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ANALYSIS OF POETRY
extracted from the BA1 reader 2016-17

What Is Poetry?
‘The wish of interpreters of poems to arrive at something they call “meaning” seems to me
misguided. However important “meaning” may be to a theological hermeneutic practice eager to
convey accurately the Word of God, it cannot have that importance in lyric. Lyric poetry, especially
highly conventionalized lyric [...] has almost no significant freight of “meaning” at all, in our
ordinary sense of the word. “I have insomnia because I am far away from you” is the gist of one
[poem]; “even though Nature wishes to prolong your life, Time will eventually demand that she
render you to death” is the “meaning” of another. These are not taxing or original ideas, any more
than other lyric “meanings” (“My love is like a rose,” “London in the quiet of dawn is as beautiful
as any rural scene,” etc.). Very few lyrics offer the sort of philosophical depth that stimulates
meaning-seekers in long, complex, and self-contradicting texts like Shakespeare’s plays or
Dostoyevsky’s novels.’
(Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1997), p. 13)

‘Poetry is speech framed for contemplation of the mind by way of hearing or speech framed to be
heard for its own sake and interest even over and above its interest of meaning. Some matter and
meaning is essential to it but only as an element necessary to support and employ the shape which is
contemplated for its own sake.’
(Gerard Manly Hopkins, in his Notebooks, 1874, quoted in W. E. Houghton and G. R. Stange, eds.
Victorian Poetry and Poetics, 2nd ed. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1968), p. 663)

‘Part of our pleasure of poetry lies in its relationship to music. It awakens in us a fundamental
response to rhythmic repetitions of various kinds. Learning to read poetry is partly a matter of
learning to respond to subtle and delicate rhythmic patterns as well as the most obvious and
persistent ones. But poetry is not just a kind of music. It is a special combination of musical and
linguistic qualities—of sounds regarded both as pure sound and as meaningful speech. In particular,
poetry is expressive language.’
(Robert Scholes, Elements of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 2-3)

Genres of poetry:

narrative poetry
• epic
• mock-epic
• ballad

lyric poetry
• elegy
• ode
• hymn
• aubade
• epithalamion
• dramatic monologue
• sonnet
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Rhythm and Meter

Principal metrical systems:

quantitative meter: verse in which the pattern is a sequence of long and short syllables (e.g. Greek
and Latin poetry)
syllabic meter: verse in which the lines are measured according to the number of syllables they
contain (e.g. French poetry)
accentual meter: verse in which the lines are measured according to the number of stressed
syllables they contain (e.g. Old English poetry)
accentual-syllabic meter: verse in which the lines are measured according to the number of stressed
syllables where these stressed syllables are arranged within the lines within a fixed total number
of syllables (English poetry)
English being a stress-timed language, the rhythm of English verse, unlike that of French verse, is
based on the regular recurrence of stresses and on the contrast between stressed and unstressed
syllables. The unit of rhythm is called the foot. A foot normally comprises one stressed syllable ( / )
and a variable number of unstressed syllables ( x ). The regular rhythmic pattern is called the base
of the poem. All departures from the rhythm of the base are called modulations. To scan a poem is
to analyse its lines by determining the nature and number of its feet. The most important feet are:

the iambus (or iamb) ai’æmbəәs (ai’æm) x/ about / unite / insist

x / x / x / x / x /
Iam | bic me | ter runs | along | like this

the trochee ‘trəәuki: /x Peter / unit / instant

/ x / x / x / x
Trochees | simply | tumble | on and
/ x / x / x / x
Start with | downbeats | just like | this one.

the dactyl ‘dæktil /xx Washington/ Ecuador

/ x x / x x / x x / x x / x x / /
‘Dactyl’ means | ‘finger’ in | Greek, and a | foot that was | made up of | one long
/ x x / x x / x x / x x / x x / x
Syllable | followed by | two, like the | joints in a | finger was | used for
/ x x / x x / x x / x x / x x / x
Lines made of | six, just like | these, in the | epics of | Homer and | Virgil,
/ x x / x x / x x / x x / x x / /
Save that in | English we | substitute | downbeats and | upbeats for | long-short.

the anapest ‘ænəәpest xx/ Cameroon / intercede

x x / x x / x x / x x /
In an an | apest up | beats start out | in reverse
x x / x x / x x / x x /
Of the dac | tyl’s persua | sion but end | up no worse.
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the spondee ‘spondi: // heartbreak / headline

the pyrrhic ‘pirik xx

Some of the above examples have been drawn from John Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to
English Verse (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

