English Literature Notes

By: Aeylia Zehra 10-C

Poem: A Leave taking

|Algernon Charles Swinburne|

Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.

Let us go hence together without fear;
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
And over all old things and all things dear.
She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
She would not hear.

Let us rise up and part; she will not know.

Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
There is no help, for all these things are so,
And all the world is bitter as a tear.
And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
She would not know.

Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.

We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
Saying 'If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.'
All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;
And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,
She would not weep.

Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.

She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,
Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.
Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
She would not love.

Let us give up, go down; she will not care.

Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
And the sea moving saw before it move
One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;
Though all those waves went over us, and drove
Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,
She would not care.

Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.

Sing all once more together; surely she,
She too, remembering days and words that were,
Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
She would not see.

Check List:
Title
Historical Contexts
Introduction to essay
Tone
Structure
Punctuation
Themes
Literary Devices
Deeper Implications
Philosophical Overtures
Similar Poems References
Tone:
➔ 1st Stanza has a tone of irony: An aspect of this poem I really enjoy is the sense of irony
that grows stanza by stanza. The more he says let us leave or let us go hence, the more
I get the impression that he wants her to stop him from going. The more distance he
threatens to put between himself and her, the closer he really wants to be. This irony is
founded on repetitions of different kinds.

➔ The tone of A Leave-Taking makes me think that Swinburne is poking fun at this kind of
self-important man; whether you interpret his satire as sharp and cutting or as gentle
and sympathetic perhaps depends on how much of yourself, or those you know, you
recognise in this portrait. The literary term bathos means to treat trivial or narrow
concerns importantly and it’s this feeling that underpins the satire of A Leave-Taking. The
way Swinburne’s speaker seems to think he’s god’s gift to the ladies (associating his
songs and gifts with angels and heaven) is a pointed example of bathos.

➔ Masterful elements of form such as these belie the melodramatic tone of the speaker
and convey the impression that the speaker and the poet are not the same person –
although they may once have been.

➔ Part of what makes his tone of voice so bathetic is the way the speaker addresses
himself alongside a third party, referring to both himself and another as us and we. And
it’s amusing when the realization dawns… this third party is actually his own singing
voice, personified as a kind of wingman helping the speaker serenade the woman of his
dreams!

➔ Thus, the poem opens with the instruction let us go hence… let us go hence together
without fear. In my mind’s ear, although he’s speaking to himself, I imagine him saying
these words just loud enough for her to overhear – a ploy by which he hopes she might
suddenly come to her senses and cry out, “Stop! I do love you after all.” To be honest,
I’m not sure he sounds like such a catch. Look at how the first three lines all position
verbs (let and keep) at the beginning; this is an example of the imperative tense,
otherwise called the command tense, and it makes me think that the speaker is used to
getting his own way.

➔ He certainly sounds confident – after all, he compares his own singing voice to the
sound of angels! – but the mention of fear betrays a touch of insecurity, a burden carried
by young men who act tough, but are only really looking for recognition. The
personification of his singing voice plays into this idea as well, as if it’s his only
companion – in reality he might be alone or even lonely.

➔ Sound transmits feelings of melancholy, especially softer sounds like sibilant S

(silence, singing, sang, she) and assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds): phrases
 such as over all old things and she loves not you nor me contain long, deep assonant
sounds that easily convey sadness.
Structure:
➔ ‘A Leave-Taking’ by Algernon Charles Swinburne is a love-lyric that talks about an
egotistical lady who rejected the poet’s love.

➔ However, the poet employs the well-known dramatic monologue form in this poem to
express his feelings. Moreover, there are a total of six stanzas consisting of seven lines
each.

➔ The poem follows a regular rhyming pattern that presents the rhyme scheme of a
closed couplet. However, the last three lines of each stanza form a rhyming tercet.
Apart from that, the whole poem is composed of iambic pentameter with a few
variations. As an example, the last line of each stanza is in iambic dimeter.

➔ A Leave-Taking is written in unusual seven-lined stanzas (called septets) of steady

iambic pentameter, reminiscent of a heartbeat, but controlled rather than frantic.

➔ The first line of each stanza begins with an action on the part of the speaker (for
example, let us go hence) that is completely ignored by the woman in the poem (e.g. she
will not hear). The middle lines of each stanza elaborate in some way on the speaker’s
actions and bruised emotions, before ending in an abrupt, clipped reiteration of her
implacable resistance to his charms; in this case, She would not hear.

