The
pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which
the meteor beam for a starless night
Sheds
on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
Ere
the dawning of morn’s undoubted light,
Is
the flame of life so fickle and wan
That
flits round our steps till their strength is gone. 5
O
man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through
the stormy shades of thy worldly way,
And
the billows of cloud that around the roll
Shall
asleep in the light of a wondrous day,
Where
Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free 10
To
the universe of destiny.
This
world is the nurse of all we know,
This
world is the mother of all we fell,
And
the coming of death is a fearful blow
To
a brain unencopassed with nerves of steel; 15
When
all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall
pass like an unreal mystery.
The
secret things of the grave are there,
Where
all but this frame must surely be,
Though
the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear 20
No
longer will live to hear or to see
All
that is great and all that is strange
In
the boundless realm of unending change.
Who
telleth a take of unspeaking death?
Who
lifteth the veil of what is to come? 25
Who
painteth the shadows that are beneath
The
wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or
uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With
the fears and the love for that which we see?
Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing; 5
Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
Upon the flesh to cleave,
Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
And many sorrows after each his wise
For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve. 10
O Love's lute heard about the lands of death,
Left hanged upon the trees that were therein;
O Love and Time and Sin,
Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,
Three lovers, each one evil spoken of; 15
O smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine
Came softer with her praise;
Abide a little for our lady's love.
The kisses of her mouth were more than wine,
And more than peace the passage of her days. 20
O Love, thou knowest if she were good to see.
O Time, thou shalt not find in any land
Till, cast out of thine hand,
The sunlight and
the moonlight fail from thee,
Another woman fashioned like as this. 25
O Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her
Was made a goodly thing;
Yea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss,
With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier
Than lips of amorous roses in late spring. 30
By night there stood over against my bed
Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black,
Both sides drawn fully back
From brows wherein the sad blood failed of red,
And temples drained of purple and full of death. 35
Her curled hair had the wave of sea-water
And the sea's gold in it.
Her eyes were as a dove's that sickeneth.
Strewn dust of gold she had shed over her,
And pearl and purple and amber on her feet. 40
Upon her raiment of dyed sendaline
Were painted all the secret ways of love
And covered things thereof,
That hold delight as grape-flowers hold their wine;
Red mouths of
maidens and red feet of doves, 45
And brides that kept within the bride-chamber
Their garment of soft shame,
And weeping faces of the wearied loves
That swoon in sleep and awake wearier,
With heat of lips and hair shed out like flame. 50
The tears that through her eyelids fell on me
Made mine own bitter where they ran between
As blood had
fallen therein,
She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see
If any glad thing be or any good 55
Now the best thing is taken forth of us;
Even she to whom all praise
Was as one flower in a great multitude,
One glorious flower of many and glorious,
One day found gracious among many days: 60
Even she whose handmaiden was Love--to whom
At kissing times across her stateliest bed
Kings bowed themselves and shed
Pale wine, and honey with the honeycomb,
And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering; 65
Even she between whose lips the kiss became
As fire and frankincense;
Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king,
Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame,
Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence. 70
Then I beheld, and lo on the other side
My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead.
Sweet still, but now not red,
Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died.
And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade, 75
The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes.
And sweet, but like spoilt gold,
The weight of colour in her tresses weighed.
And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes,
The body that was clothed with love of old. 80
Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair
And all the hollow bosom of her gown--
Ah! that my tears ran down
Even to the place where many kisses were,
Even where her parted breast-flowers have place, 85
Even where they are cloven apart--who knows not this?
Ah! the flowers cleave apart
And their sweet fills the tender interspace;
Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss
Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart. 90
Ah! in the days when God did good to me,
Each part about her was a righteous thing;
Her mouth an almsgiving,
The glory of her garments charity,
The beauty of her bosom a good deed, 95
In the good days when God kept sight of us;
Love lay upon her eyes,
And on that hair whereof the world takes heed;
And all her body was more virtuous
Than souls of women
fashioned otherwise. 100
Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands
And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves
Rain-rotten in rank lands,
Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves
And grass that fades ere any of it be mown; 105
And when thy bosom is filled full thereof
Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth,
And say "My master that was thrall to Love
Is become
thrall to Death."
Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan. 110
But make no sojourn in thy outgoing;
For haply it may be
That when thy feet return at evening
Death
shall come in with thee.
1.
Preface.
Let us begin by raising and studying the following question: what would
be a difference between a Romantic and a Victorian writer? In my opinion this
is a suitable matter so as to develop this project. My personal consideration
on the issue is the way of perceiving reality; how did they confront the world.
While Wordsworth or Blake tried to understand themselves through nature and
God’s will, Swinburne and Elizabeth B. Browning “deconstructed” reality by
means of reason, comprehension and emphasis on the being. This concern for the
individual is what novelists of the 18th and the 19th
centuries referred to as stream of
consciousness. I strongly believe that this intellectual
powerful era results really attractive since its combination of Romantic
and Neoclassical patterns.
http://www.powayusd.com/online/Britlit/images/wanderer.jpg
(Representing nature & individualism).
http://www.ferrum.edu/majors/psychology.jpg
(Symbolizing rationality principle).
I have carefully chosen these illustrations in order
to reflect the essence of the Victorian Era: nature and individualism together
with rationality.
http://waynehastings.blogs.com/offtheshelf/THINKER.jpg
As I see it, even nowadays, we-as a whole of society- should turn our
attention to it so as to realize how
far we are going with the 21st century technical revolution.
As a conclusion, I must
add that the basis of this second paper is the different perspective authors
applied during the above mentioned eras (Romanticism and Victorianism) to trust
and deal with the reality of their epochs.
I wish you, reader,
enjoy this kind of retrospective philosophy being the main structure upon I
have “constructed” the paper.
2.
Setting the poems.
2.1. On Death.
The first text above presented belongs to the early poetical production
of the English Romantic writer Percy Bysshe Shelley [1](1792-1822); a poem which
can be found in the Posthumous Poems of
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) collection published by his wife, Mary Shelley.
In order to understand the main idea of the poem, we must take into
account the date in which it was written (probably between 1810 and 1815). As a
result, there are certain historical facts such as the Industrial and the
American Revolutions that are to be briefly studied. For example, the whole European continent was
tremendously shaken by the quick changes and progresses brought by the
Industrial Revolution: the watt machine, the railway, the growth of many
industries in the city and the consequent migration of population from the
country areas to cities and etcetera. Here I provide you with a new link
leading to the Wikipedia webpage resource about the complete history of the
Industrial Revolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
All this accelerated innovations entailed a whole situation of chaos for
society if we contrast them to the obtained benefits: children exploitation,
poverty seen as the queen of some suburban zones… As mentioned above, Europe
was set into an uncontrolled status quo that ended up showing the worst facets
of the
“Poetry
is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted”.[2]
In order
to finish this little setting of the poem, I find it necessary to allude to
some personal facts about the author: Shelley always lived under the influence
of modern and liberal ideas from
2.2. A Ballad on Death.
This second poem belongs to the English author
Algernon Charles Swinburne[3]
(1837-1909) and found in Poems and
Ballads first collection (1866). What really grabbed my attention about
this conspicuous writer and made me choose it was his criticised way of
writing; his reputation: Swinburne became very “popular” due to his
controversial poetry containing taboo themes such as sex, death-wish or
atheism. Personally, the fact that a person brings those notions to light is
extremely interesting. Why should human beings be ashamed of themselves and the
atmosphere surrounding them? During the Victorian period, many writers would
assert and maintain the truth of the world; what was happening at the moment.
Poverty, children exploitation, prostitution, women rights…All is out there!
Why not examine and study it? Why would we make ourselves ignorant about the
real world? As far as I have seen in many of Swinburne’s poems, this is his
main topic. However, it should be taken under consideration that young
Swinburne had serious problems with alcohol and did also take drugs; apart from
his numerous homosexual scandals. But this does not have to demerit his works.
In order to conclude this introduction, I must
indicate the revolutionary and strong personalities guiding both authors
Shelley and Swinburne. They fell in love with the idea of the new applied to
may fields: literature, politics, economy, philosophical researches and
etcetera.
