Am - Lit UNIT II Non Detailed Poetry
Am - Lit UNIT II Non Detailed Poetry
Am - Lit UNIT II Non Detailed Poetry
Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Massachusetts. Although she was very close to her
father and siblings, she rarely left her house and had very few visitors. By the 1860s,
Dickinson lived in almost complete isolation from the outside world but still maintained
some relationships through letters. It is only after her death that her poetry was discovered
and published. Since their publication, Dickinson has become recognized as one of the
strongest voices in American poetry.
Writing Style
Dickinson's poems are usually lyrics, short poems with a single speaker who expresses
thoughts and feelings. Although the poems are usually written with 'I,' this does not mean it
represents Dickinson, just the speaker of the poem. Many of Dickinson's poems do not have
titles but are now recognized by the first few lines of the poem. Finally, she usually follows a
specific writing pattern, common meter, which is alternating lines of eight syllables and then
six syllables. It is important while reading her poems to listen to the syllables and accented
words to find the pattern.
An Introduction to the poem
Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘Hope is the Thing with Feathers’ is perceived to have been published
circa 1861. It was published posthumously as Poems by Emily Dickinson in her second collection
by her sister. Emily uses hope, an abstract entity holding human spirits tightly, maneuvering their
desire, trust, and spirits with its utter relentlessness. For her, hope can be signified as a bird,
almost a living entity as humans.
The narrator perceives hope a-la a bird that resides inside humans. It persists dutifully without a
break, singing constantly. Using metaphor, she emphasizes it sings vigorously during a
hurricane, requiring a heavy storm to lay the bird in peace. As per the speaker, this bird never
wavers by her side in coldest of lands and strangest of seas, yet it never demanded a bread
crumb, singing away merrily.
Using approximate rhyme and quatrain, Emily successfully weaves a compelling poem. The
rhyming scheme used is a-b-c-b is an erratic one. Each second and fourth are rhyming
automatically. In case of second stanza, using rhyming scheme a-b-a-b, first and third verses
rhyme with each other as does fourth and second. In concluding stanza, rhyming scheme is a-
b-b-b, as per which, second, third and fourth verses rhyme.
Rhythm
Using erratic punctuation is a key constituent of her poem. Using many dashes and hyphens
in order to break and modify the flow of poetic rhythm is commonplace here. It’s done to give
breaks and pauses while reading the poem. The rhythmic flow follows an iambic trimeter,
accommodating the fourth stress as well.
1/4
Repetition
Emily uses ‘that’ and ‘and’ during the entirety of ‘Hope is the Thing with Feathers’.
Emily has used ‘And’ is used five times in the poem, showing the flip-flopping nature of
humans.
Comparison
The poet has made use of personification and metaphor in this poem. As hope is an
inanimate object, therefore it is referred to as bird/ thing with feathers. Dickinson gives
hope some wings so as to keep it alive in human hearts.
Stanza One
Emily Dickinson is an expert employer of metaphors, as she uses the small bird to
convey her message, indicating that hope burns in harshest of storms, coldest of winds,
and in unknown of seas for that matter, yet it never demands in return. It persists
continuously within us, keeping us alive.
In the case of the first stanza, the narrator feels that hope can be deemed as a bird with
feathers, singing in its own tune merrily. It may not speak any specific language, yet it’s
certainly present within human souls. Just as importantly, Emily Dickinson voices that
hope is an eternal spring, as it’s a vital constituent of human beings, enabling us to
conquer unchartered territories.
Stanza Two
In case of second stanza, the poetess elucidates the expansive power hope wields over
us. It gets merrier and sweeter as the storm gets mightier and relentless. The poetess
deems that no storm can sway hope and its adamant attitude. According to the poetess, it
would take a deadly storm of astronomical proportions to flatten the bird of hope that
has kept the ship sailing for most men.