➔ The rhyme scheme is AABABAA, with five of the lines rhyming one way and only two
lines rhyming another; if you use your mind’s eye to isolate the middle three lines you’ll
see they form an envelope rhyme (BAB) with the two outside rhymes being kept apart
by the line in the middle, for all the world like frustrated lovers never able to come
together.

➔ Zoom out to the poem as a whole and you’ll notice that the interjection Yea that begins
the sixth line of the first stanza is mirrored in the sixth line of the last stanza by Nay.

➔ Oppositions of one sort or another echo through the poem, most obviously in the duality
between ‘him’ and ‘her.’ Other dualities include heaven above and deep down, singing
and silence, sow and reap and more.
Major Themes:
1. Unrequited love
2. Futility of obsessed love
3. Heartlessness of the beloved

➔ The entire poem laments the unrequited love of the beloved of the poem who is not
responding as he repeats it several times that she does not care, does not see, and
does not respond. This shows that the poet is slow in becoming aware of the futility of
his obsession to which she is unresponsive. It also shows that his beloved is heartless
and the poet loses all hopes of getting any response for his singing in her love.

Literary Devices:
Personification:
The poet has personified songs as if they have life and emotions of their own. That is why he
addresses them as “Let us…” Employing it the poet directly talks with his verse and this
dialogue between a poet and his verse reflects how lonely the poet was at the time of writing
this poem.The personification of his singing voice plays into this idea as well, as if it’s his only
companion – in reality he might be alone or even lonely.

Apostrophe:
to invoke the poetic spirit of his songs in the poem.

Metaphors and Similes in the poem:

As an example, in the second stanza, “And all the world is bitter as a tear” is an example of a
simile. In this line, the poet also uses metonymy in the usage of the word “world”.
Metaphors are present in the lines such as “Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep” and “Though
all the stars made gold of all the air”.

Litote:
The poet also uses litotes in the poem.

Synecdoche:
Moreover, the line “Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair” contains a synecdoche

Conflict + Metaphor:
In the third stanza of ‘A Leave-Taking’, the poet appears somehow puzzled in his thoughts.
Previously, he has talked about going to the sea. Now, he is talking about going to his home.
Such a conflict reflects how dedicated the poet was to the lady.

Sowing + Metaphor:
However, in this section, the poet uses metaphors like sowing, reaping, and sowing not in their
literal sense. Here, the poet talks about the seeds of love that the poet had sown in his heart. In
the present scenario, everything is mown. What is left is the poet’s reaped mind with some
scattered pain rising their heads here and there.Swinburne develops the metaphor of the
speaker planting (sow) ‘seeds’ of love that he expects her to harvest (reap); when she doesn’t
do so he prostrates himself before her (I picture him down on his knees, arms wide open) and
begs her to bury her sickle, a small curved knife used to cut plants, in his heart and cut it out for
herself.

Sea + Metaphor:
The poet has used an extended metaphor of love to show the futility of his efforts. However, the
best metaphor is “Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep.”
(4)The “love’s ways” aren’t soft and soothing as the poet has suffered mental pain in this way.
Now, there is a realization in the poet’s mind that love is metaphorically a sea that is bitter,
barren, and deep. There is no hope left in it. At last, the poet imagines if the lady had ever
thought about the poet’s feelings, her egotist mind never allowed her to fall in love with the poet.
(5)the poet uses the metaphor of the sea for expressing how miserable the poet is without the
lady. There are some contrasting images in this stanza that present the poet’s suffering at one
hand and the passivity not only of the lady but also of the whole creation. Such a hyperbolic
expression only comes from a person in extreme mental pain like the poet is. However, the poet
feels like drowning in this symbolic sea and his stifling lips can’t utter a single word. Even if the
poet is undergoing all such pains, “she wouldn’t care”.Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep.
This is one of several lines where the poet’s craft emerges from beneath the bluster of
speaker’s voice;

Anaphora + Repitions:
It means to repeat the first part of the sentence in other clauses and sentences such as “Let
us…” is an anaphora first two stanzas.anaphora and reiteration (repetition at the start of lines of
poetry is called anaphora; a repetition of the same idea using different words is called
reiteration); examples being let us go hence, let us rise up and let us go home, all of which
essentially carry the same intentional meaning – ‘let’s get out of here’. Because of such frequent
repetition, the poem is sometimes in danger of becoming a little one-note; you could certainly
level this accusation against the fourth stanza which is almost a recap; she will not love… she
shall not hear us… nor see love’s ways are all statements we have heard before

Assonance:
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line such as the sound of /e/ in “Let us
go hence together without fear” the sound of /o/ and /i/ in “And over all old things and all things
dear” and the sound of /o/ and /e/ in “She loves not you nor me as all we love her.”

