TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 1 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

AN ANTHOLOGY OF LYRIC POETRY

(Elegy - Ode - Sonnet - Dramatic

Monologue)

Ode Example 1. “Ode on Solitude”

by Alexander Pope

Happy the man, whose wish and care

   A few paternal acres bound,
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 2 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

Content to breathe his native air,

                            In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

   Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
                            In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find

   Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
                            Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,

   Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please,
                            With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

   Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
                            Tell where I lie.

Ode Example 2. “Ode to Autumn”

By John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 3 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Poetry Cafe

Ode Example 3. “Ode to Dirt” by Sharon Olds offers a nature poem at its core, with lovely and
thought-provoking metaphors, by the time one is finished reading it, reflection turns to deeper
issues such as the equality of humans despite their differences and the never-ending circle of life.

Ode Example 4. “Ode to Beauty” by Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks of beauty as a tough tyrant or
controller, and as something light and sweet that fills the air with happiness and pleasure.

Ode Example 5. “Ode to Winter” by Thomas Campbell describes Winter as howling and barren
and pleads Winter to stop ruining the year and tearing apart the nature around him.
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 4 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

Ode Example 6. “Ode to Spring” by Thomas Gray talks about the spring season, and praises its
beauty, expressing lofty and noble sentiments about it.

Elegy Example 1. “Elegy for my husband”

By Toi Derricotte

What was there is no longer there:

Not the blood running its wires of flame through the whole length
Not the memories, the texts written in the language of the flat hills
No, not the memories, the porch swing and the father crying
The genteel and elegant aunt bleeding out on the highway
(Too black for the white ambulance to pick up)
Who had sent back lacquered plates from China
Who had given away her best ivory comb that one time she was angry
Not the muscles, the ones the white girls longed to touch
But must not (for your mother warned
You would be lynched in that all-white Ohio town you grew up in)
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 5 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

Not that same town where you were the only, the one good black boy
All that is gone
Not the muscles running, the baseball flying into your mitt
Not the hand that laid itself over my heart and saved me
Not the eyes that held the long gold tunnel I believed in
Not the restrained hand in love and in anger
Not the holding back
Not the taut holding

Copyright © 2012 by Toi Derricotte. Used with permission of the author.

Elegy Example 2. “O Captain! My Captain!”

by Walt Whitman

I.
O CAPTAIN! my captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red!
Where on the deck my captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

II.
O captain! my captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills
For you bouquets and wreaths for you the shores a-crowding;
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 6 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.
O Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

III.
My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.
The ship is safe and sound, its voyage closed and done:
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won!
Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells!
But I, with silent tread,
Walk the spot my captain lies
Fallen cold and dead.

Poetry Cafe

Elegy Example 3."Fugue of Death.” by Paul Celan describes the emotions of a person
stricken by a deep, biting loss not for one person, but for all the people lost in the Holocaust.

Elegy Example 4. “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray was written
to honor the death of his friend and fellow poet, Richard West.

Elegy Example 5. “To an Athlete, Dying Young,” by Alfred Edward Houseman,” is an

elegy that, at the same time, asks its reader to contemplate how much we value fame and
glory.

Elegy Example 6. "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" by Emily Dickinson tells the
story of how she was visited by "Death"—personified as a "kindly" gentleman—and taken
for a ride in his carriage.
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 7 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

Sonnet Example 1. ”Sonnet to Twilight”

By Helen Maria Williams

    MEEK Twilight! soften the declining day,

And bring the hour my pensive spirit loves;
    When o'er the mountain slow descends the ray
That gives to silence and to night the groves.
    Ah, let the happy court the morning still,
When, in her blooming loveliness arrayed,
    She bids fresh beauty light the vale or hill,
And rapture warble in the vocal shade.
    Sweet is the odour of the morning's flower,
And rich in melody her accents rise;
    Yet dearer to my soul the shadowy hour
At which her blossoms close, her music dies:
    For then, while languid Nature droops her head,
    She wakes the tear 'tis luxury to shed.

From British Women Romantic Poets

 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 8 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

Sonnet Example 2. “My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun”
(Sonnet 130)
by William Shakespeare

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 damasked, 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
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
     As any she belied with false compare.

Poetry Cafe

Sonnet Example 3. Elizabethan and 17th Century Sonnets

“Death, be not proud” (Holy Sonnet 10) by John Donne argues that death is not permanent
and it serves as an eternal pathway to life hereafter.

Sonnet Example 4. Romantic Poets

”Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” by William Wordsworth
features a speaker looking at London just as the sun rises. In the still of the morning, the city
sleeps, and the wonders of nature are temporarily highlighted.

Sonnet Example 5. 20th Century American Poets

“The Facebook Sonnet” by Sherman Alexie questions the value of social media.

Sonnet Example 6. British Victorian and 19th Century American Poets

“I thought I was quite happy yesterday” by Louisa Sarah Bevington
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 9 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

Dramatic Monologue Example 1. “Lady Lazarus”

by Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.

One year in every ten
I manage it——
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
my enemy.
Do I terrify?——
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 10 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.
It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 11 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Dramatic Monologue Example 2. “Killing Floor”

By Ai

1. RUSSIA, 1927

On the day the sienna-skinned man

held my shoulders between his spade-shaped hands,
easing me down into the azure water of Jordan,
I woke ninety-three million miles from myself,
Lev Davidovich Bronstein,
shoulder-deep in the Volga,
while the cheap dye of my black silk shirt darkened the water.

