Poetry 2

MA English Part 2
Paper 1 (Poetry) All Important notes
William Blake All Important Questions

Compare and Contrast William Blake’s Holy Thursday (I) of Innocence with Holy Thursday (II)
of Experience.
Critical Analysis of William Blake’s Tyger
William Blake’s Romanticism
William Blake’s Symbolism
Seamus Heaney All Important Questions
A Constable Calls
A Tollund Man
Heaney as a Non-Political Poet
Seamus Heaney's Casting and Gathering (for Ted Hughes)
Seamus Heaney’s “The Toome Road”
Keats All Important Questions
Keats' ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE
Keats' ODE ON A GRECIAN URN
Keats' ODE TO AUTUMN
PHILIP LARKIN All Important Questions

PHILIP LARKIN AS A MOVEMENT POET
Themes in Larkin’s poetry
S.T Coleridge Important Question
S.T Coleridge As A Supernatural Poet
Notes Prepared By Prof. Tahir Islam

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William Blake All

Important Questions
Compare and Contrast William Blake’s Holy
Thursday (I) of Innocence with Holy Thursday (II) of
Experience.
The two poems: Holy Thursday I, II reflect Blake’s theory of contrariness. The tile of the poems
refers to the Thursday before Easter Sunday, observed by Christians in commemoration of
Christ’s Last Supper in which the ceremony of the washing of the feet is performed: the
celebrant washes the feet of 12 people to commemorate Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet. In
England a custom survives of giving alms to the poor.
So the title has religious significance. Both poems deal with the same theme; but their approach
to the theme is different; the first being light and ironic and the second being more savage and
direct. I first analyse Holy Thursday (I) and then Holy Thursday (II) and finally, I will compare
and contrast both the poems.
“Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames‘ waters flow.”
The poem’s (Holy Thursday I) dramatic setting refers to a traditional Charity School service at
St. Paul‘s Cathedral. The first stanza captures the movement of the children from the schools to
the church, likening the lines of children to the Thames River, which flows through the heart of
London: the children are carried along by the current of their innocent faith. In the second stanza,
the metaphor for the children changes. First they become “flowers of London town.” This
comparison emphasizes their beauty and fragility; it undercuts the assumption that these destitute
children are the city’s refuse and burden, rendering them instead as London‘s fairest and finest.
Thus Blake emphasizes their innocence and beauty in Holy Thursday I. Next the children are
described as resembling lambs in their innocence and meekness, as well as in the sound of their
little voices.
The image transforms the character of humming “multitudes,” into something heavenly and
sublime. The lamb metaphor links the children to Christ and reminds the reader of Jesus’s special
tenderness and care for children. As the children begin to sing in the third stanza, they are no
longer just weak and mild; the strength of their combined voices raised toward God evokes
something more powerful and puts them in direct contact with heaven. The simile for their song
is first given as “a mighty wind” and then as “harmonious thunderings.” The beadles, under
whose authority the children live, are eclipsed in their aged pallor by the internal radiance of the
children. Thus the ‘guardians’ are beneath the children. The final line advises compassion for
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the poor. Blake’s basic aim in this poem is to emphasize the heavenliness and innocent or the
children. The beginning of Holy Thursday (I) is transformed into Holy Thursday II as:
“Is that trembling cry a song?

Can it be a song of joy?
Holy Thursday II in contrast begins with a series of questions: how holy is the sight of children
living in misery in a prosperous country? Might the children’s “cry,” as they sit assembled in St.
Paul‘s Cathedral on Holy Thursday, really be a song? “Can it be a song of joy?” In the first
stanza, we learn that whatever care these children receive is minimal and grudgingly bestowed.
The “cold and usurous hand” that feeds them is motivated more by self-interest than by love
and pity. Moreover, this “hand” metonymically represents not just the daily guardians of the
orphans, but the city of London as a whole: the entire city has a civic responsibility to these most
helpless members of their society, yet it delegates or denies this obligation.
Here the children must participate in a public display of joy that poorly reflects their actual
circumstances, but serves rather to reinforce the self-righteous complacency of those who are
supposed to care for them. The song that had sounded so majestic in the Songs of Innocence
shrivels, here, to a “trembling cry.” In the first poem, the parade of children found natural
symbolization in London‘s mighty river. Here, however, the children and the natural world
conceptually connect via a strikingly different set of images: the failing crops and sunless fields
symbolize the wasting of a nation’s resources and the public’s neglect of the future. The thorns,
which line their paths, link their suffering to that of Christ. They live in an ‘eternal winter’,
where they experience neither physical comfort nor the warmth of love.
Holy Thursday I is meek and lenient in tone; but the poem calls upon the reader to be more
critical than the speaker is: we are asked to contemplate the true meaning of Christian pity, and
to contrast the institutionalized charity of the schools with the love of which God–and innocent
children–are capable. Moreover, the visual picture given in the first two stanzas contains a
number of unsettling aspects: the mention of the children’s clean faces suggests that they have
been tidied up for this public occasion; that their usual state is quite different. The public display
of love and charity conceals the cruelty to which impoverished children were often subjected.
Moreover, the orderliness of the children’s march and the ominous “wands” (or rods) of the
beadles suggest rigidity, regimentation, and violent authority rather than charity and love. Lastly,
the tempestuousness of the children’s song, as the poem transitions from visual to aural imagery,
carries a suggestion of divine vengeance as in these lines:
“Then cherish pity, lest you drive

an angel from your door.”
In the Innocence version, Blake described the public appearance of charity school children in St.
Paul‘s Cathedral In “experienced” version, however, he critiques rather than praises the charity
of the institutions responsible for hapless children.
The speaker entertains questions about the children as victims of cruelty and injustice, some of
which the earlier poem implied. The rhetorical technique of the poem is to pose a number of
suspicious questions that receive indirect, yet quite censoriously toned answers as in:
“Is this a holy thing to see