Alliteration:
The poem shows the use of alliteration in the shape of initial consonant sounds of the
neighboring words such as the sound of /th/ in “these things”, /m/ in “moon-flower making” and
/f/ in “foam-flowers fair.”
Consonance:
Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound of /l/ and
/n/ in “She loves not you nor me as all we love her”, the sound of /s/ and /t/ in “Keep silence
now, for singing-time is over” and the sound of /l/ and /f/ in “Full of blown sand and foam; what
help is here?”

Enjambment:
It is defined as a thought in verse that does not come to an end at a line break; rather, it rolls
over to the next line. For example;
And the sea moving saw before it move
One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair.

Imagery:
Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. Algernon Charles
Swinburne has used imagery in this poem such as “Keep silence now, for singing time is over”,
“And all the world is bitter as a tear”, and “We gave love dreams and days to keep.”

Symbolism:
Symbolism is using symbols to signify ideas and qualities, giving them symbolic meanings that
are different from literal meanings. The poem shows the use of symbols of natural objects and
phenomena to point out the heartlessness of his beloved.

Imagery + Moon:
As well, the lovely image of the moon scattering light across the surface of foamy waves is a
reflection.

S Sound:
Sound transmits feelings of melancholy, especially softer sounds like sibilant S (silence,
singing, sang, she) and assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds): phrases such as over all
old things and she loves not you nor me contain long, deep assonant sounds that easily convey
sadness.

Aligning of speaker voice with wind:

After his initial ploy fails to catch her attention, the speaker ups his game, commanding his voice
to go seawards as the great winds blow. This is one of those lines that seems to be very
knowing on the part of the writer. Swinburne deliberately aligns his speaker’s voice with the
wind, describing it as full of blown sand and foam – in other words, full of bluster but without
much substance. The syntax of this line reminds me of Shakespeare’s famous words ‘full of
sound and fury, yet signifying nothing’. As well, the image of an intangible wind is one of those
clues that suggests the entire relationship is imaginary – there’s no solid foundation for his
protestations of love. There’s ample hyperbole in this verse: great winds… full of… no help.. all
these things are so… all the world is bitter as a tear.
Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration, here crossing over into melodrama, which the speaker no
doubt intends to be moving, but Swinburne wants us to hear as posturing: being melodramatic
is one of the traits of a Petrarchan lover and hyperbole very often suggests a lack of emotional
control or maturity.

Diction (dreams):
makes explicit what we have been suspecting all along – this relationship is a one-way fantasy.
The speaker mentions giving his love impossible gifts; flowers with no scent and fruit that will not
grow, both images that suggest any tangible love affair never got off the ground.

Language is erotic:
Truth to tell, the use of language here is quite erotic, and I wonder if the associations with sexual
penetration are completely intentional – the reversal of the usual male-female parts of the image
would certainly play into the satire of a foolish young man who lets his thoughts and feelings –
as well as his words – get out of hand. Where it does succeed is in the picture of abstract
desperation it conjures; as with all his gifts and songs, she completely ignores him (She would
not weep) and he’s left looking pretty ridiculous making all these grandiloquent gestures to the
unresponsive air.

Alliteration:
Swinburne was especially partial to alliteration, and you can find plosive alliteration (made with
the letters B and P) as well as dental (made with D and T) in this line. Both create hard,
negative effects associated with pain.Swinburne once again treats us to a masterclass in the
use of sound: the letters W, L and R belong to a category of alliteration called liquid, a perfect
sonic accompaniment to a watery scene. Dental D and plosive P are once more pressed into
service to suggest pain, and assonance (though all those, over, drove, down, drowning)
underscores everything with a melancholy dirge. It’s at this point of the poem that you might find
the attention-seeking tactics of the spurned young man ridiculous (especially if you interpret his
drowning himself as just another attention-seeking ploy).

