Theme 7 : the Natural and the

Fantastic
Group 9 : Cindy F, Nadia A, Renata
M, Ridho B

Contents
Theme 7 : the Natural and the Fantastic
Before you read William Blake's Poetry
"A Poison Tree"
"The Lamb"

Media Connection
Before you read : Meet Mary Wollstonecraft
"A Vindication of The Rights of Woman"
Responding to literature

Before you read William Wodsworth's Poetry

"The World Is Too Much With Us"
"My Heart Leaps Up"
Responding to Literature

the Natural and the Fantastic

A hideous monster, feverish reveries, and impassioned arguments,
as well as some of the less dramatic moments of daily life. Although
these works range from dramatic to dreamlike to down-toearth, all of
them capture powerful feelings.

INTRO

BINGUNG MAU DIISI APA, MUNGKIN PENJELASA NATURAL FANTASTIC ITU APA DULU ????/

A Poison Tree Summary

In the beginning of the poem, the speaker tells of his anger toward a friend and a foe and how each differed. Wit
h his friend, he expressed his anger and was relieved of it, but with his foe, he did not express it, which fed his f
ury.
Blakes speaker continues, describing how he emotionally nourished his wrath, or tree, until an apple grew from
it, which his enemy took although he knew it was his. In the end of the poem, the speaker has killed his oppone
nt, and he is not only unremorseful, but also happy and proud. Blake uses a confident and assertive tone, which
makes the speaker sound all-powerful and merciless, two ideas feared when combined
Symbolically, the speaker represents God, the foe and garden represent Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,
and the tree represents the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis. If this analogy is true, it shows God
rejoicing in killing his enemies, which most people think the God they know would never do.

A Poison Tree : Analysis

1st Stanza : He was mad at his friend so he told him why he was ma
d and his anger disappeared. When he was angry with his foe and h
e didn't say why he was angry he got more angry at himself.
2nd Stanza : His anecdote to cure his wrath or anger was tears. He
cried night and day morning and night. But he didn't want his foe t
hinking that anything was out of the norm so he sunned it with smil
es.
3rd Stanza: And it grew both day and night meaning that the fake s
miles continued until it became apparent to both of them what he
was doing. And my foe beheld its shine and he knew that it was min
e meaning that the foe looked right through his transparent and fak
e smiles.
4th Stanza : Reveals the end result of the foe sneaking into the spea
kers garden to take the apple from the poison tree. In the end, th
e apple, the fruit of speakers wrath, takes the life of the foe. The sp
eaker is victorious over the foe but at a high cost. Blake says that th
e speaker is glad to see the foe outstretched beneath the tree. T
hese last lines have a sense of unease. No matter what the anger-p
oisoned speaker may believe, this is not a victory.

The speaker, identifying himself as a child, asks a series of questions of a little lamb, and then
answers the questions for the lamb. He asks if the lamb knows who made it, who provides it fo
od to eat, or who gives it warm wool and a pleasant voice.
The speaker then tells the lamb that the one who made it is also called the Lamb and is the c
reator of both the lamb and the speaker. He goes on to explain that this Creator is meek and m
ild, and Himself became a little child. The speaker finishes by blessing the lamb in Gods nam
e.

The Lamb Summary

The Lamb : Analysis

The poem is a childs song, in the form of a question and answer. The first stanza
is rural and descriptive, while the second focuses on abstract spiritual matters and
contains explanation and analogy. The childs question is both naive and profoun
d. The question (who made thee?) is a simple one, and yet the child is also tappi
ng into the deep and timeless questions that all human beings have, about their o
wn origins and the nature of creation.

The poems apostrophic form contributes to the effect of naivet, since the situati
on of a child talking to an animal is a believable one, and not simply a literary cont
rivance. The answer is presented as a puzzle or riddle, and even though it is an ea
sy onechilds playthis also contributes to an underlying sense of ironic knowin
gness or artifice in the poem. The childs answer, however, reveals his confidence i
n his simple Christian faith and his innocent acceptance of its teachings.