In a rich and fruitful land”
The question may be asked which of the two “Holy Thursday” poems states the right attitude.
According to John Beer, a famous critic the innocent poem displays greater insight, in spite of
the greater worldly wisdom, and in spite of the superior moral interest, shown in the experienced
poem. The innocent speaker, says this critic, sees more of the scene than the experienced one.
The speaker in the experienced poem is so anxious to assert his moral ideas that the scene in St.
Paul‘s becomes an excuse for a moral sermon rather than a situation he can give attention to.
And John Beer concludes:
“The innocent song ends on a positive note without preaching a sermon, while the
experienced speaker preaches a sermon that is negative in tone, being full of moral anxiety but
destructive of moral obligation.”
With his “Holy Thursday” of Experience”, Blake clarifies his view of the hypocrisy of
formalized religion and its claimed acts of charity. He exposes the established church’s self-
congratulatory hymns as a sham that the sound of the children is only a trembling cry.
Critical Analysis of William Blake’s Tyger

"The Tyger" represents an intense, visionary style with which William Blake confronts a
timeless question through the creation of a still-life reverie. To examine "The Tyger's" world, a
reader must inspect Blake’s word choice, images, allusions, rhyme scheme, meter, and theme.
"The Tyger" seems like a simple poem, yet this simple poem contains all the complexities of
the human mystery. The first impression that William Blake gives is that he sees a terrible tiger
in the night, and, as a result of his state of panic, the poet exaggerates the description of the
animal when he writes:
‘Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright

In the forests of the night…’
The opening question enacts what will be the single dramatic gesture of the poem, and each
subsequent stanza elaborates on this conception. Blake is building on the conventional idea that
nature, like a work of art, must in some way contain a reflection of its creator. The tiger is
strikingly beautiful yet also horrific in its capacity for violence. What kind of a God, then, could
or would design such a terrifying beast as the tiger? In more general terms, what does the
undeniable existence of evil and violence in the world tell us about the nature of God, and what
does it mean to live in a world where a being can at once contain both beauty and horror?
Immediately after seeing the ‘Tyger’ in the forests, the poet asks it what deity could have created
it:
‘What immortal hand and eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’
The word ‘immortal’ gives the reader a clue that the poet refers to God. Then, in the second
stanza, the author wonders in what far-away places the tiger was made, maybe, referring that
these places cannot be reached by any mortal. In the third stanza, the poet asks again, once the
tiger’s heart began to beat, who could make such a frightening and evil animal. Next, in the forth
stanza, William Blake asks questions about the tools used by God. And he names the hammer,
the chain, the furnace, and anvil. All these elements are used by an ironsmith.
The tiger initially appears as a strikingly sensuous image. However, as the poem progresses, it
takes on a symbolic character, and comes to embody the spiritual and moral problem the poem
explores: perfectly beautiful and yet perfectly destructive, Blake's tiger becomes the symbolic
center for an investigation into the presence of evil in the world. Since the tiger's remarkable
nature exists both in physical and moral terms, the speaker's questions about its origin must also
encompass both physical and moral dimensions. The poem's series of questions repeatedly ask
what sort of physical creative capacity the "fearful symmetry" of the tiger bespeaks; assumedly
only a very strong and powerful being could be capable of such a creation.
“What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?”
The smithy represents a traditional image of artistic creation; here Blake applies it to the divine
creation of the natural world. The "forging" of the tiger suggests a very physical, laborious, and
deliberate kind of making; it emphasizes the awesome physical presence of the tiger and
precludes the idea that such a creation could have been in any way accidentally or haphazardly
produced. It also continues from the first description of the tiger the imagery of fire with its
simultaneous connotations of creation, purification, and destruction.
The speaker stands in awe of the tiger as a sheer physical and aesthetic achievement, even as he
recoils in horror from the moral implications of such a creation; for the poem addresses not only
the question of who could make such a creature as the tiger, but who would perform this act.
This is a question of creative responsibility and of will, and the poet carefully includes this moral
question with the consideration of physical power. Note, in the third stanza, the parallelism of
"shoulder" and "art," as well as the fact that it is not just the body but also the "heart" of the
tiger that is being forged.
The repeated use of word the "dare" to replace the "could" of the first stanza introduces a
dimension of aspiration and willfulness into the sheer might of the creative act.
“Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”
The reference to the lamb in the penultimate stanza reminds the reader that a tiger and a lamb
have been created by the same God, and raises questions about the implications of this. It also
invites a contrast between the perspectives of "experience" and "innocence" represented here
and in the poem "The Lamb." "The Tyger" consists entirely of unanswered questions, and the
poet leaves us to awe at the complexity of creation, the sheer magnitude of God's power, and the
inscrutability of divine will. The perspective of experience in this poem involves a sophisticated
acknowledgment of what is unexplainable in the universe, presenting evil as the prime example
of something that cannot be denied, but will not withstand facile explanation, either. The open
awe of "The Tyger" contrasts with the easy confidence, in "The Lamb," of a child's innocent
faith in a benevolent universe.
The meekness of Blake’s lamb makes his “fearful” and “deadly” tiger appear all the more
horrific, but to conclude that one is decidedly good and the other evil would be incorrect. The
innocent portrayal of childhood in “The Lamb,” though attractive, lacks imagination. The tiger,
conversely, is repeatedly associated with fire or brightness, providing a sharp contrast against the
dark forests from which it emerges — “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the
night.” While such brightness might symbolize violence, it can also imply insight, energy, and
vitality. The tiger’s domain is one of unrestrained self-assertion. Far from evil, Blake’s poem
celebrates the tiger and the sublime excessiveness he represents. “Jesus was all virtue,” wrote
Blake “and acted from impulse, not from rules.”
William Blake never answers his question about the unknown nature of god. He leaves it up to
the reader to decide. By beginning and ending his poem with the same quatrain he asks the
question about god creating evil as well as good, again. In conclusion, a reading of "The Tyger"
offers different thematic possibilities. The poem seems to change as the reader changes, but the
beauty of the words and meter make this poem an astonishing, enjoyable excursion into the
humanity of theology. Moreover, the poem is quotable in various situations, and it leaves a
permanent impression on the reader. Therefore, "The Tyger" by William Blake emerges from
creation's cold, clear stream as a perpetual inspiration - a classic. In my opinion, William Blake
wrote the poem with a simple structure and a perfect rhyme to help the reader see the images he
wanted to transmit. Above all, the description of the tiger is glaringly graphic due to essentially
the contrast between fire and night.
William Blake’s Romanticism

