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To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works

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To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works

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The speaker "muses" on how artists draw inspiration from the divine and mythology, and wonders, given that human art exists from divine inspiration and from human struggles, how art will change in response to the dynamics of heaven.

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Whitman was born in 1855, on Long Island. During the Civil War, Whitman worked as a clerk in Washington, DC. For three years, he visited soldiers during his spare time, dressing wounds and giving solace to the injured. These inspire many of his famous works. He celebrated democracy, nature, love, and friendship. This monumental work chanted praises to the body as well as to the soul, and found beauty and reassurance even in death. Whitman is regarded as one of America’s most significant 19th-century poets. While he failed to receive popular attention for his poetry from his American readership during his lifetime, over 1,000 people came to view his funeral. So, as the first writer of American poetry, Whitman’s legacy endures.

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Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,

I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,

I will make divine magnetic lands,

With the love of comrades,

With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,

I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,

By the love of comrades,

By the manly love of comrades.

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!

For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

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Whitman makes a declaration addressed to democracy, essentially describing all of the things he will do to make America lavish and worthy of receiving democracy. He uses complex diction to illustrate the way America can strengthen itself through companionship. He states,  "I will make divine magnetic lands", which is a metaphor for a country that attracts people. It's an ode to democracy, cherishing and celebrating the ways it strengthens our country.

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Wilde uses allusions to Keats's poems. "Isabella did her Basil-tree." He refers to Greek mythology: Endymion - A handsome Aeolian shepherd, hunter, or king.

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Wilde was a huge romantic, shown by him constantly reading the works of romantic authors and appreciating them. As a gay man living in the 1800s, he was a huge believer that everyone should have the chance to love who they want. He loved Shakespeare's poems and sonnets because of the romantic themes and this is reflected in his poems, where he writes about the significance of love and the power of it.

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As a famous Irish poet and playwright in the 1800's, Oscar Wilde attended multiple colleges such as Trinity and Oxford. He became popular in the early 1890's for his playwriting. Throughout his life he undertook many artistic forms including poems, play writing, and even creating an extremely popular novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. His work focused on the memorialization of poets he looked up to, including John Keates, along with writing about love and romanticism. He was imprisioned in the late 1800's for acts of homosexuality and after being released, he got an ear infection and shortly after passed away from meningitis.

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Wilde spends time appreciating the works of other poets such as John Keats and Percy Shelly based on the types of romanticized poems they wrote. He values the art and style of the pieces as opposed to the commercial value merchants give them.

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Tennyson was an English poet from the Victorian era. He eventually was appointed Poet Laureate by Queen Victoria. While Poet Laureate he wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade". His family had many problems, including epilepsy, many of his siblings in ended up in mental institutions, and his father threatened to kill his brother more than once. He is well known for his "lyric gift for sound and cadence".

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Damon's name is an allusion to the story of Damon and Pythias, where the strength of friendship leads Damon to put his life on the line for Pythias.
Aurora is the personification of the dawn.

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The Colossus: “a person or thing of enormous size, importance, or ability”/a statue larger than life.

First Stanza: Imagery (comparing the fallen statue to barnyard sounds/catastrophe) - “Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles” “It’s worse than a barnyard." This implies that the statue is falling apart and can't be put back together.

Second Stanza: "Thirty years now I have labored to dredge the silt from your throat" means that the presence Plath is referring to is dead and has been for 30 years. This presence cannot be brought back.

Third Stanza: Contrast and comparison - “Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol” “I crawl like an ant in mourning” - Using “lysol” in a poem with strong classical language, creates a contrast between time and modern-day. Plath compares herself to an ant; she crawls around in sorrow, trying to bring the presence back.

Fourth Stanza: “A blue sky out of the Oresteia” is an allusion to the Greek tragedy Oresteia; Orestes and Electra carried resentment towards their mother for cheating on their father and killed her. This is similar to Plath’s resentment toward the presence she's referencing. The “blue sky” refers to the justice/relief the death brings. “Black cypress” tree signifies death; the death lingers around Plath.

Fifth Stanza: Not one "lightning stroke"/big thing killed her father, but many things caused the "ruin" that is his death.

Sixth Stanza: “scrape of a keel” refers to the return of a ship to shore. Plath uses this comparison to statue explain her loss of hope in the return of the fallen presence.

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The Colossus by Sylvia Plath | Poetry Foundation

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I shall never get you put together entirely,

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Considered one of the seven wonders of the world.

It stood in the Mandrákion harbor and it is believed that he is shielding his eyes as a representation of relief.

The Colossus was placed in the city of Rhodes which was a prominent power in the maritime and the statue stood tall signifying the power of the city.

A large earthquake was the cause of his dismay after years and years of strength against the sea's forces.

After resting lifeless for over 200 years, he was dismantled by Arab after they had invaded and his bronze was used for scrap.