Stanza Three
I’ve heard it in the
chillest land, And on the
strangest sea;
Yet, never, in
extremity, It
asked a crumb of
me.
In the last stanza, Emily Dickinson concludes her poem by stressing that hope retains its
clarity and tensile strength in harshest of conditions, yet it never demands in return for
its valiant services. Hope is inherently powerful and certainly needs no polishing, as it
steers the ship from one storm to another with efficacy.
The metaphorical aspect of ‘Hope is the Thing with Feathers’ is an old practice, used by
well-known poets, the small bird represents hope in this poem. When abstract concepts
are under study such as death, love and hope, they are often represented by an object
from nature, in this case, the bird.
Historical Context
Being a globally renowned poet of her time, Emily Dickinson lived quite a prosaic life.
During years of American Civil War when Walt Whitman (contemporary American
legend himself) tended to the wounded and addressing American themes; at a time
when war had brought poverty and pain with Abraham Lincoln getting assassinated in
the process, American years were tumultuous, to say the least, yet Emily Dickinson lived
far from the madding crowd in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was born in the same
house and met her demise there as well. The popular myth being that Emily was a
literary hermit-genius, she was active in social circles and adored human interaction
company. Moreover, her travels were limited to her countryside and native town,
evidenced by her poetry which remains aloof of political connotations/ commentary
altogether.
Lastly, Emily Dickinson hardly ever published her massive stock of 1800 poems,
succumbing to depths of obliviousness. Only her sister stumbled upon the prolific
collection and took the liberty to publish the massive literary work.
Whereas Walt Whitman adored and eulogized Lincoln as his political champion, Emily
was known as the poetess of inwardness. Reading her poetic collection can indicate
almost zero evidence of the timeline she lived in.
‘Hope is the Thing with Feathers’ is a beautiful metaphorically driven poem, using the
bird in her usual homiletic style, inspired from religious poems and Psalms for that
matter. Introducing her metaphorical device (the bird), and further elucidates its
purpose of existence. Hope, according to Emily Dickinson is the sole abstract entity
weathering storms after storms, bypassing hardships with eventual steadiness. It
remains unabashed in harshest of human conditions and circumstances, enabling a
thicker skin on men.
Just Lost, When I Was Saved!
— Emily Dickinson
160
Even a modest selection of Emily Dickinson's poems reveals that death is her principal
subject; in fact, because the topic is related to many of her other concerns, it is difficult to say
how many of her poems concentrate on death. But over half of them, at least partly, and about
a third centrally, feature it. Most of these poems also touch on the subject of religion,
although she did write about religion without mentioning death. Other nineteenth-century
poets, Keats and Whitman are good examples, were also death-haunted, but few as much as
Emily Dickinson. Life in a small New England town in Dickinson's time contained a high
mortality rate for young people; as a result, there were frequent death-scenes in homes, and
this factor contributed to her preoccupation with death, as well as her withdrawal from the
world, her anguish over her lack of romantic love, and her doubts about fulfilment beyond the
grave. Years ago, Emily Dickinson's interest in death was often criticized as being morbid,
but in our time readers tend to be impressed by her sensitive and imaginative handling of this
painful subject.
Her poems centering on death and religion can be divided into four categories: those focusing
on death as possible extinction, those dramatizing the question of whether the soul survives
death, those asserting a firm faith in immortality, and those directly treating God's concern
with people's lives and destinies.
Dickinson wrote this poem between 1860 and 1862, if one accepts the Johnson chronology.
Her sister included it among the small selection of poems published after the poet’s death. It
appears that the title “Called Back” was appended based on a note the poet had written to her
cousins on the day before her death. Perhaps she was inspired by the sudden conviction she
was recovering that affects many terminally ill people, or (equally likely) she did not want
her cousins to worry. In any event, she wrote, “Little cousins,—Called Back. Emily.”