William Blake is a romantic poet. The sparks of romanticism are vividly marked on his poetry.
The question arises what is Romanticism? The answer is that it is a phenomenon characterized
by reliance on the imagination and subjectivity of approach, freedom of thought and expression,
and an idealization of nature.
It was Schelling who first defined romanticism as ‘liberalism in literature’. Though romanticism
officially started by the Lyrical Ballads jointly penned by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1830,
poets like William Blake made cracks to classicism towards the end of the18th century. In
Romanticism, a piece of work could become, as Blake described, “an embodiment of the poet’s
imagination and vision.” Many of the writers of the Romantic period were highly influenced by
the war between England and France and the French Revolution.
In the midst of all these changes, Blake too was inspired to write against these ancient ideas. ‘All
Religions Are One’, and ‘There is No Natural Religion’ were composed in hopes of bringing
change to the public’s spiritual life. Blake felt that, unlike most people, his spiritual life was
varied, free and dramatic. Blake’s poetry features many characteristics of the romantic spirit. The
romanticism of Blake consists in the importance he attached to imagination, in his mysticism and
symbolism, in his love of liberty, in his humanitarian sympathies, in his idealization of
childhood, in the pastoral setting of many of his poems, and in his lyricism.
“Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire”
The above lines from, ‘Jerusalem’ amply justifies the point. “Poetry fettered”, said Blake,
“fetters the human race”. In theory as well as practice, the Romantic Movement began with the
smashing of fetters. In his enthusiastic rage, Blake condemned the verse-forms which had
become traditional. He poured scorn upon all that he associated with classicism in art and in
criticism. “We do not want either Greek or Roman models if we are but just and true to our
own imaginations”, he said. The whole critical vocabulary of neo-classical criticism had
evidently disgusted him. He could not endure it. The visions that Blake started seeing in his
childhood and which he kept seeing throughout his life were doubtless a product of his ardent
imagination.
His visions profoundly controlled both his poetry and his painting. Of many of his poems he
said that they were dictated to him by spirits. In this most literal sense he held that, inspiration
could come to the aid of a poet. In a state of inspiration, the poet made use of his imagination.
“Human imagination is the Divine Vision and Fruition”, he said. Energy and delight
accompany this expression of the Divine Vision. All these views on the subject of poetry spring
from the intensely romantic nature of Blake. It is not merely the revolutionary spirit that
permeates his poetry. The subject of child is more crucial to his art. We see in Holy Thursday I:
“These flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit

with radiance all their own”
The child is here the symbol of the most delicate and courageous intuitions in the human mind.
The elements of Romanticism are present in these poems, some of them in the highest degree,
such as the sense of wonder, the contemplation of Nature through fresh eyes, an intimate
sympathy with the varieties of existence. Other elements of Romanticism are found in a much
less degree, such as the obsession with the past, or the absorbing sense of self. Everything that
the eyes of the child see is bathed in a halo of mystery and beauty.
The words in these poems are perfectly adapted to the thought because they are as simple as
possible, and the thought itself is simple. Blake’s first style is in a way a juvenile form of
Romanticism. The “Songs of Innocence” most completely fulfil the definition of Romanticism
as “the renascence of wonder”. The world of Nature and man is the world of love and beauty
and innocence enjoyed by a happy child, or rather by a poet who miraculously retains an
unspoiled and inspired vision. Despite his strong emotions and his unfamiliar ideas, Blake keeps
his form wonderfully limpid and melodious. Besides love for children, imagination plays a key
role in his poetry as Tyger embodies:
“When the stars threw down their spears,

And watered heaven with their tears;
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he Who made the Lamb make thee?”
Symbolically, this poem is an impassioned defense of energy and imagination which occupy a
commanding position in Blake’s thinking. The tiger is Blake’s symbol for the “abundant life”,
and for regeneration. The poem effectively conveys to us the splendid though terrifying qualities
of the tiger. The climax of the poem’s lyricism is reached in the lines which, though somewhat
cryptic, effectively produce and effect of wonder and amazement. Blake was a great champion of
liberty and had strong humanitarian sympathies. This is another aspect of his Romanticism.
Blake’s humanitarian sympathies are seen in such poems of Experience as Holy Thursday, A
Little Boy Lost, The Chimney Sweeper, and above all London as in the following lines:
“In every voice, in every ban.

