Responses to Emerson's Self-Reliance due today. Last grade for marking period.
Note: in class you will be handed out excerpts from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. This is 15 pages of reading for which you are responsible for Monday. If you loose your copy, it is posted on the Friday blog. There are 9 accompanying short responses that will be collected. Heads up. Writing response on Monday.
In class: we are looking at some American Romantic poets:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow- The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls
Oliver Wendell Holmes- The Chambered Nautilus
James Russell Lowell- Auspex
Emily Dickinson- Hope; There's a certain Slant of light; I never saw a Moor; Tell all the Truth; Much Madness
Below is a copy of the class handout. You are working in groups on these in class Thursday and Friday. If you are absent, you will be assigned one of the following for an individual written response.
New England Poets
The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveler to the shore.
And the tide rises, the tide falls
1. Identify the setting
2. What do the “little waves” do?
3. What happens in the thirds stanza?
4. What details of the setting in the first
stanza suggest that the traveler is nearing
death?
5. What does the poem suggest about the relationship between humanity and nature?
6. What is the effect of the refrain or repeated line?
7. How does the rhythm contribute to the meaning?
8. What do the details in lines 11-13 suggest about Longfellow’s attitude toward death?
THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sail the unshadowed main,--
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn;
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:--
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
1. What has happened to the nautilus the speaker is describing?
2. What did the nautilus do “as the spiral grew”?
3. What does the voice that rings ‘through the deep caves of thought” tell the speaker?
4. Each year throughout the course of its life, the nautilus creates a new chamber of shell to house its growing body. How does Holmes compare this process to the development of the human soul?
5. What is it about the chambered nautilus that makes it appropriate for Holmes’ message?
6. What can be learned from the life of the nautilus?
AUSPEX
by James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
(in ancient Rome, an auspex was someone who watched for omens in the flight of birds)
My heart, I cannot still it,
Nest that had song-birds in it;
And when the last shall go,
The dreary days to fill it,
Instead of lark or linnet,
Shall whirl dead leaves and snow.
Had they been swallows only,
Without the passion stronger
That skyward longs and sings,--
Woe's me, I shall be lonely
When I can feel no longer
The impatience of their wings!
A moment, sweet delusion,
Like birds the brown leaves hover;
But it will not be long
Before their wild confusion
Fall wavering down to cover
The poet and his song.
1. According to the first stanza, what will “ill” the speaker’s heart when the songbirds have gone?
2. According the second stanza. When will the speaker be lonely?
3. What is the “sweetest delusion” the speaker refers to in lines 11-14?
4. What will happen when the delusion ends?
5. In this poem, Lowell compares songbirds to the happiness that provides him with poetic inspiration. To what does he compare the emptiness following gh disappearance of his happiness?
6. What do the swallows (7) represent? How is this different than what the songbirds represent?
7. What does the image of the leaves falling and covering the poet represent?
8. What type event in Lowell’s life might have prompted him to write the poem?
Hope
by Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
1. According to the speaker, what “perches in the soul”? What type of tune does it sing? When does it stop singing?
2. Name two places where the speaker has heard the ‘little Bird”? What has the “little Bird” never done?
3. Throughout the poem Dickinson develops a comparison between hope and a “little Bird.” What is the effect of this comparison?
4. What qualities does the bird possess? What does this suggest about the characteristics of hope?
5. In what way do the final two lines suggest that hope is something that we cannot consciously control?
6. What does this poem suggest about the human ability to endure hardships?
There’s a certain slant of light
by Emily Dickinson
There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.
Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.
None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.
When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.
1. When does the “certain slant of light” come? What does it do? What does it give us?
2. What may none teach? What is “the Seal of Despair”?
3. What does the landscape do when the “slant of light’ comes? What do the shadows do?
4. What is the situation when the “slant of light goes”?
5. What mood does the “slant of light” create? What does it seem to represent to the speaker?
6. What is paradoxical, or self-contradictory, about Dickinson’s reference to “Heavenly Hurt”? How does this paradox suggest that suffering is precious as well as painful?
7. What does the third stanza suggest about the source of despair?
8. In the final stanza, Dickinson suggests that despair makes us more aware of our spiritual relationship to the natural world. What do the final two lines suggest about the connection between despair and our own mortality?
I never saw a moor
by Emily Dickinson
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.
1. What two things has the speaker never seen? What does she know in spite of never having seen them?
2. With whom has the speaker never spoken? Where has she never visited? Of what is she certain?
3. How might the speaker have acquired the knowledge she claims to possess in the first stanza? In what way is the knowledge presented in the second stanza different from that of the first stanza? How might she have acquired the knowledge in the second stanza?
4. Explain the difference between intuition and experience?
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
by Emily Dickinson
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Cirrcuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---
1. According to the speaker, what is “to bright for our infirm Delight”?
2. Why must the truth “dazzle gradually”?
3. What does Dickinson mean when she tells us to “to tell all the Truth but tell it slant”?
4. To what type of “Truth” do you think Dickinson is referring?
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