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Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,

All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,

Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,

Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,

A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,

Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

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Walt Whitman was an American poet during the nineteenth century. He incorporated transcendentalism and jingoism into many of his short poems. In his poem, "America" Whitman uses multiple metaphors, such as "a grand, sane, towering mother" to compare America to a personified maternal figure. he addresses an interesting point with the line, "centre of equal sons, and equal daughters". This an interesting idea to claim that America provided during the time the poem was written in 1888, almost 30 years before women could even vote. It is also curious that Whitman wrote a poem glorifying America, directly after the Civil War, which he had witnessed firsthand, since it was arguably a horrible time for our country and its reputation.

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Phillis Wheatley was one of the best-known poets in the late 1700s America. Wheatley was a significant image for other enslaved blacks, representing that they could be artistic and intelligent. She was taken from her home in West Africa, and sold to the Wheatleys as an enslaved person in Boston in 1761, at just 7 years old. The Wheatleys educated her and she began writing poems at age 13, which were sent to be published in Boston newspapers, and then in London. Phillis Wheatley played a significant role in pushing the abolitionist movement, gaining supporters, and expanding the movement.

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In the Bible, Cain was the name of the first man to ever murder, he killed his own brother due to jealousy. Saying that even the most heinous of criminals can be saved and go to heaven.

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Wheatley was an abolitionist and an evangelical of the first great awakening. In her most famous poem, she praises her Christianization, and implores Christians to believe that Black people can be civilized and  become Christian.

She was also one of the first to write many poems in tribute to America, invented the character of "Columbia," and was supported by many founding fathers.

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'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

"Their colour is a diabolic die."

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

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The Grave of Keats
Oscar Wilde
1854 – 1900
Rid of the world’s injustice, and his pain,
He rests at last beneath God’s veil of blue:
Taken from life when life and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew,
But gentle violets weeping with the dew
Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.
O proudest heart that broke for misery!
O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!
O poet-painter of our English Land!
Thy name was writ in water—it shall stand:
And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,
As Isabella did her Basil-tree.

ROME.

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This poem, written in his own unique rhyme scheme, written as an Italian sonnet it memorializes the work of a famous poet of Wilde's time, John Keats. He depicts his grave utilizing imagery to describe his place of rest and his purpose in the world as a role model for Wilde's work. He depicts how his appreciation and admiration of Keats keeps his memory alive and creates many allusions to do so.

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“Reading the poem involves more than simply understanding individual words and describing what happens. Students [are] expected to view the text specifically as a poem, recognizing literary elements and techniques used in the context of poetry, and then analyze how those techniques are used to shape the poem and its meaning.” (AP Lit. Exam Chief Reader Steve Price, Mississippi College)

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On paper and in ink:

Starting with a claim, write a unified, well-developed paragraph in which you relate imagery in the poem to the speaker’s self-image and to the speaker's view of the poem's audience.

OR

Starting with a claim, write a unified, well-developed paragraph in which you discuss how the poem's diction (choice of words) reveals the poet's
attitude toward the experience described in the poem.

Your response will include the following (in an order that follows the logic of your thinking):

a paragraph claim telling the reader what your paragraph will demonstrate or illustrate

the author and title of the poem

the period during which the poet lived

where the poet lived

several examples from the text, each of which will be followed by analysis of its significance

a concluding thought about the significance, generally, of your analysis in relation to the role of culture and tradition in the formation of identity

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS' LOVE LETTERS

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ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS' LOVE LETTERS

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These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in secret, and apart.
And now the brawlers of the auction mart
Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note,
Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant’s price. I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.

Is it not said that many years ago,
In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran
With torches through the midnight, and began
To wrangel for mean raiment, and to throw
Dice for the garments of a wretched man,
Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?

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Background of "The Charge of the Light Brigade"

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Background of "The Charge of the Light Brigade"

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Historically “The Charge of the Light Brigade” took place during the Crimean War. In 1854 the British cavalry charged against a heavily defended Russia. The British were outnumbered due to a bad call. The infantry consisted of of 673 men who were unprepared for what they were about to face, in the end only 195 men survived the battle. It was one of Britain's worst losses. Tennyson wrote “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, an elegy, when he was Poet Laureate, he wrote the elegiac poem to honor those who died. Tennyson also wanted to write the to raise money for veterans, at the time many of them were homeless.

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Tennyson added a lot to his poem to symbolize the chaos of war and of a battle. His use of short lines suggested movement, Tennyson took the reader through battle and the structure and word choice created the feeling of being surrounded. The repetition of words is meant to create the sounds of battle, immersing the reader. Tennyson used other literary techniques in order to further depict the battle. Tennyson used personification to better describe the perilous nature of the conflict. Phrases like "Valley of Death" and "Into the jaws of Death" serve as powerful examples of this literary technique, giving the battlefield a haunting and foreboding aura. Tennyson write ​​“Boldly they rode and well”, reverse syntax for rhyme. “When can their glory fade?” was a rhetorical question that Tennyson asked, leaving the reader thinking about those who died and sacrificed during the battle.

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Tennyson wrote “The Higher Pantheism” for an initiation of metaphysical society, a debate society that he’s a member of. Metaphysical is a branch of philosophy that details the first principles of things including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, identity, time, and space.