The mind-forg’d manacles I hear”
In London, Blake attacks social injustice in its various forms, as it shows itself in the chimney
sweeper’s cry, the hapless soldier’s sigh, and the youthful harlot’s curse. He appears here as an
enemy of what he calls “the-mind-forged manacles”. Nor does, Blake show any mercy to the
Church. The boy in Blake’s poetry finds the church an inhospitable place, while the ale-house is
warm and friendly because the church imposes religious discipline like fasting and prayer.
Pastoralism, too is feature of poetry. The little pastoral poem ‘The Shepherd’ has a delicate
simplicity. It celebrates the happiness of rural responsibility and trust. Noteworthy also is ‘The
Echoing Green’ with its picturesqueness in a warmer hue, its delightful domesticity, and its
expressive melody.
Finally, it is established that Blake is a romantic poet. Blake is one of the major Romantic poets,
whose verse and artwork became part of the wider movement of Romanticism in late Eighteenth
and early Nineteenth century European Culture. His writing combines a variety of styles: he is at
once an artist, a lyric poet, a mystic and a visionary, and his work has fascinated, intrigued and
sometimes bewildered readers ever since. For the nineteenth century reader Blake’s work posed
a single question: was he sane or mad? The poet Wordsworth, for example, commented that
there “is no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in his madness which
interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott”. Blake’s use of images,
symbols, metaphors and revolutionary spirit combined with simple diction and spontaneous
expression of thoughts and emotions make him a typical romantic poet.
William Blake’s Symbolism

Blake is a highly symbolic poet and his poetry is rich in symbols and allusions. Almost each and
every other word in his poems is symbolic. A symbol is an object which stands for something
else as dove symbolizes peace. Similarly, Blake’s tiger symbolizes creative energy; Shelley’s
wind symbolizes inspiration; Ted Hughes’s Hawk symbolizes terrible destructiveness at the heart
of nature. Blake’s symbols usually have a wide range of meaning and more obvious. Few critics
would now wish to call Blake a symbolist poet, since his handling of symbols is markedly
different from that of the French symbolists’, but the world inhabited by his mythical figures is
defined through quasi-allegorical images of complex significance, and such images are no less
important in his lyrical poetry. The use of symbols is one of the most striking features of Blake’s
poetry.
There is hardly any poem in the “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” which does not
possess a symbolic or allegorical meaning, besides its apparent or surface meaning. If these
poems are written in the simplest possible language, that fact does not deprive them of a depth of
meaning. The language of these poems is like that of the Bible—at once simple and profound as
the following lines read:
“O Rose, thou art sick!”
When Blake talks of the sick rose, he is really telling us how mysterious evil attacks the soul.
Flower-symbolism is of particular importance in Songs of Innocence and Experience, being
connected with the fall by the motif of the garden; and its traditional links with sexuality informs
the text of ‘The Blossom’ and the design for ‘Infant Joy’, which are taken up in Experience by
the plate for ‘The Sick Rose’. ‘Ah! Sun-Flower’ is a more symbolic text, and has evoked a
greater variety of responses. Declaring this to be one of ‘Blake’s supreme poems’, we can
interpret the flower as a man who ‘is bound to the flesh’ but ‘yearns after the liberty of
Eternity”. Harper claims that it describes the aspiration of all ‘natural things’ to ‘the sun’s
eternality’. Blake travels from flower-symbolism to animal symbols as in the ‘Tyger’
:
“Did he smile his work to see
Did he who made the Lamb make thee!”
If the lamb symbolizes innocence and gentleness, the tiger is to Blake a symbol of the violent
and terrifying forces within the individual man. The lamb, innocent and pretty, seems the work
of a kindly Creator. The splendid but terrifying tiger makes us realize that God’s purposes are
not so easily understood, and that is why the question arises “Did he who made the Lamb make
thee?” At the same time, the tiger is symbolic of the Creator’s masterly skill which enabled Him
to frame the “fearful symmetry” of the tiger. But the lion described in the poem Night (in the
“Songs of Innocence”) offers an interesting contrary to the tiger of the “Songs of Experience”.
Both the beasts seem dreadful, but the lion, like the beast of the fairy tale, can be magically
transformed into a good and gentle creature: the tiger cannot. In the world of Experience the
violent and destructive elements in Creation must be faced and accepted, and even admired. The
tiger is also symbolic of the Energy and the Imagination of man, as opposed to the Reason. Blake
was a great believer in natural impulses and hated all restraints. Consequently he condemns all
those who exercise restraints upon others. He states in Holy Thursday II:
“And their ways are fill’d with thorns

