ID Passages Flashcards
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away;
Agayne I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.
“Vayne man,” said she, “that doest in vaine assay,
A mortall thing so to immportalize,
For I my selve shall lyke to this decay,
And eek my name bee wyped out lykewize.”
“Not so,” quod I “let based things devize
To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues are rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens wryte your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdew
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
Title: Amoretti
Author: Edmund Spenser
Significance:
- demonstrates how renaissance poetry liked to play in to the ideas of time
- the ravishes of time and death will come for us all
- although the beloved may pass on or get old and their beauty may fade, the poem can crystalize as she is in this moment forever
Themes:
- time
- beauty
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay;
And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Biting my truant pent, beating myself for spite,
“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart and write.”
Title: Astrophil and Stella
Author: Sir Philip Sidney
Significance:
- quatrain one: establishes love as the subject of the poem / sonnet sequence; love poems are often false but this is true!
- quatrain two: poetry will persuade the lady to love me!
- quatrain three: positions the poem in reference to other sonnets and other poetic traditions in order to demonstrate how he will win her affection
Theme:
- love
- persuasion
Not at first sight, nor with a dribbed shot, [ineffectual, at random]
Love gave the wound, which while I breathe will bleed,
But known worth did in mine of time proceed,
Till by degrees it had full conquest got.
I saw, and liked; I liked, but loved not;
I loved, but straight did not what Love decreed;
At length to Love’s decrees I, forced, agreed,
Yet with repining at so partial lot.
Now even that footstep of lost liberty
Is gone, and now like slave-born Muscovite
I call it praise to suffer tyranny;
And now employ the remnant of my wit
To make myself believe that all is well,
While with a feeling skill I paint my hell.
Title: Astrophil and Stella
Author: Sir Philip Sidney
Significance:
- he didn’t fall in love right away but he, like the lady, had to be persuaded
- poem describing how he falls in love
Theme:
- love
O joy, too high for my low style to show,
O bliss, fit for a nobler state then me!
Envy, put out thine eyes, least thou do see
What oceans of delight in me do flow.
My friend, that oft saw through all masks my woe,
Come, come, and let me pour myself on thee:
Gone is the winter of my misery;
My spring appears, O see what here doth grow.
For Stella hath, with words where faith doth shine,
Of her high heart given me the monarch:
I, I O I may say, that she is mine.
And though she give but this conditionly
This realm of bliss, while virtuous course I take,
No kings be crowned but they some covenants make.
Title: Astrophil and Stella
Author: Sir Philip Sidney
Significance:
- he is saying that she finally has admitted she loves him, but their love can only be platonic
- in her admitting she loves him, he regains control over her
Theme:
- love
- male control (gender)
When Sorrow (using mine own fire’s might)
Melts down his lead into my boiling breast,
Through that dark furnace to my heart oppressed,
There shines a joy from thee my only light;
But soon as thought of thee breeds my delight,
And my young soul flutters to thee, his nest,
My most rude Despair, my daily unbidden guest,
Clips straight my wings, straight wraps me in his night,
And makes me then bow down my head, and say,
“Ah what does Phoebus’ gold that wretch avail,
Whom iron doors do keep from us of day?”
So strangely (alas) thy works in me prevail,
That in my woes for thee thou art my joy,
And in my joys for thee my only annoy.
Title: Astrophil and Stella
Author: Sir Philip Sidney
Significance:
- portrays the speaker as sort of a masochist
- love is his torture but so does his joy
- basically is saying this is good that she keeps rejecting him, it gave him something to write about
Theme:
- love
- muses
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heigh might bear his memory;
But thou, contracted to thin own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy lights flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundances lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
Title: Sonnet 1
Author: William Shakespeare
Significance:
- plays on the petrarchan theme of morality
- rejects TOO much chastity
- removes erotic components of sex and looks at it from a purely reproductive (to carry on beauty) sort of way
- compares immortality through poetry to immortality through procreation
Themes:
- time / morality
- living on through someone’s poetry
A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gently heart but not acquainted
With shifting change as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.
Title: Sonnet 20
Author: William Shakespeare
Significance:
- possibly a play on convention; what if beauty was used to describe a woman rather than a man?
- could also be misogynistic; “you’re like a woman but better because you lack their negative traits”
Theme:
- love
- GAAAAAAAAAAY
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
Music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks, on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Title: Sonnet 130
Author: William Shakespeare
Significance:
- embodies an anti-blazon
- raises the question should love poetry and art be required to be truthful entirely or is it okay to be slightly hyperbolic?
Theme:
- love
- truth (and art?)