Pantheism is a doctrine that identifies God and the universe as the same, or “regards the universe as a manifestation of God”. The main idea of Tennyson’s poem is that God is everything and his word in law. The entirety of the poem rhymes to reiterate the ideas presented. Tennyson wrote the poem from the logical perspective of a Christian, the perspective of a believer.

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A rounded poet, she was a young woman who paved the way for the feminine presence in poetry. Sadly she took her life at age 30, but by the time she passed, she was followed by many from her works about her troubled marriage and her rocky mental state. She was known for not making her work with a "pretty curtain," but had raw emotion about her life.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS’ LOVE LETTERS - Analysis

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ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS’ LOVE LETTERS - Analysis

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This poem is speaking about an auction where he watched John Keates' love letters to his lover get auctioned off. Wilde highly looked up to Keates because he loved his style and topics of writing and he could not help but feel as if the auctioning off was just for selfish reasons. His poem is showing his feelings about the auction - he thinks that the only reasons the people actually want the letters is because they enjoy the economical value of them, instead of appreciating the art and romance that the letters speak about. He believes that they are defiling the art, and he appreciates it more so than they do.

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The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains,-

Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?

Is not the Vision He, tho' He be not that which He seems?

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,

Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?

Dark is the world to thee; thyself art the reason why,

For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel "I am I"?

Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom,

Making Him broken gleams and a stifled splendour and gloom.

Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet-

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

God is law, say the wise; O soul, and let us rejoice,

For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice.

Law is God, say some; no God at all, says the fool,

For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool;

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;

But if we could see and hear, this Vision-were it not He?

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I

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!” he said.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

II

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

III

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

Rode the six hundred.

IV

Flashed all their sabres bare,

Flashed as they turned in air

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

All the world wondered.

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right through the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

Reeled from the sabre stroke

Shattered and sundered.

Then they rode back, but not

Not the six hundred.

V

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell.

They that had fought so well

Came through the jaws of Death,

Back from the mouth of hell,

All that was left of them,

Left of six hundred.

VI

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred!

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TO show the lab’ring bosom’s deep intent,

And thought in living characters to paint,

When first thy pencil did those beauties give,

And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,

How did those prospects give my soul delight,

A new creation rushing on my sight?

Still, wond’rous youth! each noble path pursue,

On deathless glories fix thine ardent view:

Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire

To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire!

And may the charms of each seraphic theme

Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame!

High to the blissful wonders of the skies

Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes.

Thrice happy, when exalted to survey

That splendid city, crown’d with endless day,

Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring:

Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring.

Calm and serene thy moments glide along,

And may the muse inspire each future song!

Still, with the sweets of contemplation bless’d,

May peace with balmy wings your soul invest!

But when these shades of time are chas’d away,

And darkness ends in everlasting day,

On what seraphic pinions shall we move,

And view the landscapes in the realms above?

There shall thy tongue in heav’nly murmurs flow,

And there my muse with heav’nly transport glow:

No more to tell of Damon’s tender sighs,

Or rising radiance of Aurora’s eyes,

For nobler themes demand a nobler strain,

And purer language on th’ ethereal plain.

Cease, gentle muse! the solemn gloom of night

Now seals the fair creation from my sight.

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The Colossus

BY SYLVIA PLATH

I shall never get you put together entirely,

Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.

Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles

Proceed from your great lips.

It’s worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,

Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.

Thirty years now I have labored

To dredge the silt from your throat.

I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol

I crawl like an ant in mourning

Over the weedy acres of your brow

To mend the immense skull plates and clear

The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia

Arches above us. O father, all by yourself

You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.

I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.

Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.

It would take more than a lightning-stroke

To create such a ruin.

Nights, I squat in the cornucopia

Of your left ear, out of the wind,

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.

The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.

My hours are married to shadow.

No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel

On the blank stones of the landing.

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Oscar Wilde cherished life admired poets' work. He had a love and respect for art, shown by his elaborate metaphors and allusions to the poets he memorializes in his poems. In The Grave of Shelly, he writes for Percy Shelley, an English romantic poet who had died 30 years before he was born.

Like burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed
Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
In the still chamber of yon pyramid
Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.

Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.

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The poem was written about Percy Shelley's real grave site in Italy. The first stanza serves as a characterization of the grave site with descriptive imagery and similes. He mentions native Italian cypress trees and the Pyramid of Caius Cestius which is located close to the cemetery. "like burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed." This simile illustrates the grave site as somber. The burnt-out torch suggests a dark atmosphere while the sick man's bed refers to death and decay surrounding the graves.

In the second stanza, he writes, "Sweet indeed to rest within the womb... But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb." This quote refers to Shelley in his grave. He mentions that although it is nice to rest in a silent grave, it would be better for Shelley to rest in a place more dramatic. He states that a better resting place would be somewhere like the ocean in a shipwreck, alluding to Shelley's death in a storm out in the sea.

Shelley is buried in the Non-Catholic Cemetery, the same cemetery where John Keats is buried.