It is eternal winter there”
The eternal winter are symbolic of total destruction of the country and the perpetual devastation
and ‘Grey-headed beadles’ in ‘Holy Thursday I’ are symbolic of authority and it is they
exploit children for their own material interests. In the poem London, oppression and tyranny are
symbolised by the king (who is responsible for the soldier’s blood being shed), social institutions
like (loveless) marriage, and ‘”he mind-forged manacles”. Even further, personal and social
relationships have been symbolised as:
“In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree”
A Poison Tree is another allegory. The tree here represents repressed wrath; the water represents
fear; the apple is symbolic of the fruit of the deceit which results from repression. This deceit
gives rise to the speaker’s action in laying a death-trap for his enemy. The deeper meaning of the
poem is that aggressive feelings, if suppressed, almost certainly destroy personal relationships.
On the surface, however, the poem is a simple, ordinary story. Thus symbolism is crucial to
understanding Blake as poet of earlier romanticism. What can be more symbolic than the
following lines from, ‘Auguries of Innocence’?
“To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour”
Thus, Blake’s poetry is charged with symbols. He has depicted nature and human nature; animals
and plants as simple but profound symbols of powerful forces; “contrary states of the human
soul” – for example, good and evil, or innocence and experience throughout his poetry. What is
different in Blake is that he is not modeling after any symbols but his own.
The symbols always have an inner relatedness that leads us from the outer world to the inner
man. The symbols live in the ordered existence of his vision; the vision itself is entirely personal,
in theme and in the logic that sustains it. Blake is difficult not because he invented symbols of
his own; he created his symbols to show that the existence of any natural object and the value
man’s mind places on it were one and the same. He was fighting the acceptance of reality in the
light of science as much as he was fighting the suppression of human nature by ethical dogmas.
He fought on two fronts, and shifted his arms from one to the other without letting us know—
more exactly, he did not let himself know. He created for himself a personality, in life and in art
that was the image of the thing he sought.
In short, it is established that William Blake is a highly symbolic and even allegorical poet. His
use of symbolism is unique and cinematic. It paints a lively and pulsating picture of dynamic life
before us. Especially, the symbolic use of ‘Sun-flower’ gets so much stamped on the mind of the
reader that it is difficult to forget it. He mentions a tiger it becomes a symbol of God’s power in
creation, his lamb turns out to be a symbol of suffering innocence and Jesus Christ and his tree is
symbolic of anger and desire to triumph over enemies; the dark side of human nature.
Symbolism is the main trait of William Blake as a dramatist as a poet and this has been well-
crystallized in his legendary work, ‘The Songs of Innocence and Experience’.
Seamus Heaney All

Important Questions
A Constable Calls
Introduction
The poem is from ‘Singing School’. The poet describes an event when a constable comes to visit
his father, to record information about his farm.
The poem is based, perhaps, on an experience of childhood of Heaney himself. The Catholics of
Northern Ireland or Ulster were an oppressed minority under the British rule. The poem narrates
the visit of a constable to a family for some routine inquiry. But this routine visit casts horrible
and fearful effects on the child and the other members of the family. This is the kind of fear in
which the Catholics of Ireland are living.
The Main land got freedom in 1952 and it became a republic but that part of Ireland which is
attached to the Main land England and is called Ulster, remained under British control. Irish are
Roman Catholics while English are Protestants.
Ulster is the home of Irish but it has been largely occupied by settlers from England and
Scotland. They dominated the economy of Ulster and even distorted its culture. The Irish feel
very sore about it. Besides, there have been violent clashes between the Catholics and the
Protestants. The Catholics have been reduced to a minority in their own land. Also, the British
government, and its forces, too, are on the side of Protestants. So there have been big massacres
of the Catholics in Ireland in 1920 and 1970.
The Massacred are the Catholics and they are the oppressed. Aparthited (the division between
black and while) is very sharp in Ulster. Heaney thinks that poets should not meddle in politics.
On the other hand the situation of Ireland demands an active role from him. This creates a sense
of guilt in him. This sense of guilt has been presented in the poem ‘A Constable Calls’.
CRITICAL APPRECIATION
The poem is based, perhaps, on Heaney’s childhood experience. It is about state terrorism and
guilt conscious. Heaney has taken a very ordinary and routine simple situation and has turned it
into something bizarred and monstrous. The poem tells of some government official, perhaps an
excise inspector who has come to a farm house to collect data about the crops. The very arrival
of the constable is seen as something sinister. The situation is very much like that prevailing in
our own society where the arrival of a constable at some house creates a kind of panic not only
for the inmates but also for the neighbours.
Everything related to the constable assumes a weird (horrifying) look. The bicycle itself appears
like a monster threatening the house with “flat black handlegrips”. The narrator is a child. It is
perhaps some childhood experience of Heaney himself. He looks at the cycle as if some strange
creature has come from the outer space. The ‘spud’ of the dynmo, the cocked back and the
paddles each detail is minutely noted by the frightened child. The authority is symbolically
describes as the “boot of law’.
The constable is not threatening at all. He is quite at ease. He has put his cap upside down on
floor. The impression created by the cap on his hair is visible. He takes out a heavy ledger from
his bicycle. The child’s father starts making entries of the land and its various crops. The father
is busy in calculations and entries while the child is watching the whole scene with some
unknown fear troubling his mind. He particularly looks at the butt of the revolver the constable
carries.
Perhaps the fear is that there might have not been any mistake and the constable might detect
some wrong entry or some entry which has been missed. He makes a routine inquiry and
suggests that something have been left out.
The child immediately thinks of punishment. He fears that his father might be arrested. Black
holes of barracks come before his eyes. However the constable is doing his duty in a simple
routine way and his approaches very businesslike. He holds out no threats but to the child his
heavy ledger looks like a doomsday book. He is quite courteous too and says good bye to the
child.
The horror of the situation is further deepened when a shadow like figure shows a glimpse in the
window. The suggestion is that the anxiety has haunted the whole house and it was perhaps the
child’s mother who was watching from behind the window. The constable quietly puts his things
back and rides the bicycle which goes with the sound of ticked, ticked, ticked as if it was some
time bomb.
The poem gives an impression of an oppressive fear and a sense of guilt associated with that fear.
Guilt and fear are prominent features of the poetry of Heaney. This poem is an allegory as well.
The constable is on some investigation. A young child is looking at him. This is Heaney’s
childhood experience. Heaney has been experiencing the miseries of his own family and of the
Irish since his childhood. There is a state of tension. He sees something sinister in the bicycle. He
believed, in a sense, that the constable is not a man. He was a symbol of terror. The chid is only
looking at the books, at the cap and at and machine which are the images of terror, which have
been settled down in Heaney’s childhood consciousness. The child is terribly frightened. It is a
very beautiful poem of fear, mixed with an unknown sense of guilt.
‘Any other root crops’?
The constable is questioning; he is inquiring. It is an allegory of fault finding by the authorities