3. Analysis of the poem.
It
is now time to analyze and discuss the thematic axis upon which this study is
based: the revolutionary way of perceiving death. Is it death a condemnation or
a salvation? Will it private us from the pleasures of life or, on the contrary,
will it offer us the so expected paradise? Nonetheless, before we go on with
the analysis, I feel it necessary to develop the notion of revolutionary. First
of all, since Shelley and Swinburne are considered to be radical poets to their
correspondent times, I found it interesting to compare and contrast the degree
of radicalism. So as to show this
contrast, there is a right quotation about Swinburne and his poetical career
stating: “At a time when Victorian verse was at its very
tamest, when the two most widely read of recent poems were Enoch Arden and Hiawatha, this trumpet of
insurrection excited in young and ardent minds an emotion comparable to what Wordsworth
and Coleridge had felt when they witnessed the beginning of the French
Revolution”[4]. This perfectly reflects the basic
idea we already have of change and progress constituting the Victorian Era.
Nonetheless, setting again what we were mentioning before about the notion of
radical, in
what direction did those well-known writers orient their feelings and
sensations? What is more, death-and the way it is “welcomed” or “bore”- is
another element that has attracted my attention. As we will see in the study,
each epoch has its own attitudes and defining patterns. As a result, the main
idea that is going to be extracted from the poetical texts could be defined as the
focalization of death through Shelley and Swinburne.
On the one hand,
Shelley presents death to the readers as:
[..]
the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.
(Lines 5&6).
[..] through the stormy
shades of thy worldly way
(Line 8).
[..] pass like an unreal
mystery
(Line
18).
As we see, this author
describes death as a mysterious phenomenon consequence of what is happening
around the world (worldly way). What is more, he compares life to a flame
light: little by little it will be off. This dramatic metaphor gives us a clue
about his feelings towards death.
On the other hand,
Swinburne seems to hold a more complicated idea of death: as I see it, he
represents it in a metaphorical way by a curly fair hair young woman to whom he
demonstrates a love feeling (death-wish characteristic we mentioned far above).
Stanza 10 is a good example to illustrate the truth of this:
Ah!
in the days when God did good to me,
Each
part about her was a righteous thing;
Her
mouth an almsgiving,
The
glory of her garments charity,
The
beauty of her bosom a good deed,
In
the good days when God kept sight of us;
Love lay upon her eyes,
And on that hair whereof the world takes heed;
And all her body was more virtuous
Than souls
of women fashioned otherwise.
In addition, this
perception is totally contrary to Shelley because on line 32 we read:
Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black,
This perfectly
exemplifies how Swinburne understands death. The author is comparing her to the
Queen Venus. It results a bit contradictory since the Venus painting-for
instance- represents birth; a new life; perfection on the human embodiment.
Thus, death is Venus, who will offer us life. The complexity here is found in
the fact that the English writer mixes up three different topics: a) love &
sexual connotations, b) death-wish (main idea) and c) irreligion (God is
criticized on some lines).
Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair
And all the hollow bosom of her gown-
Ah! that my tears ran down
Even to the place where many kisses were
(Stanza
9).
Her mouth an almsgiving
[..]
The beauty
of her bosom a good deed
And all her body was
more virtuous
(Stanza 10).
Ah! in the days when God did good to me
(Line 91).
In the good days when God kept sight of us;
(Line 96).
In these two last
examples, Swinburne seems to be ironic; by that “Ah!” and “in the good days” he
gives the line a certain nostalgic attitude.
The most satisfactory
conclusion we can come to is that Shelley refuses death meanwhile Swinburne
loves it. My own view of this is based upon this easy scheme:
·
SHELLEY à DEATH à CONDEMNATION
·
SWINBURNE à DEATH à SALVATION
The different
perspectives are obviously given by the epochs we are dealing with. In times of
Shelley, death was seen as a punishment because human being was destined to
confront and learn from nature. He must live and go on; progress (also
connoting some political liberal ideas). However, on Swinburne’s times-and as a
result of all the changes brought by the several revolutions which shook the
whole world- deaths was often seen as a liberation; a possible escape from
poverty, hunger and many other problematic situations ruling in the streets of
London; for instance.
Now, I wish to
focus our attention on a prosodic analysis of the poem. By it, we are going to
study the structure of the poems, their rhyme schemes, its versification, some
essential stylistic resources and the symbolism of certain words.
Let us start by
analyzing the structure of the poems. There is a great comparison to establish.