The lamb of symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb underscore
s the Christian values of gentleness, meekness, and peace. The image of the child i
s also associated with Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special solicitude for ch
ildren, and the Bibles depiction of Jesus in his childhood shows him as guileless a
nd vulnerable. These are also the characteristics from which the child-speaker app
roaches the ideas of nature and of God. This poem, like many of the Songs of Inno
cence, accepts what Blake saw as the more positive aspects of conventional Christi
an belief.

Lines 5-6
Gave thee clothing of delight,

Line 1

Little lamb, who made thee?

The speaker addresses the lamb and asks, "Who made thee?"

The speaker is not someone who takes things as they are. He wants to know
where they come from. He sounds genuinely curious, but he also places hi
mself above the lamb by calling it "little."

Softest clothing, woolly, bright;

he next high-end fashion line. This clothing is advertised as "the softest" an

d "wooly bright."

The speaker repeats his question in a slightly different way. He's all about u
sing those old-sounding English words like "dost" and "thee."

Unlike in line 1, where the speaker seems curious, here he sounds like he k
nows the answer to the question "Who made thee?" and is quizzing the l
amb. We get the sense that we're going to learn the answer before too long.

The speaker doesn't seem to mind the redundancy of describing lamb's woo
l as "wooly." That's like calling someone's hair "hairy." Not too helpful.

Line 2

Does thou know who made thee,

The lamb has a creator who gave it "clothing of delight," which sounds like t

The wool looks "bright" because it gleams in the sun.

Lines 7-8
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?

Line 7 is the third in this stanza to begin with the word "Gave."

This is one lucky little lamb. As if its fancy clothing weren't enough, it also h
as a voice so "tender" that it makes the valleys happy as its baa-ing echoes t

Lines 3-4

Gave thee life, and bid thee feed

hrough them.

reply with the same joyful voice.

By the stream and o'er the mead;

These lines extend the question of "Who?"

The speaker wants to know who gave the lamb life and that voracious appet
ite for greenery that leads it to travel by streams and over meadows, or "me
ad."

In other words, the lamb didn't create its own desires and appetites. They c
ome from a higher power.

A "vale" is just a word for valley. When the lamb speaks, the valleys seem to

Lines 9-10
Little lamb, who made thee?
Does thou know who made thee?

These lines repeat word for word the first two lines of the poem. Everybody
sing along now.

Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is a declaration of the rights of women to equality of education and to civil
opportunities. The book-length essay, written in simple and direct language, was the first great feminist treatise. In it Wollstonecraft argu
es that true freedom necessitates equality of the sexes; claims that intellect, or reason, is superior to emotion, or passion; seeks to pers
uade women to acquire strength of mind and body; and aims to convince women that what had traditionally been regarded as soft, wo
manly virtues are synonymous with weakness. Wollstonecraft advocates education as the key for women to achieve a sense of self-re
spect and a new self-image that can enable them to live to their full capabilities. The work attacks Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean
Jacques Rousseau who, even while espousing the revolutionary notion that men should not have power over each other, denied women
the basic rights claimed for men. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman created an uproar upon its publication but was then largely ignor
ed until the latter part of the twentieth century. Today it is regarded as one of the foundational texts of liberal feminism.

a Vindication of the Right's of

Women : Overview

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a Vindication of the Right's of W

oman : Analysis

Key Concepts:

women are weaker than men but ought to be educated to be morally responsible in their
degree
women's current inferiority stems from faulty education
middle classes are the most natural state
women's artificial weakness leads to tyranny
women trained only to get husbands will make poor wives
neglected wife makes a good mother
current education of women makes them creatures of sensibility and not intellect.

