Precious Works

The Collar: George Herbert

2013-03-02T08:41:00.000+05:30

A students write-up on Herbert's poem The Collar

George Herbert

The collar is a much typical and well known poem from 'The Temple' by George Herbert. Here the poet is doing analysis of the conflict in himself and presenting it in terms of human actions and gestures, of the senses and the body and he clears that all his grief and sorrow take place in his life by his own state of mind. He has the lack of strength against ideal restrictions of the world. He wants to be free but he is captured by the follies of the world. At this moment his heart is so weak and so helpless as that no any action it takes for relief and happiness of the self.

Poet's Lament

In this poem poet desires to get the freedom and happiness but it does not mean that this poem is an attraction to the relishes of pleasure and lull to the divine sleep of joy; But it is an impotent irritation at not being able to muster up enough response to them. Here is the poet's lament which shows the will of getting freedom and also the weakness of the heart very closely.

In the first step of the conflict he is crying- "No more, I will abroad' and now he starts to examine his own condition in this part of life he has many of the questions as "Shall I be still in suit?" Though his lines and life are free - as free as the road, as loose as the wind and as large as the store. Again "Is the year only lost to me" and "Have I no boys to crown it?" and more and more - "No flower? No garlands gay? All blasted? All wasted?" and he is completely surrounded by universal question to himself 'Why'?

And then "You are a poor thing", says Herbert to his heart,

"preoccupied as you are with cages and cables and death's heads: why not resurrect some of that corn and wine that you drowned and dried up with tears and sighs", Why, O my temperament, are you not more cheerful, more sanguine, more energetic, more fearless? Is the year only lost to me?"

Now the conflict of the poet gives the consolation-

"Not so, my heart." the poet leaves the pessimistic way of his mind and achieves a hope and says to his heart to act to get the real joy. At the end the poet is raved because of useless railings against one's constitution and nature; and when he "grew more fierce and wild./At every word." For the circle of thought is self closed and does not reach out to dream visions of sensual satisfactions; He hears a calling 'child'. And then comes a famous word of submission 'My Lord' by poet himself. 'Helen Vendler' clears the significant use of 'My Lord' and gives a way to grant this submission very closely -

"If we did not sense that a futile self - destructiveness and an attempt to force a new untimely fruition on nature, were at the root of the intemperate language, we would not be convinced by this submission, 'My Lord'; we come to that submission with relief, because it means a return to Herbert's own nature to which he has been so cruel in the course of the poem.

George Herbert himself described the work as "a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master; in whose service I have now found perfect freedom."

Therefore this poem is sensitive to the most delicate changes of feelings, and catches some of the tones of the Elizabethan dramatists in its irregular rhymed verse. The poem could be very profitably studied as illustrating what Mr. Eliot has called attention to when he says that in much good poetry, especially that of the Elizabethan period and the seventeenth century, "the intellect is immediately at the tips of the senses."

Text of the poem 'The Collar'

I struck the board, and cried, "No more;
I will abroad!
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away! take heed;
I will abroad.
Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears;
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need
Deserves his load."
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied My Lord.

Photo source: Google

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

2013-02-02T13:46:00.000+05:30

A General view on Shakespeare's Sonnet No.130

Shakespeare, Source:Wikipedia

In this sonnet Shakespeare expresses in an unconventional style. The poet like every passionate lover in this world believes his mistress to be a most beautiful woman, though he knows what are the proper necessities of beauty and also knows that his mistress has the lack of necessary qualities to be beautiful.

Shakespeare describes the essential things in a lady to be a beautiful women in the whole sonnet. Only the couplet is rest in which the poet gives the proper notion of lover or himself. This couplet is result and a characteristic in all Shakespeare's sonnets. Poet here suggests most significant comparison between his beloved and worldly pleasures (nature). He compares the eyes with the sun, the redness of the lips with the coral, the whiteness of the breast with snow; cheeks with the roses (damasked) and the breath with the perfume, and much more pleasure he wants in his mistress; but his mistress has not the eyes like the sun, her lips are not red like coral, her breast is not white like snow but dark, her hairs are not wire-like, not any damasked rose is shown in the cheeks of her mistress and her breath is not well-perfumed. The poet knows that music is better than her sound but he wants only to hear his mistress speaking because of his love to her.

Now Shakespeare in his couplet expresses a lover's thought and idea about his beloved that his beloved is extraordinarily beautiful, as beautiful as any woman who was depicted as an exceptional woman by the use of false comparison.