My head wet, water caught in my lashes.   

Am I blind?
I rub my eyes, then wade back to shore,   
undress and lie down,
until Stalin comes from his place beneath the birch tree.
He folds my clothes
and I button myself in my marmot coat,
and together we start the long walk back to Moscow.
He doesn’t ask, what did you see in the river?,
but I hear the hosts of a man drowning in water and holiness,   
the castrati voices I can’t recognize,
skating on knives, from trees, from air
on the thin ice of my last night in Russia.   
Leon Trotsky. Bread.
I want to scream, but silence holds my tongue   
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 12 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

with small spade-shaped hands

and only this comes, so quietly
Stalin has to press his ear to my mouth:   
I have only myself. Put me on the train.   
I won’t look back.

2. MEXICO, 1940

At noon today, I woke from a nightmare:   

my friend Jacques ran toward me with an ax,   
as I stepped from the train in Alma-Ata.
He was dressed in yellow satin pants and shirt.   
A marigold in winter.

When I held out my arms to embrace him,   

he raised the ax and struck me at the neck,   
my head fell to one side, hanging only by skin.   
A river of sighs poured from the cut.

3. MEXICO, August 20, 1940

The machine-gun bullets

hit my wife in the legs,
then zigzagged up her body.
I took the shears, cut open her gown   
and lay on top of her for hours.   
Blood soaked through my clothes   
and when I tried to rise, I couldn’t.

I wake then. Another nightmare.

I rise from my desk, walk to the bedroom   
and sit down at my wife’s mirrored vanity.   
I rouge my cheeks and lips,
stare at my bone-white, speckled egg of a face:   
lined and empty.
I lean forward and see Jacques’s reflection.
I half-turn, smile, then turn back to the mirror.
He moves from the doorway,   
lifts the pickax
and strikes the top of my head.   
My brain splits.
The pickax keeps going
and when it hits the tile floor,   
it flies from his hands,
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 13 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

a black dove on whose back I ride,   

two men, one cursing,
the other blessing all things:   
Lev Davidovich Bronstein,
I step from Jordan without you.

Ai, "Killing Floor" from Vice: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1979 by Ai. Reprinted with the permission of W.
W. Norton & Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Source: Vice: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1999)

Poetry Cafe

Dramatic Monologue Example 3. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot

highlights the thoughts of a modern young man who is madly in love but still hesitates from
expressing it.

Dramatic Monologue Example 4. “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning presents the
monologue of a Duke telling his audience, possibly the father of his new bride, about his
last duchess who could not survive his severity.

Dramatic Monologue Example 5.  “Hawk’s Roosting” by Ted Hughes presents a

psychological state of mind of personified megalomaniac bird how he thinks when he holds
power over the lives of other weak birds.

Dramatic Monologue Example 6. “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,
On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798” by William Wordsworth
looks back on the past five years that have gone by since his first visit to the place, and
remembers how much the memory of this scene meant to him when he was cooped up in the
city.
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 14 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

Poetry Explication Activity

1. Work in groups of 6. Each group will be assigned two exemplar texts representative of one
type of lyric poetry:

G1 - Elegy
G2 - Ode
G3 - Sonnet
G4 - Dramatic Monologue

2. Research on the features of type of lyric poem assigned and complete Column 2.

3. Use the information in Column 2 and look for the Poetry Explication Sheet below:

Features Poetic Form: Title of Poem 1: Title of Poem 2:

__________________ __________________ __________________
____ ____ ____

Who is the speaker? Is

it possible to determine
the speaker’s age, sex,
sensibilities, level of
awareness and values?
Which point of view is
used? 1st person?

Is the speaker
addressing anyone in
particular?
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 15 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

What is the function of

this lyric type of
poetry?

Is there a specific
setting of time and
place?

Is there any
biographical, cultural
or historical
information about the
poem or the poet that
you think is
important to the poem?
Can you explain how
this is important?

What does the title

emphasize?

Is the theme presented

directly or indirectly?
 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 16 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

Does the poem’s form

- its overall structure -
follow an established
pattern? How many
lines are there? How
are the lines organised
into stanza(s)? Do you
think the form is a
suitable vehicle for the
poem’s meaning?

Does it rhyme? If so,

what’s the rhyme
scheme?

What sounds are

repeated? If there are
rhymes, what is their
effect? Do they seem
forced or natural? Is
there a rhyme scheme?
Do the rhymes
contribute to the
poem’s meaning?

Does the poem use

onomatopoeia,
assonance,
consonance, or
alliteration? How do
these sounds affect
you?

Are figures of speech

 TSLB3123 Literature in English Page 17 of 17

Topic 3 Forms of Poetry and Critical Analyses

used? How does the

figurative language
contribute to the
poem’s vividness and
meaning? Simile,
Metaphor,
Personification
Imagery (Taste,
Touch, Sight, Sound,
Smell)

What is the tone of the

poem – what emotion
does the speaker use as
he/she talks? Is the
tone consistent?

Others

Write a short analysis

of the poem using any
one literary criticism
theory where
applicable.