The first poem-On Death- is built up in five stanzas each one containing
6lines, i.e., we are presented five sextets. On the other hand, A ballad of
Death has a wider complexity: it is structured in 11 stanzas, each one
completed by 10lines except stanza 11 which has 11 lines.
Although this
scheme may seem really complex, we must study the titles of the poems so as to
understand and “locate” the main unity of meaning extracted from the texts. It
is a clue which guides us to the right interpretation of the poems. For
example, Shelley poem’s extension is shorter compared to Swinburne’s one. This
brings us to the point that the Romantic poet is writing about something he
dislikes or, even more, he frightens. Nonetheless, the Victorian writer
dedicates an 11-stanza ballad to death; literary form often written to admire
or make tribute to someone or something. Therefore, it is obvious who fears
death and who praises it.
About the rhythm in
poem 1, the same pattern is always present: we find one unstressed syllable
which is followed by a stressed one (in other words, iambic foot). Take the
case of stanza three, for example:
This ‘world
is the’ nurse of’ all we’ know,
This ‘world
is the’ mother of ‘all we ‘fell,
And the
‘coming of ‘death is a ‘fearful ‘blow
To a ‘brain
unenco’passed with ‘nerves of ‘steel;
When ‘all
that we ‘know, or ‘feel, or ‘see,
Shall ‘pass
like an un’real ‘myste’ry.
(Stanza 3)
However, in poem 2, there is a great
irregularity: iambic and trochaic trimeters, tetrameters and pentameter. Some
examples are shown:
Kneel ‘down, fair ‘Love, and ‘fill thy’self with ‘tears,
‘Girdle
thy’self with ‘sighing for a ‘girth
U’pon
the ‘sides of ‘mirth,
‘Cover
thy ‘lips and ‘eyelids, let ‘thine ears
Be
‘filled with ‘rumour of ‘people ‘sorrowing;
Make
‘thee soft ‘raiment out of ‘woven ‘sighs
U’pon
the ‘flesh to ‘cleave,
Set
‘pains there’in and ‘many a ‘grievous ‘thing,
And
‘many ‘sorrows after ‘each his ‘wise
For
‘armlet and for ‘gorget and for ‘sleeve
(Stanza 1)
‘Even
she ‘whose hand’maiden was ‘Love—to’ whom
At
‘kissing times a’cross her ‘stateliest ‘bed
‘Kings
bowed them’selves and ‘shed
Pale
‘wine, and ‘honey with the ‘honey’comb,
And
‘spikenard ‘bruised for a ‘burnt-offer’ing;
Even
she be’tween whose ‘lips the ‘kiss be’came
As
‘fire and ‘frankin’cense;
Whose
‘hair was as ‘gold rai’ment on a ‘king,
Whose
‘eyes were as the ‘morning ‘purged with ‘flame,
Whose ‘eyelids as ‘sweet savour issu’ing ‘thence.
(Stanza 7).
Once we have
studied the examples, it cannot be denied that Swinburne’s poem is a
“more-completed” work than Shelley’s. And, what is even more important, it has much
more musical sound patterns. Consequently, the principal notion of claiming
is-again- present. It is essential to realize this same idea of reivindication
characterizing the rhyme patrons shown immediately after some instance stanzas:
a) Shelley’s stanza 3:
This world is the nurse of all we know, G
This world is the mother of all we fell, H
And the coming of death is a fearful blow G
To a brain unencopassed with nerves of steel;
H
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
F
Shall pass like an unreal mystery. F
b) Swinburne’s stanza 11:
Now, ballad,
gather poppies in thine hands K
And sheaves
of brier and many rusted sheaves J
Rain-rotten
in rank lands, K
Waste
marigold and late unhappy leaves J
And grass
that fades ere any of it be mown; Z
And when thy
bosom is filled full thereof G
Seek out
Death's face ere the light altereth, F
And say
"My master that was thrall to Love G
Is become
thrall to Death." F
Bow down
before him, ballad, sigh and groan. Z
But make no
sojourn in thy outgoing; C
For haply it
may be J
That when
thy feet return at evening C
Death shall
come in with thee. J
It should be mention
in passing that little by little a collateral meaning of that principal idea of
revolution we indicated at the beginning of this commentary is being brought to
light: the extension of the poem together with its varied rhyme are enough
exemplifications to corroborate it.