In the early poem "Just lost, when I was saved!" (160), Emily Dickinson expresses joyful
assurance of immortality by dramatizing her regret about a return to life after she — or an
imagined speaker — almost died and received many vivid and thrilling hints about a world
beyond death. Each of the first three lines makes a pronouncement about the false joy of
being saved from a death which is actually desirable. Her real joy lay in her brief contact with
eternity. When she recovers her life, she hears the realm of eternity express disappointment,
for it shared her true joy in her having almost arrived there. The second stanza reveals her
awe of the realm which she skirted, the adventure being represented in metaphors of sailing,
sea, and shore. As a "pale reporter," she is weak from illness and able to give only a vague
description of what lies beyond the seals of heaven. In the third and fourth stanzas, she
declares in chanted prayer that when next she approaches eternity she wants to stay and
witness in detail everything which she has only glimpsed. The last three lines are a
celebration of the timelessness of eternity. She uses the image of the ponderous movements
of vast amounts of earthly time to emphasize that her happy eternity lasts even longer — it
lasts forever.
A ship metaphor serves to describe a brush with death. The poet had just been preparing
herself for the “onset with Eternity” when a lucky wind blew her boat back to safety. She
begins the poem with the interesting contrast of “lost” with “saved” and here “lost” means
loss of hope of living and “saved” means rescued. That would seem conventional enough
until you stop to think that in the religious milieu of 1860 Amherst “lost” and “saved” have
very particular meanings. To be saved is to be saved from eternal damnation and to be lost is
to be lost from hope of heaven. Yet in this poem the poet in her little boat is saved from going
to “foreign shores” that do not seem at all like the shores of hell. The shores seem more like
Paradise and Paradise seems to want the poet, in fact is “disappointed” that she returns to
earthly shores.
The speaker has the lingering unearthly feeling expressed by many who have nearly
died. She feels like a reporter come back with news of some amazing place, or a sailor who
has glimpsed exotic lands. And although she experienced a sense of awe and maybe even
dread by seeing “the awful doors” that guard the “Seal” between life and death, she is eager
to meet death when her time comes.
Like an intrepid explorer, she looks forward – in due time! – to experiencing
something that eyes and ears have never encountered, to “tarry” there for “Ages” while the
“Centuries” slowly “tramp” by. The wheeling “Cycles” might be a tip of the hat to the
Eastern, Vedic, thought just making its way into American discourse via, among others,
Emerson and Thoreau, both of whom Dickinson read deeply and frequently.
Rather than employing a somber or reflective tone, Dickinson writes with the
excitement of a great encounter. The first two words, “Just lost” are equally emphasized and
function as an exclamation. The next two lines repeat the “Just …” construction to
underscore the immediacy of the event. The poem is sprinkled with exclamation marks and
rushes headlong through the account until the last stanza. There, the word “tarry” signals a
tarrying and slowing down, certainly of time but also of poetic pace. “Slow tramp the
Centuries” is a much slower line than, say, “Next time, to stay!” The pace picks up again in
the last line where “Cycles wheel” as if time were a flock of seagulls swirling overhead.
Home Burial
ROBERT FROST
He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: ‘What is it you see
From up there always—for I want to know.’
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,
And her face changed from terrified to dull.
He said to gain time: ‘What is it you see,’
Mounting until she cowered under him.
‘I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.’
She, in her place, refused him any help
With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,
Blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see.
But at last he murmured, ‘Oh,’ and again, ‘Oh.’
This dramatic poem 'Home Burial' was written and published in 1914. In this dramatic
narrative Frost has depicted a critical situation arising between husband and wife over the
death of their son. There is the drama of social adjustment in human relationship. The son
dies. This breaks the wife completely. She is standing at the top of the staircase and peeps
through the window and sees that her husband is digging the grave of the child. On returning
home, he talks of daily concerns.