and an allegory of fear and guilt. This fear and this sense of guilt have become a routine for the
Irish. This kind of sinister visit is a routine matter. To the constable it is just a routine, but to the
poor Irish grower it is a menace. So there is a sense of menace also. Menace and sense of guilt
have been combined in the poem.
Official business appears to the people as a doomsday business. The constable is just doing his
duty. The menace is inside. Fear has found a deep root in the people’s hearts. Everybody is tense;
the father, the child, the mother.
The bicycle “ticked, ticked, ticked”—like a time bomb. So they live under a perpetual fear.
Unknown, unexpected fears and uncommitted crimes haunt their minds.
A Tollund Man
Heaney has read about the bog people of Jutland in Glob’s Book “The Bog People”. It describes
the archaeological discoveries in Jutland in the Denmark. The researchers found “preserved
bodies of men and women in the bogs of Jutland naked, strangled or with their throats cut
disposed under the peat since early Iron Age times. Heaney sees a similarity between the bog
men and those Irish men who have been killed during the civil war. He develops a myth out of
this situation and says that the mother has always demanded sacrifices from the people as the bog
men were sacrificed to the goddess of the land similarly the Irish men are being sacrificed for
their motherland. It is in this spirit that Heaney wishes to go to the bog land to personally see
what happened in the early Iron Age, or perhaps Stone Age, and what is happening now in
Ireland. Therefore he says that he wants to go to Aarhus—a place where the head of one of the
bog men, called, Tollund man, is kept in a museum.
The researchers have found that the Tollund man at the time of sacrifice was fully fed and seeds
of grain are found in his stomach. It is with reference to this fact that he has described his eye
lids as pods, which are ready to sprout. The Tollund man had only a skull cap on his head,
otherwise he was naked. Besides the cap the only two things on his body were a noose and a
girdle, or a belt around the waist.
Heaney calls him the bridegroom to the goddess. This refers to the myth that the goddess of the
land wanted the sacrifice of a male so that she could conceive with him. Thus he is the
bridegroom of the goddess who must become pregnant so that the earth may become fertile and
the crops may flourish in the next season. The goddess tightened the noose around his neck and
the bridegroom was sucked by the fen or the bog. The sacrificed man thus becomes the fertilizer
of the land. The dark juices symbolise the transference of the sacrificed man to the earth. To
Heaney, in this way, he becomes a martyr whose death is the life of others and whose blood is
the fertility of the land. Heaney then compares these martyred bodies to the beehives, the cells of
which are full of honey and that face still exists in the museum of Aarhus.
In the second section, Heaney feels that he has committed blasphemy by calling a Pagan a martyr
and the bog as cauldron made holy by the sacrifice. He believes that from this cauldron a new
life may emerge. This is the creativity of the martyr. T.S. Eliot explained the process of creativity
to the chemical action that takes place in the chemist’s crucible. When the ingredients are
proportionately mixed, they are re-created in a new form. Similarly martyr’s blood also
germinates or recreates life.
He, then, compares these sacrificed bog men to the labourers of Ireland whose dead bodies were
found in the fields. These labourers were in their working dress. They had their stockings on.
Heaney means to say that these people were not fighters. They were ordinary labourers and were
killed mercilessly in the civil war in Ireland. So many innocent people who had nothing to do
with this war were killed.
Heaney also recalls the stories of men who were dragged from miles along the railway track.
They had been thoroughly skinned and their dead bodies were bare to the teeth because of this
dragging. Heaney recalls, perhaps alluding to the scenes of condemned people carried in
tumbrels to the guillotine during the French Revolution as described by Dickens in ‘A Tale of
Two Cities’.
Heaney recalls these people name by name Tollund, Grabaulle, Nebelgard. These are the names
of the bog men. Yeats also gave the names of the Irish men in Easter 1916. This is meant to show
the close association of the poet with those who were killed in this war. They were his fellow
countrymen. Though the bog men belonged to a different land and spoke a different language,
yet there is a archaetypal kinship between them (Archaetypal is a term coined by Jung, a
psychologist, to describe the thoughts and feelings common to all humanity at all places and in
all times belonging to all races and nations).
Heaney says that in Jutland he will feel at home because the bog of the Jutland is no different
from the bog of the modern Ireland. He will be very sorry for the loss of so many lives but the
idea that the tragedy is universal is a consolation to him. This is what he calls ‘the Redress of
Poetry’. He will feel unhappy and at home simultaneously.
Heaney claims to be a pure poet. He believes that poetry should have no function beyond poetry.
He believes in poetry for the sake of poetry. He condemns the heckler who wants to use the
poetry for politics. Heaney feels that politics is not the function of poetry. But, ironically, he
cannot detach himself from the world in which he is living. He sees men falling around him. He
feels guilty that he is only writing poetry. He wants to find a role for himself in that strife. He
elaborates upon it in his essay “the Redress of Poetry”. This poem, as we can see, is a political
poem. But Heaney joins the tragedy of Ireland with the tragedy of pre-historic bog man. He
creates a myth of misery. In this way he turns a political tragedy into an aesthetic tragedy. This is
how he combines politics in poetry.
Perhaps it consoles him but does it console the hundreds and thousands who are everyday
massacred in Ireland?
Heaney as a Non-Political Poet