RHYME
SCHEMES
On death
The pale, the cold, and the moony smile A
Which the meteor beam for a starless night B
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle, A
Ere the dawning of morn’s undoubted light, B
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan C
That flits round our steps till their strength is
gone. C
O man! hold thee on in courage of soul D
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way, E
And the billows of cloud that around the roll D
Shall asleep in the light of a wondrous day, E
Where Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free F
To the universe of destiny. F
This world is the nurse of all we know, G
This world is the mother of all we fell, H
And the coming of death is a fearful blow G
To a brain unencopassed with nerves of steel; H
When all that we know, or feel, or see, F
Shall pass like an unreal mystery. F
The secret things of the grave are there, I
Where all but this frame must surely be, F
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear J
*
No longer will live to hear or to see F
All that is great and all that is strange K
In the boundless realm of unending change. K
Who telleth a take of unspeaking death? L
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come? M
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath L
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb? M
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be F
With the fears and the love for that which we see? F
*
We must notice here that the rhyme does not strictly coincide. However, we
should get the rhyming scheme by the spelling rhyme: occurs when two words with
similar spelling but different pronunciation are rhymed. Quoted from http://www.scribblingrivalry.com/rsvp_rhyme.htm
A ballad of death
Kneel down,
fair Love, and fill thyself with tears, A
Girdle
thyself with sighing for a girth B
Upon the
sides of mirth, B
Cover thy
lips and eyelids, let thine ears A
Be filled
with rumour of people sorrowing; C
Make thee
soft raiment out of woven sighs D
Upon the
flesh to cleave, E
Set pains
therein and many a grievous thing, C
And many
sorrows after each his wise D
For armlet
and for gorget and for sleeve. E
O Love's
lute heard about the lands of death, F
Left hanged
upon the trees that were therein; C
O Love and
Time and Sin, C
Three
singing mouths that mourn now underbreath, F
Three
lovers, each one evil spoken of; G
O smitten
lips wherethrough this voice of mine H
Came softer
with her praise; D
Abide a
little for our lady's love. G
The kisses
of her mouth were more than wine, H
And more
than peace the passage of her days. I
O Love, thou
knowest if she were good to see. J
O Time, thou
shalt not find in any land K
Till, cast
out of thine hand, K
The sunlight and
the moonlight fail from thee, J
Another
woman fashioned like as this. L
O Sin, thou
knowest that all thy shame in her M
Was made a
goodly thing; C
Yea, she
caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss, L
With her
fair kiss, and lips much lovelier M
Than lips of
amorous roses in late spring. C
By night
there stood over against my bed N
Queen Venus
with a hood striped gold and black, O
Both sides
drawn fully back O
From brows
wherein the sad blood failed of red, N
And temples
drained of purple and full of death. F
Her curled
hair had the wave of sea-water M
And the
sea's gold in it. P
Her eyes
were as a dove's that sickeneth. F
Strewn dust
of gold she had shed over her, M
And pearl
and purple and amber on her feet. P
Upon her
raiment of dyed sendaline H
Were painted
all the secret ways of love G
And covered
things thereof, G
That hold
delight as grape-flowers hold their wine; H
Red mouths of
maidens and red feet of doves, G
And brides
that kept within the bride-chamber M
Their
garment of soft shame, Q
And weeping
faces of the wearied loves G
That swoon
in sleep and awake wearier, M
With heat of
lips and hair shed out like flame. Q
The tears
that through her eyelids fell on me J
Made mine
own bitter where they ran between C
As blood had
fallen therein, C
She saying;
Arise, lift up thine eyes and see J
If any glad
thing be or any good R
Now the best
thing is taken forth of us; S
Even she to
whom all praise D
Was as one
flower in a great multitude, R
One glorious
flower of many and glorious, S
One day
found gracious among many days: D
Even she
whose handmaiden was Love--to whom T
At kissing
times across her stateliest bed N
Kings bowed
themselves and shed N
Pale wine,
and honey with the honeycomb, T
And
spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering; C
Even she
between whose lips the kiss became Q
As fire and
frankincense; U
Whose hair
was as gold raiment on a king, C
Whose eyes
were as the morning purged with flame, Q