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour prentices
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no seasons knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days months, which are the rags of time.
Title: The Sun Rising
Author: John Donne
Significance:
- exemplification of an aubade
- introduces the idea of “why should the sun control the temporality of lovers?”
- speaker is boasting like he can control the sun and tell it what to do while simultaneously saying love cannot be controlled by any markers of time
Theme:
- time / temporality
- love
She’s all states, and I all princes I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus.
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.
Title: The Sun Rising
Author: John Donne
Significance:
- reflective of England as a colonizing power at the time (he claims to rule over the female)
- seemingly beautiful by saying they only need to be with one another to be complete (but then it’s also bad because he could be saying if I shut out the world I only need her to rule)
Theme:
- love
- control (gender)
- historical context
For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his honor, or his grace,
Or the king’s real, or his stamped face
Contemplate; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.
Title: The Canonization
Author: John Donne
Significance:
- mocks the idea that love can be disastrous by basically saying “we haven’t done anything and the world will continue to go on without us”
- sort of weird to start something religious by taking the lords name in vain
Theme:
- love
Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us: we two being one, are it.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.
Title: The Canonization
Author: John Donne
Significance:
- exemplification of a metaphysical conceit
- in order to become a saint (as the title says) you need some sort of miracle and this could be their miracle
- they achieve perfect union and resurrection of sorts (SEX)
Theme:
- love
- resurrection / fall
- metaphysical poetry
Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more
Till he became
Most poor:
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
My tender age in sorrow did begin:
And still with sicknesses and shame
Thou didst so punish sin
That I became
Most thin.
With thee
Let me combine,
And feel this day thy victory:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.
Title: Easter Wings
Author: George Herbert
Significance:
- poem about fall and resurrection (how you need to fall in order to resurrect)
- the fall may be bad but the consequences will be good because you can redeem yourself
- pattern poem! (implies an order and stability in falls and resurrections as a way to make sense of the bad that happens and why)
Theme:
- resurrection / fall
- theodicy
Who says that fictions only nad false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
May no lines pass, except they do their duty
Not to a true, but painted chair?
Is it no verse, except enchanted groves
And sudden arbors shadow coarse-spun lines?
Must purling streams refresh a lovers loves?
Must all be veiled, while he that reads, divines,
Catching the sense at two removes?
Shepherds are honest people: let them sing:
Riddle who list, for me, and pull for prime:
I envy no man’s nightingale or spring;
Nor let them punish me with loss of rhyme,
Who plainly say, My God, My king.
Title: Jordan
Author: George Herbert
Significance:
- historical context reflection: lines in front of a throne and in a poem
- during the time this was written there was lots of control over what could and couldn’t be published (only could be published if they paid proper homage to the king)
Third quatrain:
- pastoral
- the chair from previous stanzas become a pale copy of God’s throne in Heaven
- call for honesty in poems (the only way to speak truth to power and to get these lines passed through censors is to conceal their truth)
Theme:
- truth (what is its role in art/beauty?)
- pastoral
How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their uncessant labours see Crowned from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow-verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all flower and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose!
Title: The Garden
Author: Marvell
Significance:
- humans should strive for rewards from nature and not the things they create for themselves such as the palm, oak, or bays (i.e. the military, civic or poetic rewards)
Theme:
- ambition
- man and the natural world
What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find, Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas, Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade.
Title: The Garden
Author: Marvell
Significance:
First Quatrain:
- highlighting the Edenic qualities (fruit in abundance)
- is the fall meant to mimic a more metaphorical fall like Adam and Eve?
Second Quatrain:
- why green? (green in previous stanza was the color of desire)
Theme:
- desire
- resurrection / fall
Such was that happy garden-state, While man there walked without a mate; After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet be meet! But ‘twas beyond a mortal’s share To wander solitary there: Two paradises ‘twere in one To live in paradise alone.
Title: The Garden
Author: Marvell
Significance:
- man = Adam before Eve
- blames Eve for the fall not the apple
Theme:
- misogyny
- resurrection / fall
Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the heav’ns and earth
Rose out of Chaos: or of Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’Aonian mount, white it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
Title: Paradise Lost
Author: Milton
Significance:
- the invocation
- written in blank verse
- claim to originality in poetry; (but he borrows lines from Italian poetry and poetic conventions)
- how does one write original poetry?
Theme:
- sin
- resurrection / fall
- muses
And chiefly thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Title: Paradise Lost
Author: Milton
Significance:
- humility; “I don’t know what happened so you muse have to tell me so I can tell this story”
- self conscious recognition of Milton’s blindness?
Theme:
- disability studies
- humility
- muses