Heaney is a non-political poet. He, like Keats, is a pure poet who believes in art for the sake of
art, poetry for the sake of poetry. He is committed to poetry. No doubt Heaney’s poems, like The
Tollund Man, Wedding Day and A Constable Calls, are political poems but Heaney claims that
there is no politics in them. Heaney believes that poetry and politics are two different subjects
and they should remain separate.
Heaney agrees with Joseph Brodsky that the only thing poetry and politics have in common “are
the letters P and O”. He also believes that one should be aware of the things going around him,
especially when there is a big massacre, and that he must play his part as much as he can. But he
wants not to be a heckler. In his famous essay, The Redress of Poetry, he charged the heckler for
making poetry a device for bringing revolution. This creates confusion in understanding Heaney
with two approaches—on the one side he believes that art is important, and on the other side he
believes that life is also important. But he has resolved this problem and has made politics a
subject for poetry by making a myth of the archetypal pattern. Here, in the selected poems of
Heaney, we find an attempted reconciliation between poetry and politics.
Heaney belongs to Ireland and Ireland has been suffering from the worst effects of politics. He
has a deep attachment to his country. He cannot bear the violence and cruelty from which his
people have been suffering for centuries. He, actually, wants to share their hopes, worries and
frustrations. Heaney cannot ignore the grim realities of life. This has created a sense of guilt and
an oppressive fear in Heaney and it is very much visible in his poetry.
In The Tollund Man, Wedding Day, A Constable Calls, The Toome Road, Personal Helicon and
Casting and Gathering, we find Heaney both as a poet and as a citizen of Ireland, who has great
compassion for the Irish people. In these poems, which are known as bog-poems, he discusses
the questions—whether one should be committed to poetry or to life? Is life more important or
art? Is life more important or poetry? In these poems he seems to know his role in this human
tragedy. As a poet, he feels himself guilty because a number of people, including his own
relatives are dying and he is doing poetry. It seems difficult for Heaney to remain detached with
this dilemma. This was the complexity and conflict in the mind of Heaney. He finds it very hard
to reconcile the two contradictory approaches.
He goes to another approach which is the approach of compromise. His compromise is to find
some aesthetic approach to politics. He believes in the aesthetics of politics, not in the violence
of politics. He wants to rise above party-politics.
In Easter 1916, W. B. Yeats mourns the death of the Irish people, but at the same time he is
equally sorry for the young men who were soldiers in the English army as he says:
This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,

Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part.
This is what Heaney wants to do. The poet must feel for all humanity. He resolves this problem
by creating a myth. The myth is that strife and violence are the pattern of life. They are
inevitable. Nobody can stop them, but through the message of love and peace, the poet can
provide some consolation, some redress. It means that the poet is only a mourner.
In the poem The Tollund Man, he has made politics a subject of poetry by creating a myth.
Heaney takes the title of this poem from Glob’s book about the archaeological excavations in
Jutland, a marshy land in Denmark. One head, which was found separated from the body, had
been kept in a museum, called Aarhus. And the sacrificed man was given the name of Tollund
Man.
It was thought that the Tollund man was sacrificed to the goddess of land, the mother goddess.
Heaney sees this sacrifice in the archetypal pattern which he applies to Ireland. Heaney thinks
that it is the destiny of man that he has to sacrifice for the prosperity of the land.
She tightened her tore on him