Form
This is a dramatic lyric—“dramatic” in that, like traditional drama; it presents a continuous
scene and employs primarily dialogue rather than narrative or description. It is dramatic, too,
in its subject matter—“dramatic” in the sense of “emotional” or “tense.” Form fits content
well in this poem: One can easily imagine two actors onstage portraying this brief, charged
scene. Rhythmically, Frost approaches pure speech—and some lines, taken out of context,
sound as prosaic as anything. For example, line 62: “I do think, though, you overdo it a
little.” Generally, there are five stressed syllables per line, although (as in line 62), they are
not always easy to scan with certainty. Stanza breaks occur where quoted speech ends or
begins.
Pay special attention to the tone, vocabulary, and phrasing of the dialogu e. At the time of
“Home Burial’s publication, it represented a truly new poetic genre: an extended dramatic
exercise in the natural speech rhythms of a region’s people, from the mouths of common, yet
vivid, characters.
“Home Burial” is one of Frost’s most overtly sad poems. There are at least two tragedies
here: the death of a child, which antecedes the poem, and the collapse of a marriage, which
the poem foreshadows. “Home Burial” is about grief and grieving, but most of all it seems to
be about the breakdown and limits of communication.
The husband and the wife represent two very different ways of grieving. The wife’s grief
infuses every part of her and does not wane with time. She has been compared to a female
character in Frost’s A Masque of Mercy, of whom another character says, “She’s had some
loss she can’t accept from God.” The wife remarks that most people make only pretence of
following a loved one to the grave, when in truth their minds are “making the best of their
way back to life / And living people, and things they understand.” She, however, will not
accept this kind of grief, will not turn from the grave back to the world of living, for to do so
is to accept the death. Instead she declares that “the world’s evil.”
The husband, on the other hand, has accepted the death. Time has passed, and he might be
more likely now to say, “That’s the way of the world,” than, “The world’s evil.” He did
grieve, but the outward indications of his grief were quite different from those of his wife. He
threw himself into the horrible task of digging his child’s grave—into physical work. This
action further associates the father with a “way-of-the-world” mentality, with the cycles that
make up the farmer’s life, and with an organic view of life and death. The father did not leave
the task of burial to someone else, instead, he physically dug into the earth and planted his
child’s body in the soil.
Frost brings larger issues into the forefront issues such as husband-wife relationship or that
between man and woman, or life and death. The title of the poem is highly significant; it
suggests not only the burial of the dead infant, but also of the domestic harmony. Home
Burial, in beauty and grandeur, ranks with The Death of the Hired Man. Frost's these two
dramatic narratives can favourably be compared with Robert Browning's peculiarly intense
and character-analyzing dramatic monologues like Andrea Del Sarto, Fra Lippo Lippi, My
Last Duchess and The Pauper Witch of Graf-ton (in Two Witches).
Cathedral
James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell is an American poet, critic, essayist, and editor. Lowell is considered
one of the most erudite and versatile American authors of the nineteenth century. In his
earnest, formal verse, he sought to advance liberal causes and establish an American
aesthetic. While such poems as Ode Recited at the Commemoration of the Living and Dead
Soldiers of Harvard University, July 21, 1865 (commonly referred to as the Commemoration
Ode), and The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848) were widely admired in his day, Lowell's poetry
is now considered diffuse and dated and is seldom read. Modern critics generally agree that
his outstanding literary contributions were in the areas of satire and criticism in such works
as A Fable for Critics: A Glance at a Few of Our Literary Progenies (1848) and The Biglow
Papers (1848).
Biographical Information
Lowell was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to a wealthy and influential Boston family.