Whose
eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence. U
Then I
beheld, and lo on the other side V
My lady's likeness
crowned and robed and dead. N
Sweet still,
but now not red, N
Was the shut
mouth whereby men lived and died. V
And sweet,
but emptied of the blood's blue shade, W
The great
curled eyelids that withheld her eyes. D
And sweet,
but like spoilt gold, X
The weight
of colour in her tresses weighed. V
And sweet,
but as a vesture with new dyes, D
The
body that was clothed with love of old. Y
Ah! that my
tears filled all her woven hair M
And all the
hollow bosom of her gown-- Z
Ah! that my
tears ran down Z
Even to the
place where many kisses were, M
Even where
her parted breast-flowers have place, W
Even where
they are cloven apart--who knows not this? L
Ah! the
flowers cleave apart K
And their
sweet fills the tender interspace; W
Ah! the
leaves grown thereof were things to kiss L
Ere their
fine gold was tarnished at the heart. K
Ah! in the
days when God did good to me, J
Each part
about her was a righteous thing; C
Her mouth an
almsgiving, C
The glory of
her garments charity, J
The beauty
of her bosom a good deed, J
In the good
days when God kept sight of us; S
Love lay
upon her eyes, D
And on that
hair whereof the world takes heed; J
And all her
body was more virtuous S
Than souls
of women fashioned otherwise. D
Now, ballad,
gather poppies in thine hands K
And sheaves
of brier and many rusted sheaves J
Rain-rotten
in rank lands, K
Waste
marigold and late unhappy leaves J
And grass
that fades ere any of it be mown; Z
And when thy
bosom is filled full thereof G
Seek out
Death's face ere the light altereth, F
And say
"My master that was thrall to Love G
Is become
thrall to Death." F
Bow down
before him, ballad, sigh and groan. Z
But make no
sojourn in thy outgoing; C
For haply it
may be J
That when
thy feet return at evening C
Death shall
come in with thee. J
Ultimately, the number
of syllables contained in both poems also constitute a worth noting point.
There is no firm structure to follow but divergent lines written from 8 to 11
syllables in poem 1 and from 6 to 13 syllables in poem 2. Personally, all this
goes to show the strict attitude of the second author to maintain his clear
notions and feelings about death. For his part, the first writer also holds the
refuse to death. Nonetheless, he does so by short sentences and brief
perceptions. But this is an aspect we will onwards comment on more deeply; in a
special point of the stylistic resources section.
The other aspect I wanted to comment on is the
use of the stylistic resources in the poetical works; resources which-I
strongly believe- deserve special consideration. It is here necessary to
mention that we will proceed with the analysis of the poems one by one:
firstly, the one written by Shelley. Secondly, the one written by Swinburne.
To be exact, I have
identified seven specific resources: a)
Anaphora; b) Comparison; c) Enjambment; d) Epithets; e) Oxymoron; f) Special
vocabulary or semantic fields; g) Use of interrogative and exhortative
sentences. First of all, we got the anaphora which is the repetition of a single or various words
at the beginning of a sentence or a line. They are located on lines 24, 25 and
26:
Who telleth a
tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the
veil of what is to come?
Who painteth
the shadows that are beneath
In this
case, this particular repetition leads us to think about the mental introspection
process the poet is carrying out. These lines seem to be a result of his
meditations about life and death.
Secondly, the enjambment; that
takes place when the verbal pause does not coincide with the syntactic pause
but continues in the following line. Just one example of this is found on lines
11 and 12:
Where Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe
of destiny
In third place, we
find epithets: simple adjectives accompanying the noun. Here, on the contrary,
they do not seem so simple since they are depicting certain interesting
connotations having to do with uncertainty, fear and many other feelings. A
pair of examples are the following:
undoubted
light
(Line6)
fearful blow
(Line 15)
Fourthly, we got an uncommon figure
which is oxymoron. It consists of the union of two words that have opposite
meanings and whose combination gives rise to a new sense. For example, on line
24, the author is writing:
unending
change
This alienation of words does not really create a
new sense but it gives a contradictory meaning: from my point of view, a change
that is initiated always carries a series of new changes; the idea of progress
is constant. Therefore, the sense of “finishing” a change seems a bit
controversial.