Lines of Poetry
A line of poetry contains one or more feet; typical lines are:
the monometer (one foot)
the dimeter (two feet)
the trimeter (three feet)
the tetrameter (four feet)
the pentameter (five feet)
the hexameter (six feet)
Much English poetry (and drama) is written in iambs. Here is a regular iambic pentameter:
The cur- | few tolls | the knell | of par- | ting day
(Thomas Gray, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’)
Was this | the face | that launched | a thou- | sand ships
(Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus)
Few lines are absolutely regular since they tend to be boring. Here is Samuel Johnson’s parodic
poem with four entirely regular iambic lines, alternating tetrameters and trimeters:
I put | my hat | upon | my head
And walked | into | the Strand,
And there | I met | ano- | ther man
Whose hat | was in | his hand.
Often, a line departs slightly from the basic metrical pattern. A common modulation is achieved by
an initial trochee (called a trochaic inversion):
Guided | by faith | and match- | less for- | titude
(Milton, ‘To the Lord General Cromwell, May 1652’)
Better | to reign | in hell | than serve | in heav’n
(Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I)
A trochaic inversion in the middle of the line (typically after the caesura) is also common:
I am | not I; | pity | the tale | of me.
(Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 45)
Here’s an example of a spondee in the third foot:
As yet | but knock, | breathe, shine | and seek | to mend
(John Donne, Holy Sonnet 14)
In the following line, the second and the fourth feet are pyrrhic:
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My way | is to | begin | with the | beginning.

(Lord Byron, Don Juan)
A line with a feminine ending has an extra unstressed syllable at the end:
A thing | of beau- | ty is | a joy | for ever
(John Keats, Endymion)
Some lines are altogether more irregular:
x x / x /x / / x /
And the | ague | being | spent give | o’er care
(John Donne, An Anatomy of the World)

Sound, Rhyme, Stanzas

Rhyme and Sound: A Few Examples

Masculine rhyme: ‘tree’/‘bee’

Feminine rhyme: ‘bending’/‘ending’

Assonance: ‘On purpose laid to make the taker mad’ (Shakespeare, Sonnet 129)
‘Rend with tremendous Sound your ears asunder,
With Gun, Drum, Trumpet, Blunderbuss and Thunder’
Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace, Epistle II.i)

Consonance: ‘live/love’, ‘lean/alone’

Alliteration: ‘Then shall the fall further the flight in me’

(George Herbert, ‘Easter Wings’)

Imperfect / near / ‘justice’ / ‘hostess’ (Jonathan Swift); ‘port’ / ‘chart’ (Emily Dickinson);
/ slant / half rhyme ‘grope’ / ‘cup’; ‘drunkard’ / ‘conquered’

Rich rhyme: ‘knew’ – ‘new’; ‘foul’ – ‘fowl’

Eye rhyme: ‘rough’/‘cough’/‘through’/‘though’/‘plough’; ‘love’/‘move’

Internal rhyme: ‘As he takes from you, I engraft you new’ (Shakespeare, Sonnet 15)

Stanza Forms: A Few Examples

Heroic couplet:
’Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill,
But, of the two, less dang’rous is th’offence,
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense:
Some few in that, but numbers err in this,
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;
(from Alexander Pope (1688-1744), An Essay on Criticism)
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Heroic quatrain:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
(from Thomas Gray (1716-71), ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’)

In Memoriam stanza:
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
(from Alfred Tennyson (1809-92), In Memoriam A.H.H.)

Ballad stanza:
Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down,
’Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
(from Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

Terza rima (also called ‘chain rhyme’):

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay
This was the tenor of my waking dream.
Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream
Of people there was hurrying to and fro 5
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
(from Percy B. Shelley (1792-1822), ‘The Triumph of Life’)

Ottava rima:
“And oh! if e’er I should forget, I swear –
But that’s impossible, and cannot be –
Sooner shall this blue ocean melt to air,
Sooner shall earth resolve itself to sea,
Than I resign thine image, Oh, my fair! 5
Or think of anything, excepting thee;
A mind diseased no remedy can physic” –
(Here the ship gave a lurch, and he grew seasick.)
(from George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), Don Juan)