His privileged ancestry and Harvard education provided Lowell with access to the New
England literati, and as a young man he became acquainted with Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A natural conservative, Lowell
turned increasingly toward liberal humanitarianism after his marriage to Maria White, a poet
and abolitionist who encouraged her husband to contribute poetry to the National Anti-
Slavery Standard and the Pennsylvania Freeman. In 1848, Lowell achieved national acclaim
with the publication of three of his best-known works: Poems: Second Series, A Fable for
Critics, and The Biglow Papers. After his wife's death in 1853, Lowell concerned himself
more with editing, scholarship, and criticism than with poetry. In 1855, he succeeded
Longfellow as Smith Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard, a post which allowed him
to travel abroad and study European languages and literature. Two years later, Lowell
assumed additional responsibilities as first editor of the Atlantic Monthly and later joined
Charles Eliot Norton as coeditor of the North American Review. In 1877, President
Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Lowell minister to Spain. James Garfield, in 1880, transferred
Lowell to England where the diplomat made himself known among London literary society.
Lowell died in Cambridge in 1891.
Major Works
Representative of his early poetry, A Year's Life (1841) demonstrates numerous technical
flaws and a didactic tone that was to mar much of Lowell's later lyrical work. In contrast,
many of the selections in his Poems: Second Series are political in nature, and represent
Lowell's strengths as a public poet. A Fable for Critics, a witty diatribe written in lively
though sometimes careless verse, is remarkable for its numerous critical appraisals of
American literary figures which have endured through time and changing styles. An
ingenious combination of humor, poetry, and trenchant satire written in a brisk
Yankee dialect, the first volume of The Biglow Papers records the sardonic observations of
Hosea Biglow, a New England farmer, and his neighbors as the United States enters the
Mexican War. Lowell's popular verse fantasy The Vision of Sir Launfal follows an Arthurian
knight in his search for the Holy Grail. Melancholy in tone, The Cathedral (1870) meditates
on the subject of faith and was prompted by Lowell's visit to Chartres. His
1865 Commemoration Ode is considered among Lowell's most significant works of public
poetry, and speaks to the enduring qualities of the American mind.
"The Cathedral," originally called "A Day at Chartres," is Lowell's last notable contribution
to poetry. It is full of thought and feeling, but the verse is intricate, and the meaning
sometimes as obscure as Browning's " Sordello." The poet sees in the century growth of the
cathedral the type of all historic progress. That progress is rooted in the faith of the past; it
witnesses to the need of such faith in these times which boast advance but may mistake the
key and later recognize the indwelling God as the source of such faith, imparting it to every
child, and helping every man.
This poem forms the natural transition to a consideration of Lowell's theology. It was printed
in 1869, before his public life began. He himself called it "a kind of religious poem." It is
indeed a confession of faith, noble in many respects, yet lacking some of the best elements of
Christian belief. "The Cathedral" will furnish us with material both for praise and for
criticism. We may begin by pointing out that Lowell, while recognizing an imminent God,
has no faith in a God who is transcendent, and therefore can believe in no miracle or special
revelation. The closing lines of the poem make this plain:
Truth and error are so interwoven here that some insight is needed to disentangle them. The
great truth that God is in all, and through all, is made to imply that this is his only being, and
his only method of manifestation, and so to involve what Scripture would call a limitation of
the Holy One of Israel. The apostle Paul avoids this error, when he declares that God is not
only " in all," and "through all," but also "above all." "But a whisper is heard of Him," says
the book of Job; " the thunder of his power who can understand!" To limit God to mere
Nature is virtually to deny his omnipotence, and even his personality. But if God is above
Nature, and not simply one with Nature, he can act upon Nature and apart from Nature,
whenever there is need; and miracle and special revelation are possible.
The real question, then, is the question of need. Is there a moral need, which it is becoming
that God should supply? Is the enlightenment, which the universal presence of God in nature
gives, a sufficient enlightenment in man's actual moral condition? The answer to this question
is given to us in John's Gospel, when the apostle asserts that before Christ came in the flesh
"the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not." In other words, man's
sin prevented God's light from having its normal and proper effect. Lowell's error with regard
to miracle and revelation, then, is an error with regard to man's moral condition. He ignores
man's, sin and perversity, which "hinder the truth in unrighteousness," and which necessitate
special revelation to awaken conscience and to draw forth repentant love. Such a revelation
must make plain God's personality, his holiness, his self-sacrificing desire to save; and such a
revelation is actually given us in Christ's atoning death and in his offer to deliver the sinner
from %the bondage of his sins. But Lowell seems to have no personal experience of his need
as a sinner. He has no proper conception of God as the hater and punisher of sin, nor of Christ
as the divine Saviour from its guilt and defilement.