Now, I would like to emphasize the use
of words forming different meaning fields. Two groups can be appreciated:
۩
Words related to
darkness and death: pale,
cold, moony (line 1); starless night (line 2); lonely isle (line 3); stormy
shades (line 4); grave (line 19); unspeaking death (line 25); tomb (line 28).
۩Words related to life: destiny (line 12);
mystery (line 18).
Similarly,
we find several interrogative sentences together with exhortative one. The
effect the writer gets with this mechanism is to make the readers think deeply
about what is being developed. To illustrate the truth of this we must pay
attention to line 7 and the last stanza:
O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
(Line 7)
Who telleth a take of
unspeaking death?
Who
lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who
painteth the shadows that are beneath
The
wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or
uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With
the fears and the love for that which we see?
(Stanza 5)
Now it is time to
analyze the poem written by A. C. Swinburne. In this case, I have found the
following resources: a) Anaphora; b) Enjambment; c) Epithets; d) Specific
semantic fields. e) Consonance.
In first place, there are several
anaphoras through the poem. That is why we will just mention two of them:
Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair
And all the hollow bosom of her gown--
Ah! that my tears ran down
Even to the place where many kisses were,
Even where her parted breast-flowers have place,
Even where they are cloven apart--who knows not this?
Ah! the flowers cleave apart
And their sweet fills the tender interspace;
Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss
Ere their
fine gold was tarnished at the heart.
(Stanza 8)
Ah! in the days when God did good to me,
Each part
about her was a righteous thing;
Her mouth an
almsgiving,
The glory of her garments charity,
The beauty of her bosom a good deed,
In the good
days when God kept sight of us;
Love lay
upon her eyes,
And on that hair whereof the world takes heed;
And all her body was more virtuous
Than souls
of women fashioned otherwise.
(Stanza 9)
In second place, we find many enjambments. Thus, just
three of them are pointed out from stanzas 3 and 11:
O Love, thou
knowest if she were good to see.
O Time, thou
shalt not find in any land
Till, cast
out of thine hand,
The sunlight and
the moonlight fail from thee,
Another
woman fashioned like as this.
O Sin, thou
knowest that all thy shame in her
Was made a
goodly thing;
Yea, she
caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss,
With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier
Than lips of amorous roses in late spring.
Now, ballad,
gather poppies in thine hands
And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves
Rain-rotten in rank lands,
Waste marigold
and late unhappy leaves
And grass
that fades ere any of it be mown;
And when thy
bosom is filled full thereof
Seek out
Death's face ere the light altereth,
And say "My master that was thrall to Love
Is become
thrall to Death."
Bow down
before him, ballad, sigh and groan.
But make no
sojourn in thy outgoing;
For haply it
may be
That when
thy feet return at evening
Death shall
come in with thee.
Thirdly, we got the epithets; quality that is very present in the text.
Some instances will be enough: strange tongue (line 52); feverish rhymes
(line 113) and thine eyes (line
114).
Fourthly, I wanted to make reference to specific vocabulary used by
Swinburne. On the one hand, we find certain words related to human body: lips,
eyelids, ears (line 4); mouths (line 14); breasts (line 85) or hair (line 98). On the other hand,
such concepts found through the poem deal with clothes-which entail at the same
time, some sensual and sexual connotations-: hood (line 32) or bosom (line 82).
Finally, there is a particular item which establishes a clear difference
between both poems and does, also, justify the thematic axis of this project. I
am referring to consonance: the fact of matching consonant sounds. Its main
finality is to add certain rhythm to the poem. What is more, determined sense
of happiness is also presented towards the idea of death; totally the contrary
for Shelley as already shown through his poem On death.