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Media Connection

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13

Angrily, the speaker accuses the modern age of having lost its connection to nature and to everything meaningf
ul: Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: / Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our h
earts away, a sordid boon! He says that even when the sea bares her bosom to the moon and the winds howl,
humanity is still out of tune, and looks on uncaringly at the spectacle of the storm. The speaker wishes that he w
ere a pagan raised according to a different vision of the world, so that, standing on this pleasant lea, he might
see images of ancient gods rising from the waves, a sight that would cheer him greatly. He imagines Proteus ris
ing from the sea, and Triton blowing his wreathed horn.

The World Is Too Much With

Us : Summary

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The World Is Too Much With Us : A

nalysis

It's a sonnet; consists of 14 lines

The world is too much with us takes the form of a Petrarchan sonnet.
It is divided into two parts, an octave (the first eight lines of the poem) and a sestet
(the final six lines).
The rhyme scheme of this sonnet is somewhat variable; in this case, the octave follo
ws a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA,
and the sestet follows a rhyme scheme of CDCDCD.
In most Petrarchan sonnets, the octave proposes a question or an idea that the sest
et answers, comments upon, or criticizes.
On the whole, this sonnet offers an angry summation of the familiar Wordsworthian
theme of communion with nature, and states precisely how far the early nineteenth
century was from living out the Wordsworthian ideal

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References

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William Wordsworth (1770-185

0)
One of the poets in the romanticism era
He insisted that poetry should express deep f
eelings about everyday experiences; an art t
hat engages the heart more than the mind;
it should be spontaneous rather than calcul
ated, and emotional rather than witty
When he was 28 years old, his reputation as a le
ading young poet was established with the publi
cation of Lyrical Ballads, a collection that includ
ed his poem Lines Composed a Few Miles Abov
e Tintern Abbey and Coleridges The17Rime of th
e Ancient Mariner

 When he was 73 years old, he was named poet

laureate of England
His masterpiece The Prelude, a long autobiogra
phical poem, was published after his death

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My Heart Leaps Up
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old, 5
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety. 9
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Summary
The speaker is telling us about the feeling he get
s, has always gotten, and will always get when h
e sees a rainbow in the sky: his heart rejoices. H
e says that if he were ever to stop feeling this jo
y, he would want to die

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Analysis
Line 1:
- Shows us that the poem is going to be about so
mething that makes the speaker's heart leap u
p, presumably from joy
- Personification: from the word leap itself. The
heart has no legs (its impossible for it to literall
y leap on its own)
Line 2:
- We find out what makes the speaker's heart lea
p up: a rainbow
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- Ends with a colon: this means that what follows

 Line 3:
- The speaker has had this feeling about rainbow
s ever since his life began (it means since his chi
ldhood) -> creates a sense of time
Line 4:
- The speaker still gets excited by the sight of a ra
inbow, even as a mature adult
Line 5-6:
- The speaker is sure that when he grows old, he
will still be thrilled at the sight of a rainbow
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- He stated that if he ever lost this thrill, he would

- Or let me die! -> Whom is he talking to? Whom

ever he is addressing, they are not around in th
e poem. It also ends with an exclamation point > to emphasize
- For him, life without the capacity to appreciate
nature's beauty would not be worth living
Line 7:
- The Child is father of the Man; -> paradox (con
tradictory statement)
- The speaker has shown us how important it is t
23
hat something that thrilled him when he was yo

- The speaker treasures the fact that he still has a

childlike capacity for wonder
- The capitalization of the words "Child" and "Ma
n -> a way to draw attention to the general trut
h of the line (it is meant to have a wider meanin
g than just in the speaker's life)
Line 8-9:
- The speaker now expresses that he hopes nature
will tie his days together forever
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- The glue, or rope, between these days is "natur

al piety -> a religion that is natural, or not forc
ed (piety normally has a religious connotation).
Natural here can also means genuine or sincere
- These two lines sort of put the rest of the poem
in context. The rainbow, which thrills the speake
r throughout his life, is an example of a form of
natural piety, his sense of joy and wonder at the
natural world. That sense is what he hopes to e
xperience for the rest of his days, his time on ea
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rth