Elizabethan Idealism

Shakespeare in this sonnet accepts the style of Elizabethan idealism. We find such like descriptions in Spenser and Sidney etc. also. The comparison in this sonnet is very interesting. The comparison of eyes with the sun is the most significant to think the difference between the western and eastern literature. Sun is the symbol of brightness and dazzling and dazzles the eyes of a person who watch it and like the sun the eyes also are very dazzling and hot to the western writers. Surely brightness of the eyes is beautiful and important but in the sun-like eyes the softness and the drop of tears are absent, and this very softness and the drop of tears much strike the eastern or Indian poet. For Indian poet eyes are the the mirror in which he watches all his sorrow and his happiness, all his love and his hate and whole the sentences of the heart which does not join the tongue. Indian poet 'Agyey' says to his beloved's eyes-

"तुम्हारे नैन
पहले भोर की दो ओस बूँदे हैं
अछूती, ज्योतिर्मय
भीतर द्रवित..."
(Your eyes are two dew-drops from sky of the opening dawn- unsmashed, brightened and inwardly soaked....")

Another comparison of hair and wire is most common and significant in English literature and it occurs over and over again. 'Spenser' wrote in 'Epithalamion'-

"Her long loose yellow locks lyke golden wyre"

and Sestiad in 'Hero and Leander'-

"Her tresses were of wire
knit like a net".

Thus in this sonnet Shakespeare finds his mistress wanting in all those attractions which are associated with beauty; and yet he thinks her to be the most beautiful woman in the world. So it is clearly proved that beauty lies in the beholder's eyes.

This sonnet may contain genuine praise by Shakespeare to his mistress in the days when she was really in love with him, or it may be a satirical note on that woman when she had proved disloyal to him by changing her passion to another man from the poet. What the exact state of mind Shakespeare applies here is unsure,but after all this sonnet is great exercise on expression and description of praiseworthy beauty.

Other Articles on Shakespearean Sonnets:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

The Canonization: John Donne

2013-02-01T15:22:00.000+05:30

John Donne, one of the most famous Metaphysical Poets. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Canonization is one of the finest poems of John Donne. This poem is selected in the 'Songs and Sonnets' and it stands alone among all the pieces of 'Songs and Sonnets'. The Character who is speaking rejects the worldly wise advice offered to him and vindicates his own abandonment to passion.

First and Second Stanza of the poem

The famous opening line- "For God sake hold your tongue, and let me love", shows us Donne at his best in his own familiar style. In the lines of first stanza he makes fun of himself-

"Or Chide my palsie, or my gout
My five gray haires, or ruin'd fortune flout."

and in the next lines of his friend-

"Observe his honour, or his grace,
Or the kings real, or his stamped face
Contemplate, what you will, apporve",

and in the last of the stanza he shows all the strength of his passion in the appeal- that do anything

"So you will let me love". This like satirical description reappears in the second stanza and in this stanza it sounds more clearly. The next lines are most satirical amplifications-

"What merchants ships have my sighs drown'd?
who saies my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Adde one more to the plague Bill?

and next three lines satire continues the description and becomes move stinging.

"Soldiers finde warres, and Lawyers finde out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do live."

In these first two stanzas the speaker has lectured his unsympathetic listener on the complete independence of his love from the scrambling and quarrelsome world of Kings, of courtiers, scholars,merchants, soldiers and lawyers.

Third Stanza of the poem

In the third stanza he takes change in his tone by inviting the listener, whom he first told to be silent, now to 'call' the lovers whatever he pleases, not only in the sense of 'identify of define the lovers' but also 'insult the lovers'. In this stanza he has told others to mind their own business and proved the harmlessness of his own all engrossing pursuit-

"Call her one, mee another flye,
We're Tapers too, and at our owne cost die,"

It means nobody suffers a loss by lovers' death. The main idea, in the stanza, of justification by love enters now-"Call us what you will, we are made such by love." and not only justification-ennoblement - "And we in us finde the Eagle and the Dove." This metaphor of the birds was suggested by that of the insects, and corrects it; in the erotic-mystical language of the time 'eagle' stands for 'strength' and 'dove' for 'tenderness and purity'. Remember Crashaw's appeal to St. Theresa-"By all the eagle in thee, all the dove". Another comparison with the 'phoenix' is a 'ridle',which the speaker seems to explicate almost casually, with a literary cliche- "We two, being one, are it".

With the 'Phoenix' Donne openly reverts to the type of traditional hyperbole he has just ridiculed,but he wears the hackneyed symbol with a difference-

"The phoenix ridle hath more wit
By is we two being one, are it.

The fabulous bird, being unique of its kind, united in himself both sexes; the two lovers, having combined into one neutral thing, have also acquired this other property of the phoenix; they "dye and rise the same' as before.

Fourth Stanza of the poem

In stanza four the speaker then promises a future publication of love's mysteries in 'sonnets' or 'hymns' by which all who have formerly criticized or misinterpreted the lovers will learn to-

"approve
Us canonized for love."

This stanza admits the hard fact, but answers defiantly-"We can dye by it, If not live by love." In the stanza poet points that this love of the pair is a mystery; therefore they will have a 'legend', and this fame of love will lost safely, if not in 'a chronicle', at least in 'sonnets' and 'hymns'. This word has a religious importance and it leads up the announcement that the poet and his mistress will be "Canonized for love", and here the stanza fourth ends.

In the same manner Shakespeare also immortalizes his love in the pretty sonnets or in verse, but something is different here. When Shakespeare says-

"Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou growest'
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see
So long lives this,and this gives life to thee."

and again-

"Even if you do thy worst, O Time,
My love, shall in my verse ever live long."

He clears the immortality of verse of course, but in fact he is centred on himself only. He boasts and proves his supreme mastery of a theme or a verse of his own. Donne in these lines immortalizes his love in all forthcoming sonnets-not of his own, but of others.

Finally he imagines the form in which the world edified by such 'hymns' would express its approval. In this stanza Donne expresses the power of love and the power of Sonnets and hymns also. When the speaker has proved his quality to express and explain his mysterious experience in sonnets and hymns- the previously rejected world by him as vicious and vulgar, has proved capable of conversation to his vision, his values and Donne celebrates this understanding in the last stanza. It proves that Love is long-live and if it had not proved during it lives, it will be proved after being the mystery and whole world shall accept it and will continue to study such like sonnets; and these hymns will become the torch-bearers of future lovers.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

2013-02-01T07:27:00.000+05:30

A General view on Shakespeare's Sonnet No.18

Shakespeare, Source:Wikipedia

In this fine sonnet Shakespeare glorifies the beauty of his friend. His friends' beauty is incomparable, distinct and more lovely. In the beginning the poet arises a question, would it be appropriate to compare his beauty to the beauty of a summer's day and the answer is 'no and never'. You are more lovable and soothing. The winds 'shake the darling buds of May' but the duration of this summer month is much short. And as the same all the things of the world is to be destroyed by the chance or by the chance or by the nature's course. The sun gets the brightness in the summer's day, but after sometimes sun becomes light-less and the brightness of the sun becomes dim. Shakespeare gives here a universal theme that 'Time is the most powerful' and no one can take the defense against Time's attack, he says-

"And every fair from fair sometimes decline
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed."

Shakespeare in this sonnet immortalizes his friend's beauty. He says, 'your beauty is eternal and it never can fade. Your eternal summer is not to be destroyed and you never can lose your possession of this fair beauty. Your beauty's sun is not to be dimmed and the brightness of the sun is everlasting. Spenser gets the same idea in his sonnet No. IX -

"Long-while I sought to what I might compare
Those powerful eyes,which lighte' my dark sprite
Yet find I nought on earth to which I dare
Resemble the image of their goodly light.
Not to the sun; for they do shine by night."

and like this the beauty of the poet's friend is as rare, and as lighted as no other beauty can resemble.

Shakespeare says that even death will not be able to touch his beauty away because of my eternal lines (sonnets) that will increase his beauty. Shakespeare is a conscious writer of his exceptional gifts as a poet and these lines show that consciousness. And not only Shakespeare,but all the contemporaries of his age have had like anticipation of immortality for their verse. Drayton speaks,

"While thus my pen strives to eternize thee. (Idea, XLIV. I)

and Daniel was no less explicit,

"This (verse) may remain in thy lasting monument (Delia)

Shakespeare sounds that as long as men can breath and 'As long as the eyes can see' so long would my sonnets continue to read, and by the immortality of these rhymes, his friend also must will remain immortal. To indicate these lines W.Knight has a remarkable remark,

"Starting by saying something large, the poet ends by saying something small."

Text of the Sonnet No. 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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2012-11-21T09:39:00.002+05:30

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