Rhyme royal:
A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighbourhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude, 5
A million eyes, a million boots in line
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
(from W. H. Auden, The Shield of Achilles)
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Spenserian stanza:
But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as living ever him ador’d:
Upon his shield the like was also scor’d, 5
For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had:
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.
(from Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene)

Blank verse:
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again;
While here I stand, not only with the sense 5
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.
(from William Wordsworth (1770-1850), ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’)

Figurative Language
Figurative language is a departure from what users of the language apprehend as the standard
meaning of words, or else the standard order of words, in order to achieve some special meaning or
effect. Such figures were long described as primarily poetic ‘ornaments’, but they are integral to the
functioning of language, and indispensable not only to poetry, but to all modes of discourse. It is
convenient to distinguish between ‘tropes’ or ‘figures of thought’ on the one hand and ‘rhetorical
figures’ or ‘figures of speech’ on the other:

1) ‘Tropes’ or ‘Figures of Thought’: words or phrases are used in a way that effects a conspicuous
change in what we take to be their standard (or: literal) meaning.

A Few Examples:

Simile O my love’s like a red, red rose. (Robert Burns)

John eats like a horse.

Metaphor O my love is a red, red rose. (after Robert Burns)

Metonymy I have read all of Milton. (i.e. all of Milton’s works)

John is interested in the turf. (i.e. in horse racing)
Washington has decided (i.e. the US government has decided that ...)

Synecdoche a hundred sails (i.e. ships)

Could you lend me a hand?

Hyperbole John is a giant. (i.e. very tall); or: I’m dying for love.
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Understatement Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it
altered her person for the worse. (Jonathan Swift)

Litotes He’s not the brightest man in the world (= he’s stupid).

Euphemism He passed away (i.e. he died).

Pun Mercutio (in Romeo and Juliet) bleeding to death:

‘Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.’

Paradox One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. (John Donne)

Conceit Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table; (T. S. Eliot)

Oxymoron darkness visible (Milton)

Personification I watched the leaves dancing in the wind.

Malapropism He is the very pineapple of politeness. (Richard Sheridan, The Rivals;

‘pineapple’ is confused with ‘pinnacle’).

Allusion He is a real Romeo with the ladies.

This place is like a Garden of Eden.

Periphrasis the land of the rising sun = Japan

2) ‘Schemes’, ‘Rhetorical Figures’ or ‘Figures of Speech’: the departure from standard usage is not
primarily in the meaning of the words, but in the syntactical order or pattern of the words.

A Few Examples:

Rhetorical question O wind, / If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? (Percy B. Shelley)

Chiasmus The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind. (W. B. Yeats)

Zeugma Or stain her honour, or her new brocade. (Alexander Pope)

The loud tempests raise / The waters, and repentance for past sinning. (Byron)

Antithesis Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike. (Alexander Pope)

Resolved to win, he meditates the way,
By force to ravish, or by fraud betray. (Alexander Pope)

Anaphora What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp? (William Blake)
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Polyptoton Thou art of blood, joy not to make things bleed. (Sir Philip Sidney)

Bathos / Anticlimax Ye Gods! annihilate but Space and Time, / And make two lovers happy. (Pope)

Onomatopoeia The moan of doves in immemorial elms,

And murmuring of innumerable bees. (Tennyson)

Apostrophe Death, be not proud! (John Donne)

Personae and Tone

Persona: From the Latin persona signifying an actor's mask. In poetry: “A dramatic
character, distinguished from the poet, who is the speaker of a poem.” (Poetry
Foundation)

Dramatic monologue: “A poem in which an imagined speaker addresses a silent listener, usually not
the reader. Examples include Robert Browning’s 'My Last Duchess,' T.S.
Eliot’s 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' ” (Poetry Foundation).

Irony: To say (or do) one thing but mean another; irony names the disconnection of
appearance from reality, or overt (intended) from covert (actual) meanings.

Sarcasm: exaggerated verbal irony used to wound by creating the effect of mockery.

Satire: “both a mode and genre or verse and prose lit. that adopts a critical attitude
toward its target with the goal of censuring human folly” (Princeton
Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics). Satire can use both irony and sarcasm
to create variations in poetic structure, style, and tone.

Parody: “involves opposition or contrast; it is a form of repetition with ironic critical

distance. … It can range in its tones and moods from the seriously respectful
to the playful to the scathingly critical because that is the range of irony, its
major rhetorical strategy” (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics).