II MA- Unit 1

To the Cuckoo Summary by William Wordsworth

O Blithe New-comer! I have heard,

I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! Shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

Wordsworth welcomes the cuckoo bird with a sense of familiarity, as he says he has heard
him before. Calling the cuckoo a “blithe” new-comers alludes to the fact that the cuckoo is
free and is not subject to the restrictions of human life. The cuckoo is merry and free from all
worldly worries. The first stanza itself sets the tone for the rest of the poem as the poet makes
it clear that he is addressing the cuckoo. The cuckoo bird’s voice brings back joyous
memories to the poet and thus, he rejoices. The third and the fourth line of the poem are
suggestive of the idea that the poet has never actually seen the bird, and knows him only by
his voice. He expresses this when he asks the cuckoo whether he should call him a bird or his
identity will remain as that of a wandering voice. The third line can also be interpreted as
Wordsworth wonders whether calling the cuckoo a bird encompasses his sentiments, or if the
cuckoo extends beyond his realms of comprehension.

While I am lying on the grass

Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.

Wordsworth is lying on the grass when he hears the cuckoo’s call. The effect of echoing has
been spoken about in this stanza. The cuckoo’s voice echoes across hills and reaches the poet.
This gives the impression of the voice being once close, then again far off. The fact that the
poet is lying on the grass while hearing the cuckoo’s song gives the reader an idea of how
close and deeply attached to nature the poet is. The wandering cuckoo’s song is everywhere
and it submerges the entire milieu in its melody. The poet also reveals to the reader how he
discovers that the voice is that of a cuckoo. The twofold shout that he hears is something that
is exclusive to the cuckoo, hence the poet reaches his conclusion.

Though babbling only to the Vale,

Of Sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.
Despite singing to the valley, talking about sunshine and flowers, the cuckoo bird’s voice
brings back many memories to the poet. The cuckoo birds wanders about in the valley that is
brimming with flowers and sunshine, thus the bird’s songs too are an ode to these aspects of
nature. But, to Wordsworth these songs have a completely different relevance. They act as an
element of nostalgia, transporting the poet to days of his past. He calls those times “visionary
hours” as he cannot go back to them in person, and can only envision them from his memory.
This indicates that the poet remembers the cuckoo from his childhood, which is alluded to in
the first stanza when he says he has heard the cuckoo’s song before, and the cuckoo’s voice
now acts as a catalyst in bringing back the poet’s memories of his childhood.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!

Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;

The poet welcomes the cuckoo thrice, indicating his excitement and eagerness. The cuckoo is
addressed as the darling of the spring he arrives with the genesis of spring, singing about
valleys, flowers and other beauties of nature. This is where the poet clearly states that he has
never seen the cuckoo in reality. He recognises his by his voice. Thus, to the poet the cuckoo
is less of an actual living bird, and more of a mysterious voice whom he wants to see. The
bird has been visually hidden from the poet through all these years, yet his song strikes such
emotions in him that the poet remembers the cuckoo bird by his voice.

The same whom in my school-boy days

I listened to; that Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.

In this stanza the poet is transported to days of his childhood when he used to listen to the cry
of the cuckoo and go a thousand ways to place the source of the voice. He left no possible
place undiscovered, be it the bushes, the trees or the sky. The tone of the poet is overtly
nostalgic in these lines as he clearly expresses his unfulfilled desire to get a glimpse of the
origin of the voice that he remembers from his boyhood. So desperate was the poet to locate
the bird that he scourged all possible nooks and crannies in his endeavour to get visual
satisfaction. The cuckoo’s voice had fascinated the poet and fired his need to locate the bird
so that he could see for himself, the source of such melody.

To seek thee did I often rove

Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen.

Wordsworth addresses the bird, telling him how much finding him means to him. The poet
wandered constantly, looking for the bird in woods, anywhere and everywhere. This is an
indication of the poets dedication towards locating the source of the voice. Despite being
unsuccessful in the past, the poet hasn’t given up and says that he still hopes to find the bird.
Wordsworth has also confessed his love for the cuckoo bird. This is actually a good indicator
of the attachment he had with the cuckoo’s voice as the fact that he has never seen the bird
doesn’t deter him from loving the cuckoo. In the last line of the poem, the poet States that he
still yearns to find the word and see for himself that there is more to the cuckoo than just his
voice. The poet hasn’t lost hope yet and still wants to find his love.

And I can listen to thee yet;

Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

With this stanza, the poet again travels back to the present and says that he can still listen to
the cuckoo, lying on the ground and produce memories of his childhood. This stanza is in
actuality a whole sentence, and cannot be interpreted line wise. Wordsworth was a romantic
poet, and by labelling his childhood as the “golden time” he confines this to his romantic
genre of poetry. Like gold, he implies that his childhood was precious to him and that he
wants to relive the moments of his schoolboy days by lying down on the grass and listening
to the voice of the cuckoo. The poet is nostalgic and wants to conjure up memories of his
childhood by relying on the cuckoo’s cry.

O blessed Bird! the earth we pace

Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place;
That is fit home for Thee!

“Blessed” encompasses the poet’s love and devotion towards the cuckoo. Wordsworth calls
the earth “unsubstantial”, that is an unrealistic place of fairies. This could be because the
earth has mesmerising elements of nature, like the sky, woods, rivers, valleys, but at the same
time is plagued by restrictions of industrial life which curbs the freedom of an individual. A
place with such enchanting contradictions is place that is fit for the cuckoo. The use of the
term “again” alludes to the fact that with the arrival of the cuckoo, the earth takes on such a
guise. He poet could also be saying that the earth, that is so versatile, is the perfect dwelling
for the cuckoo as he too is full of contradictions. He stirs visions from the poet’s childhood
and makes him nostalgic, but is himself never to be seen.

The owl and the pussy cat

By Edward Lear

A reading of one of nonsense literature’s best-loved poems

‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ is probablyEdward Lear’s most famous poem, and a fine
example of Victorian nonsense verse. But can one really analyse nonsense literature, or
subject it to critical scrutiny? After all, the very name implies that it’s not supposed to make
‘sense’. Yet whenever a poem attains iconic status, it’s worth discussing how it has earned
that status.

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

II

Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!

How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?’
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-Tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

III

‘Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ was published in Lear’s 1871 collectionNonsense Songs, Stories,
Botany, and Alphabets. The poem, in summary, tells of the love between the owl and the
pussycat and their subsequent marriage, with the turkey presiding over the wedding. They
obtain the wedding ring from a pig, who sells them his for a shilling.

It’s well known that Lewis Carroll wroteAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland for the daughter
of a friend, Alice Liddell (or, more accurately, he told to Alice the story that later became the
book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland). But what is not so well known is that Edward Lear
wrote ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ for a friend’s daughter, Janet Symonds, who was born in
1865 and was three years old when Lear wrote the poem. Janet was the daughter of none
other than John Addington Symonds (1840-93), who, although married with children, was a
pioneering poet of male homosexual love and desire.

Talking of gender, which is male and which female out of the owl and the pussycat? Are they
both the same gender? Biographers have speculated over Edward Lear’s sexuality, after all.
But we actually have a firm answer, supplied by Lear himself: in the little-known sequel he
wrote to the poem, it is revealed that the owl is male and the pussycat female.

The word ‘runcible’ was a coinage of Edward Lear’s for this poem, and is up there with
Lewis Carroll’s coining of ‘chortled’ and ‘galumphing’ in his poem ‘Jabberwocky’. Yet
nobody is sure what ‘runcible’ actually means. (It’s defined by the Oxford English
Dictionary as simply ‘A nonsense word originally used by Edward Lear’.) Lear didn’t help
matters: as well as applying the word to a spoon, he went on to use ‘runcible’ to describe his
hat, a wall, and even his cat.

But this all still leaves us with the question: is ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ meant
to mean anything? Is it simply delightful fantasy (it features anthropomorphic animals, after
all: the owl and the pussycat can talk, the owl sings a song and plays the guitar, the
pig engages in financial transactions, and the turkey officiates at ceremonies), or is it making
a commentary on Victorian society? Many critics have interpreted the nonsense verse of both
Lear and Lewis Carroll in this way, seeing it as a partial subversion of Victorian norms and
mores, albeit with the status quo often being restored (we can see this in Lear’s limericks:
those who behave oddly and step outside of Victorian convention are often punished). Are
the owl and the pussycat eloping, hence the going to sea in a boat? Why do they pack up
moneywithin money? (‘They took … plenty of money, / Wrapped up in a five-pound note’.)
Is this because they are running away to be married? Should we read anything into the fact
that they have to sail the seas for a year and a day, travelling to the land of the Bong-Tree, in
order to get a ring? Are such questions even sensible to ask? The usual rules of literary
analysis don’t seem to apply with nonsense literature. We’re clearly in a fantasy world here,
and should perhaps simply enjoy the delicious use of language, rhyme, and imagery.

And the charming language and imagery of ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ continue to appeal to
readers, both young and old. In 1995, it was voted Britain’s 45th favourite poem, and in 2014
it was voted the nation’s favourite childhood poem.
 Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”: Summary & Analysis

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother’s countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist

Was battered on one knuckle;

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt,

Then waltzed me off to bed

Still clinging to your shirt.

In Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s waltz” the reader finds a horrid experience, the beating of
a child by his father, which is told in a way of a romantic and beautiful dance – the waltz. The
feeling one get from reading this poem is that the narrator, at least at the time in which the
poem is written, does not look at this experience as something bad.

He tries to beautify the experience by making it a waltz. He also, by means of images and

rhythm, shows the conflict between the readers, or the way any other ‘normal’ man will
look at this experience, and how he sees it, or wants it to be seen ( although he does not show
his father as completely innocent). It can also be looked upon as the Petty Herst syndrome –
meaning having a ‘reality’ so intense and strong that one feels incapable of any other
‘reality’, fearing it can and will be worse.
The poem is built of four stanzas (quatrain), each consisting of four lines. The rhyme scheme
is, in the first stanza – abab, in the second – cdcd, in the third – efef, and in the fourth – ghgh.
The meter is trecet iamb (stressed unstressed – three times per line).

The central image in the poem is the metaphor in which the beatings are described as a waltz.
The poet is led around the house, dancing – not beaten around. Which is also brought throu
by the meter – trecet iamb – the beat of the waltz, thus the main image is shown through the
meter as well, giving the reader more of the feeling of a dance in contrast to the ‘secondery
images’ which are more associated with the rough experience of a beating. Given such
parameters the poet installs some sort of relaxation in the reader (maybe even in himself), in
order to make the subject – the beating – more readable, and lessening the effect of the
drunkenness and the beatings, making his father more human. By this dance metaphor the
whole routine of the beating is messeged. The drunken father, his breath “Could make a small
boy dizzy”, yet the boy hangs “on like death”. The word death is important, usualy the word
death, in love poems, shows truthfullness and undesputable love, as in marriage one promises
to love to death, to never leave even if what is left is just a memory – as happens in this
poem. The boy will love his father to end; although, a great bitterness remains in the memory
– the drunkenness, failure (“every step you missed”), and the beating deriving from these
failure and drunkenness. For each failure ” My right ear scraped a buckle ” – The boy is
accused for his father’s failures. Another way in which the love to the father is shown is the
way in which the father is described, by which the poet shows his love to the father, and his
longing to him, is by calling him “Papa” – not father. This word is used, often, to fathers
which with one has a special relationship, a certain love. The title in itself is misleading,
reading “My Papa’s waltz” one will expect to find a poem about a father, good and loving,
dancing this gentle dance, not, in ones eye not the poet, a beating father, a monster. Together
with all these is the description of the father as poor man, one to be mercied. He is, as we
already seen, a failure, he is drunken, probably a lot, for his breath reeks with ” whiskey “, he
is dirty – his hands ” caked hard by dirt ” and are ” battered on one knucle” , all in all a poor
man that all will pity, someone who needs love.

In Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s waltz” the reader finds a horrid experience, the beating of
a child by his father, which is told in a way of a romantic and beautiful dance – the waltz. The
feeling one get from reading this poem is that the narrator, at least at the time in which the
poem is written, does not look at this experience as something bad.

He tries to beautify the experience by making it a waltz. He also, by means of images and
rhythm, shows the conflict between thereaders, or the way any other ‘normal’ man will look
at this experience, and how he sees it, or wants it to be seen ( although he does not show his
father as completely innocent). It can also be looked upon as the Petty Herst syndrome –
meaning having a ‘reality’ so intense and strong that one feels incapable of any other
‘reality’, fearing it can and will be worse.
The poem is built of four stanzas (quatrain), each consisting of four lines. The rhyme scheme
is, in the first stanza – abab, in the second – cdcd, in the third – efef, and in the fourth – ghgh.
The meter is trecet iamb (stressed unstressed – three times per line).
The central image in the poem is the metaphor in which the beatings are described as a waltz.
The poet is led around the house, dancing – not beaten around. Which is also brought through
by the meter – trecet iamb – the beat of the waltz, thus the main image is shown through the
meter as well, giving the reader more of the feeling of a dance in contrast to the ‘secondary
images’ which are more associated with the rough experience of a beating. Given such
parameters the poet installs some sort of relaxation in the reader (maybe even in himself), in
order to make the subject – the beating – more readable, and lessening the effect of the
drunkenness and the beatings, making his father more human. By this dance metaphor the
whole routine of the beating is messaged. The drunken father, his breath “Could make a small
boy dizzy”, yet the boy hangs “on like death”. The word death is important, usually the word
death, in love poems, shows truthfulness and undisputable love, as in marriage one promises
to love till death, to never leave even if what is left is just a memory – as happens in this
poem. The boy will love his father to end; although, a great bitterness remains in the memory
– the drunkenness, failure (“every step you missed”), and the beating deriving from these
failure and drunkenness. For each failure ” My right ear scraped a buckle ” – The boy is
accused for his father’s failures. Another way in which the love to the father is shown is the
way in which the father is described, by which the poet shows his love to the father, and his
longing to him, is by calling him “Papa” – not father. This word is used, often, to fathers
which with one has a special relationship, a certain love. The title in itself is misleading,
reading “My Papa’s waltz” one will expect to find a poem about a father, good and loving,
dancing this gentle dance, not, in ones eye not the poet, a beating father, a monster. Together
with all these is the description of the father as poor man, one to be pardoned. He is, as we
already seen, a failure, he is drunken, probably a lot, for his breath reeks with ” whiskey “, he
is dirty – his hands ” caked hard by dirt ” and are ” battered on one knuckle” , all in all a poor
man that all will pity, someone who needs love.

In spite of these showings of his father as a person that he loved, and still does, the poet uses
the ‘secondary images’ – the images outside the main image – to show that the brutality
existed. He does not lessen the impact of these beatings or their brutality. The beatings was so
hard that the “pans \ Slid from the kitchen shelf “, the beatings were hard on the poet – ” Such
waltzing was not easy ” – and also made a change in the boys point of life. The poet tells that
the father beats ” time on my head “, meaning the beatings made his childhood go away, time
ran faster for him, beating him as his father did, as if making him mature faster than others,
but he does not accuse his father of that. One accusing finger does rise, and that is toward the
mother, who “Could not unfrown ” her ” countenance “, as if the poet’s mother does not react
in order to maintain this or that frown that will leave her ‘undignified’, as if stopping his
father from beating him is not of her duties – putting the blame away from his father.

Another explanation, farfetched as it may sound, is that of the Petty Herst syndrome. The
meaning of this syndrome is that one may enter into a state of life, a ‘reality’, that no matter
how brutal or harsh it may be, once it is in his mind as an absolute reality, this reality will
look as the most suitable reality, escape is not needed, and even when the person leaves this
reality it will still, in retrospective, be the best situation he was ever been. It is possible that
the narrator in this poem is ‘afflicted’ by this syndrome. He defends his father because to him
it seems that this is the reality he should be in. He describes the beatings as a waltz because
he sees it as such.
 Although the poem is narrated retrospectively, from a grown up man point of view,
something remains, the poet does not hate his father for the beating, on the contrary, he
shows us that the love to his father is not, and never was lost. And twice during the poem – he
talks about ” But I hung on ” in the first stanza, and ” Still clinging to your shirt.” in the
fourth stanza, which gives the feeling that he loved and stayed with his father during his
childhood, and that he does that even now when his childhood is no longer with him.