Hyperbole:
n the fifth stanza, her lack of reaction spurs the speaker to new levels of histrionics and
hyperbole as he imagines giving up on love and life: Let us give up, go down; where go down
means to throw himself into the ocean
He imagines the pathos of this scene would be enough to move even the moon and stars in the
sky – so numerous they seem to paint the sky gold (made gold of all the air is another beautiful
image, albeit one tinged with that familiar hyperbole) – but fail to have any effect on her at all:
she would not care.

Onomatopoeia:
(sighing), which is faint and insubstantial – like the speaker’s hopes for love – as another
example. The word sighing is important for another reason too; it reveals that the woman in the
poem is capable of emotion. If only she had seen him in time he would have been able to elicit
an emotional reaction from her. It’s one of the few moments in the poem where her actions are
not negated (the others being turn and remembering, also in the final stanza).

Deeper Implications/ Philosophical Overtures

➔ A Leave-Taking seemed to me like a tender and sympathetic portrait of heart-break, a
young man lamenting the sudden end of a love-affair. He does all he can to try to
persuade the lady in the poem not to give up on him. I sympathised with his emotional
suffering; she won’t hear him, won’t speak to him, won’t even glance in his direction, let
alone weep a single tear of regret that he’s leaving.

➔ He was so caught up in his dreams of passionate love that he never considered the
object of his persuasions might have ideas of her own – ideas that don’t involve him.

➔ He draws on the literary archetype of a Petrarchan lover, who has a long and exalted
history. At the start of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo acts like a quintessential Petrarchan
lover when he pines after Rosaline, a woman only seen from afar and whom he had
never even spoken to! The origin of this archetype is a fourteenth century Italian
sonneteer named Petrarch, who featured a beautiful – but unavailable – woman called
Laura in his poems.

➔ “I will do anything for love – but I won’t do that,” and, of course, the speaker doesn’t
actually throw himself into the sea. Another trait of Petrarchan lovers is that they are
rarely men of action; they are thoughtful and sensitive souls, prone to introspection and
emotional soul-searching. They tend to exist in fantasy worlds and find reality hard to
accept; after all, Shakespeare gave us our first glimpse of Romeo hiding out in the
darkness of his parents’ sycamore grove, before he retreats to his bedroom where he
locks the door and closes all the curtains so as not to face the ‘reality’ of the day.
Swinburne’s speaker is no exception – even in the face of continued rejection he can’t
help having his ‘what-if’ moment, which comes in the final stanza:

➔ Cheesy twist in the tale: after ignoring him for so long, when she finally glances in his
direction… the speaker says it’s too late! He’s already slipped below the surface of that
barren sea: we are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there. In
Swinburne’s speaker’s imagination there was no other way for the story to end: you
might find it strange, but Petrarchan lovers actually enjoy dwelling in the pain of
unrequited love, so, like Juliet awakening just a few seconds too late to stop Romeo
drinking poison, this final irony is fitting. It elevates what would otherwise be a regular
boy-meets-girl romance into the stuff of tragedy. Here, we see the speaker secretly
revelling in the attention and sympathy such a tragic story evokes: all men seeing had
pity on me. The feeling that his actions are performative, that he is staging this scene for
others to see and appreciate, is inescapable in this line and you might like to think of
‘seeing’ as the theme of the final stanza.
Historical background:
‘A Leave-Taking’ by Algernon Charles Swinburne reflects the artistic sensibility of the
Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. This group was founded in 1848. Christina Georgina Rossetti‘s
brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris were also part of the group. They tried to
bring up the importance of the pre-Renaissance art forms through their works. In this poem too,
the vibrant imagery reflects the influence of this artistic movement on the poet’s mind.

Similar Poetry:
Blame not my Lute! by Sir Thomas Wyatt – Here, Sir Thomas Wyatt talks about the cruelty of
the lady whom the poet loved.
The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell – Here, the speaker of Andrew Marvell‘s poem also
goes through a similar kind of mental pain that Swinburne suffered.
Love’s Growth by John Donne – Here, John Donne talks about the true nature of love.
After great pain, a formal feeling comes by Emily Dickinson – Here, Emily Dickinson talks about
the “pain” that one suffers in any kind of loss.

Summary of Poem:
https://poemanalysis.com/algernon-charles-swinburne/a-leave-taking/

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