4. Symbolical study of the poems.
As
already seen in the first paper, death is a fact that affects us from a nearer
point of view than we may think. This means, nowadays-in our 21st
century world, death beats its records with the help of suicide and many other
serious issues such as illnesses or accidents. What is more, our social view of
this does not carry (in a major part) a positive connotation. On the contrary,
it leads us to ambition and depression: “what
if tomorrow I die and I have not reached my proposal of… “Who has ever not
come up with this terrifying principle? Nonetheless, death does not always
entail that sense of the negative and darkness or solitude. It may result a
very positive fact since we “are passed away” to a new
In order to get a deeper
idea of this, I will be quoting some principal notions of death found in
different symbol dictionaries. Even
though there is a wide variety of opinion about death, there is a concrete
definition stating: “Pero también nos
introduce en los mundos desconocidos de los infiernos o los paraísos, lo cual
muestra su ambivalencia”[5]
. I.e.; there is certain disambiguation towards the symbolical meaning of
it. Consequently, we are returning to the main topic of this paper. As a
result, the notion of hell (infierno) is identified and exemplified by Shelley
meanwhile the conception of paradise (paraíso) is shown by Swinburne’s A ballad on death. The following
presented images are shown so the as to make the reader get a better
comprehension of the poem.
http://static.flickr.com/81/237583026_322eb6a1ef.jpg
Link leading to Hans Baldung Grien’s La
muchacha y la muerte.
http://www.repro-tableaux.com/kunst/piero_di_cosimo_407/simonetta_vespucci.jpg
Link leading to Pieri di Cosimo’s Simonetta
Vespucci.
As we can appreciate, the first image represents the
perception of Shelley: death as a cruel destiny absorbing our youth and beauty
and-of course- our intellectual capacity. What is more, it is something that
“surprises” us since it is not an expected fact. In other words, death is not
what we look or seek for. On the contrary, its threatening attitude is what
constitutes this idea of cruelty and horror towards death. Similarly, the
second picture above exposed is a very suitable portrait of the embodied death
reflecting the text of Swinburne. What
is more, in M.Battistini book Símbolos y
alegorías, there is a specific brief paragraph declaring the following: “El retrato idealizado de Simonetta Vespucci
caracterizada como Proserpina, reina de los infiernos, reproduce la iconografía
de los misterios paganos ligados al culto del más allá”. [6]
The interesting point here is the presence of the Roman goddess Proserpine[7] (which is also the title
of Swinburne’s Hyhm to Proserpine).
As it is known, Proserpine’s image implies the perception of a new life after
death; in other words, rebirth. Thus, a new life emerges.
The most satisfactory
conclusion drawn from this brief analysis is that death is an inevitable fact
in our lives. As said in Spanish Language: “Todo
tiene remedio menos la muerte”. Consequently, no one can escape from dying.
Thus, the best solution for it is to think about death in a positively way. For
example, believing there is an supernatural world or
5. Bibliography.
◍ Battisini, Martina. Símbolos y alegorías. Electa. Barcelona.
2003.
◍ Bysshe
Shelley, Percy. Complete poetical works. Oxford
University Press. 1971.
◍ Chevalier,
Jean& Gheerbrant, Alain. Diccionario
de los símbolos. Ediciones Herder. Barcelona. 1999.
◍ Circlot
Eduardo, Juan. Diccionario de símbolos.
Ediciones Siruela. Barcelona. 1958.
◍ D. F., Alasdair. Percy Bysshe
Shelley. Selected Poetry and Prose. Routledge.
◍ Dowling, Linda. The vulgarization of art : the victorians and aesthetic democracy. University Press of
◍ Nye, Robert. A choice of
Swinburne’s verse. Faber paper covered editions.
◍ P. Carley, James. Arthurian
Poets. A.C. Swinburne. The Boydall Press.
◍ Matthews, G. M. Writers and their
Works. Shelley. Longman Group Ltd.
6. Webgraphy.
◍ http://www.scribblingrivalry.com/rsvp_rhyme.htm
(accessed 26th November, 2007).
◍ http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/acsbio1.html
(Accessed 15th December, 2007).
◍ http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/religion1.html (Accessed
15th December, 2007).
◍http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/percy_bysshe_shelley.html (Accessed 30th December, 2007)
◍http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
(Accessed 31st December, 2007).
◍ http://www.gwywyr.com/essays/housman.html
(Accessed 30th December, 2007).
◍ http://www.ferrum.edu/majors/psychology.jpg
(Accessed 1st January, 2008).
◍ http://www.powayusd.com/online/Britlit/images/wanderer.jpg
(Accessed 1st January, 2008).
◍ http://waynehastings.blogs.com/offtheshelf/THINKER.jpg (Accessed 2nd
January, 2008).
◍ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proserpina
(Accessed 5th January, 2008).