The Toys BY COVENTRY PATMORE

My little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes

And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,
I struck him, and dismiss'd
With hard words and unkiss'd,
His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I pray'd
To God, I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
"I will be sorry for their childishness."

Patmore occupies a minor but conspicuous place in Victorian literature as the poet of both
married and mystical love. He was a British poet and articles writer who had a deep
concern for religion. Through his poems, he reacted to the spiritual degeneration of his
times. The chief source of his reputation as the laureate of wedded devotion is The Angel
in the House (1858), his two-volume tribute to middle-class courtship and marriage. This
work, which was immensely popular among Patmore's contemporaries, has come to be
valued by modern critics primarily as the domestic precursor to The Unknown
Eros (1877), a series of odes in which Patmore employs conjugal love to symbolize the
mystical attraction between the soul and God. As the subject of The Unknown
Erossuggests, Patmore was a highly individualistic thinker whose ideas on love, religion,
and social themes frequently set him apart from the mainstream of nineteenth-century
thought. Nevertheless, as a convert to Catholicism he partook in its great nineteenth-
century revival in England and is therefore frequently mentioned in connection with
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Francis Thompson, and other prominent Catholic poets.

Patmore's best-known poetic work,The Angel in the House, was originally published in
two separate volumes:The Betrothal (1854) and The Espousals (1856), highly detailed
narrative accounts of the courtship and marriage of the fictional lovers Felix Vaughan and
 Honoria Churchill.. The idyll Amelia (1878) is regarded as Patmore's last significant
original verse work.

With the publication of The Unknown Eros,critics began to regard him as a visionary poet
capable of creating bold, unconventional verse, yet they also denounced him as a wrong-
headed reactionary in his approach to political, religious, and social issues.
His poem Toys gives a graphic picture of the sorrows of childhood and the fatherly relationship
of God to man.
The poet's motherless child spoke and behaved like grown-up people, which the poet
disliked. For disobeying him for the seventh time, the poet beat him and sent him to bed without
the usual kisses. He ought to have been more tolerant towards the motherless child. Fearing
grief should hinder the child's sleep, he visited his bed to find him in deep slumber. His
darkened eyelids and wet eye lashes were proof that he had been sobbing for a long time. The
poet felt remorse for his act of unkindness. He kissed away his son's tears while he himself
wept, for he could see what gave comfort to the child in his grief, in his place. They were his
toys arranged neatly on a table beside his bed. They were simple but enough to comfort him- a
box of counters, a red-veined stone, a piece of glass abraded by the beach, six or seven shells,
a bottle with blue bells and two French copper coins. True, it is everyone's childhood. One will
wonder why the modern so-called poets can't create poetry of such pure emotions.
Just as the poet punishes the child for some puny misdoings, God can certainly punish
the poet for his multitude of wrongs but He does not do it. He forgives instead. That is the
fatherly goodness of God to man. Once he has wept as a child, God's tenderness and kindness
is dawns on his mind. The poet repents that he had never been as good a father to his child as
God has been to him. Man has been moulded by God from the clay, even then he has not
understood the goodness of God. When man at last lies with tranced breath in his death bed not
troubling God anymore, He still does not wish to punish him. Such good is God. So when that
night the poet wept and prayed, he prayed God to leave aside His anger and forgive him for his
childishness.

Questions

1. How does Wordsworth rebel at cuckoo’s memories.

2. Why does Wordsworth praise the cuckoo

3. Explain how ‘my papas waltz’ is a controversial title

4. Justify ‘the owl and the Pussy cat” as a poem of Non-sensical literature

5. Discuss Coventry Patmore as a mystical poet.