In other words, Lowell's God will be a God of infinite good nature, who makes no moral
distinctions. Such a God will be no terror to the ungodly, and no Mediator will be needed to
make propitiation for men's sins. Christ is not " the fulness of the Godhead bodily," but only
one of many guides and saviours, whose life and example have made the path of duty easier
for our feet; and his Cross becomes only a model of patience in suffering the ills that afflict
us all. With no inner experience of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, it is no wonder that the
beliefs of the fathers should seem only the useful incidents of an historic past and quite
inapplicable to the improved conditions of the present day:
But each man has within him the infinite Source, from whom have proceeded all the
revelations of the past, and who is ready to give to us new evidences of his presence:
This may be theism, but it is not Christianity. The vagueness of its conception of God, its
ignorance of God's holiness and of man's sin, the absence of faith in God's appointed way of
salvation through Christ, show it to be a man-made scheme, incapable of giving relief to a
burdened conscience, or of comforting a weak and afflicted soul. Man needs to see his own
nature in God, or rather, needs to see God in human form. Hero worship, emperor-worship,
Mithras-worship, are all of them efforts of mankind to find a human heart in the Godhead.
This universal instinct is satisfied only by Christianity, which shows us the eternal Word
made flesh, yet exalted to be King of kings and Lord of lords. With James Russell Lowell's "
Cathedral" I would contrast Robert Browning's "Saul "; and would maintain that this latter
poem furnishes a far better basis for communion with a personal God, for comfort amid the
struggles of our earthly life, and for courage in the performance of social and civic duty, than
does the poem we have been considering. Listen to David's heartening appeal to Saul:
What help did Lowell's religion give him in time of bereavement, and when he drew near to
the gates of death? We have already seen that after the loss of his child he confessed himself
a pagan. He derived no comfort from the thought of a present Christ, into whose loving arms
he could commit his loved one, with the assurance that she should be restored to him, when
life's short day was past, but cleansed from the dishonours of the tomb and clad with
immortality.
Lowell was a moralist, and not a theologian; a theist. and not a Christian. It is an interesting
question how far his conceptions of God affected his ideas of duty. What is the normal
relation of morality to religion? I reply that religion is morality toward God, as morality is
religion toward men. The two are meant to be obverse sides of one and the same great fact of
life. But human perversity has separated them; the one seems at times to exist without the
other; we see religion without morality, and morality without religion. When thus separated,
neither one is of real or permanent value. Religion without morality is a tree without fruits;
morality without religion is a tree without roots. Human progress consists in the ever
increasing union of the two; human perfection will be attained only when love to God is the
source of love to man, and love to man is the constant result and proof of love to God.
The moralist builds securely, only when the foundation of his system is laid upon the Rock of
Ages. In just the proportion that he constructs his edifice without this foundation, he builds
upon the sand, and time undoes his work. Or, to change the simile, ethics without God, by
which I mean ethics which ignores the Christian revelation, is an orchid-growth, that lives, on
air; while Christian ethics is like the rose, which has deep root in virgin soil. The orchid has
its beauty; but that beauty fades, and the light wind of passion sweeps it away; while the rose
has a permanent loveliness, and a fragrance which the orchid never possesses. To apply my
illustrations to the present case, I would say that Lowell, with all his moral earnestness, has
missed the true theory of morals, and so has given us only detached maxims, truths which are
the proper fruit of Christianity alone, and which, without connection with their source, lack
both motive and life.