenness). A man stares in from the window. A waiter brings in tropical fruits. Another woman, Rachel, eats the grapes as an animal might. Sweeney suspects Rachel and the first woman of conspiring against him so he ignores them. He leaves, looks in through a window, and grins. The host of the location (unspecified, likely either a restaurant/cafe or a brothel) talks to someone, and nightingales sing near a convent. Nightingales also sang when King Agamemnon died, and they defecated on his funeral shroud.

The plot, confusing and unclear, does seem in line with modernist tendencies away from linear, logical plot and towards fragmentation. The poem also fits well with the modernist trait of allusion: throughout, Eliot regularly alludes to Agamemnon; indeed, the story means nothing without that allusion. Nightingales (which tattle on those who are promiscuous) and the horned gate (the Odyssey) are also allusions.

The poem is very human-centric, so it does not quite fit that trait of modernism; it also doesn't emphasize the environment or surroundings very much.

Overall, the poem is a rather harsh, often sardonic look at the human condition. Agamemnon, a might Greek king, was felled by his wife's retribution on account of his infidelity. Sweeney, while never clearly romantically involved with either of the women in the story, is compared to Agamemnon. In this comparison, neither of them looks particularly good. As a result, the poem portrays Agamemnon as a mortal, not some immaculate (in fact, the word "maculate" is even used) higher being. The thrust of all this is a truly modernist idea: humans are flawed, difficult, and prone to error/cruelty/lapses of character.

One note: there are many literal definitions of this poem, ranging from the women being drunk, to being his lover/s, to having seizures. Who knows what Eliot intended?

Identify the type of sonnet, the modifications, if any, the poet has made to the form, and the volta.

Golden Retrievals

BY MARK DOTY

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention

seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.

Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh

joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue

of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?

Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,

thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you’re off in some fog concerning

—tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:

to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,

my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,

entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176664

This is a Shakespearean Sonnet with the main exception being the rhyme scheme. However, I would still consider it Shakespearean because it is divided into the quatrains, and the volta comes at the correct location.
The main modifications are in the rhyme scheme and meter. (So mainly the only thing making this a sonnet is the number of lines and the fact that poetry foundation said so....) The meter is sort of all over the place with many substitutions, that is if you chose to say it should be iambic pentameter. There is rhyme involved but it doesn't follow the Shakespearned format.
The volta is at the end with the couplet. Typically we think of owners being in charge of their pets or atleast equal, and the poem starts out with the dog and the owner doing their own things but the volta shows the dog's power in the relationship, indicating the volta.

The main reason I chose this poem is it is more modern than most of the stuff we have been reading and it was interesting to see how something this abnormal is possible in such a traditional form.
Maybe part of the reason the poet chose a Sonnet is because they wanted to take an idea and then change it and skew it, sort of like the reader's perception of a owner/pet relationship.