And opened her fen.
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint’s kept body,
This has been going on since the dawn of human life on the earth. This is Heaney’s stoicism.
Thus to talk of destiny, to talk of myth, or of the archetype does not mean to talk of politics. This
is how Heaney turns a political situation into a mythical situation. This is what he means by the
aesthetics of politics, that politics becomes a part of the emotional being of man. This is how
Heaney reconciles a personal contradiction, a contradiction between politics and poetry, between
life and art.
In this way, Heaney reconciles poetry and politics without making poetry a subservient to of
politics. Heaney says:
The Tollund Man seems to me like an ancestral, almost one of old uncles, one of those
moustached archaic faces you used to meet all over the Irish countryside.
The poem shows a humanitarian zeal on the part of Heaney. He sympathises the Irish sacrificing
class in an anti-political style. By quoting the reference of the Tollund man, he makes way for
bringing politics into poetry.
Wedding Day is also a bog poem. It is a much more political poem, but Heaney claims that there
is no politics in the poem. The poet, symbolically, considers Ireland as a bog country. By this,
Heaney means, the sacrifices of the common Irish people in the bog of civil war. The whole
country has become a bog, because there seems to be no escape from sacrifices. People, willingly
or unwillingly, have to give sacrifices. But in this process of sacrifice, Heaney sees redress of
miseries; he seeks consolation in these sacrifices. He thinks that it is the only answer to the
miseries of life.
There had been two distinct attitudes towards the miseries of life in the time of Heaney. One
group believed that misery is an essential part of life, and that miseries were man’s destiny. This
is a pessimistic approach and the conservatives believe in this concept. The conservatives believe
that man is helpless before the odd circumstances he faces. It is a negative approach. The other
group says that miseries are not his destiny, and that man has the power to overcome his
difficulties. These are, actually, progressive or socialist people, who have confidence in
themselves. Heaney was caught in the mire of the ideological war.
Similarly in modern literature, we find two distinct approaches in relation to poetry. Some
people, like conservative writers, think that it is not the job of poets and poetry to interfere in
politics. They believe that poetry has nothing to do with the realities and complexities of life.
The poet can just preach love, sympathy and humanity. But there are other people, who believe
in the power of man. They are much more concerned with life. O’Neill, Hemingway, G.B. Shaw,
Lorca and Arthur Miller fall in this category. It is a group of what we call progressives. They
believe that man must find out the faults, committed by men, responsible for his miseries, and
that he must try to remove these faults as far as he can.
They want to root out the problems disturbing the natural phenomenon of life. O’Neill finds that
Puritanism causes a misapplication of the religious beliefs, which have made life difficult to live.
Man must try to fight them, rather than cry over them and feel consolation in crying. To cry over
the miseries of life is not redress or consolation. It is false consolation, which is destructive.
There must be a constructive approach to life. This is what the progressives do. They expose the
foibles, mistakes, follies and faults of men so that these can be removed. The reason for this is
that they want to make progress and they want to make life progressive and prosperous as well.
They cannot be silent in the face of the miseries and cruelties created by the wrong people of the
society, as the conservatives do. The protest should be positive, like the one made by the
protagonists of Arthur Miller.
John Proctor, the hero of Miller’s the Crucible, protests to solve the problem of coercion. In this
play, he has shown a mirror to the establishment of the USA that what they are and what they are
doing and, no doubt, he has been very successful as far as his protest is concerned.
So the concept the bog-poems, The Tollund Man and Wedding Day give is that Heaney by
nature is a pure poet but he has feelings and sympathies for the Irish people who are being killed
ruthlessly. So, Heaney accepts both the realities, i.e., one must be committed to art, but he must
also think for life, because one cannot remain indifferent when atrocities and sufferings are going
up all the time. He must write of the cruelties of the state which is a political matter. But Heaney
has done it in a detached manner. The impact of politics on the psyche of the common man is the
subject of his poems. The poet has tried to project the mental state of the Irish people who live in
a perpetual state of fear and terror. The Blacks of South Africa also used to live under this state
of terror and they were questioned when they sometimes occupied a room, seat or place, reserved
for the Whites. Harry Bloom writes in Transvall Episode:
Any knock at the door might be that of a policeman; any day might be the one when a
husband fails to come from the work and is found to be in a jail, arrested for any regularity….
This is the kind of fear in which the Catholics of Ireland have been living. The main Ireland got
freedom in 1922 and it became a Republic, but that part of Ireland which was attached to the
Main land England, and is called Ulster, remained under British control. The majority of the Irish
are Roman Catholics whereas the English are Protestants. Ulster is the home of the Irish people
but it has been largely occupied by settlers from England and Scotland. England has dominated
the economy of Ulster and even distorted its culture. Thus, the Irish felt very sore about it. There
have been continuous clashes between the Catholics and the Protestants.
In this way, the Catholic or the Irish majority have been reduced to a minority in their own
country. W. B. Yeats, a renowned Irish poet, also wrote a poem Easter 1916 about the killing of
the Irish Catholics.
So in “The Tolland man”, Heaney recalls an incident in which bodies of four young Catholics,
murdered by Protestant militants, were dragged along a railway line in an act of mutilation.
Tell-tale skin and teeth

Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.
In ‘A Constable Calls’ we find the subjectivity of the poet as he discusses the untold miseries of
the Irish Catholics, created by the English Protestants.
Heating in sunlight, the ‘spud’

Of the dynamo gleaming and cocked back,
The pedal treads hanging relieved
Of the boot of the law.
The Toome Road has also some political strains in it but the poet, as usually, doesn’t discuss it in
a political manner. He talks about the threat of state teirorism. The poem shows a sense of state
of war. The army has occupied the country and the citizens are living in a state of scariness and
fear.
How long were they approaching down my roads As if they owned them?
The citizens are very much depressed by seeing the armoured forces entering their country,
cities, houses and fields. There is no one to whom these citizens may complain. As Heaney says:
It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass

The invisible, untopppled omphalos
So, in his poems Heaney discusses the political strains but in a non-political way because he
firmly believes that it is not the function of poetry to change the circumstances prevailing in a
country. Poetry, according to Heaney, can just tell the way and one can follow it. It is not the
duty of a poet to fight against terrorism and it is not the job of poet to find out the causes of
oppression; what the poet can do is that he may make us feel the distinction between the good
and the bad. This is what Heaney means when he says in his essay The Redress of Poetry that
poetry is only the state of the mind. It should have no concern with the state of the world. That is
what he says in his poem ‘Personal Helicon’ that inspiration is the echo of consciousness of soul
and it has nothing to do with the circumstances or surroundings. A poet gets inspiration from his
soul and not from the things around him.
So it is correct that Heaney writes about politics yet there is no politics in his poetry. He has
made politics a subject for poetry in an emphatic way. Heaney is just giving the poetry of these
traumatic experiences. He, in fact, wants to redress the people through his art without becoming
a heckler. He finds a middle way between the two extremes, between the idealist and the
escapist. He uses the myth for bringing politics into poetry. Heaney’s approach is the approach
of compromise. Heaney’s compromise is to find some aesthetic approach to politics, in the
aesthetics of politics, not in the violence of politics.
Seamus Heaney's Casting and Gathering (for Ted

Hughes)
Introduction
‘Casting and Gathering’ signifies the process of cultivation. Casting means throwing and
gathering means harvesting. Perhaps Heaney wants to use the paradox of cultivation to talk about
the conflict between the socialists and the capitalists. In the context of cultivation process he sees
the conflict between the right and the left or the Capitalists and the Socialists.
He observes both the sides and symbolically uses the words ‘hush’ and lush’ to show a mingled
feeling of fear and hope. He is, in fact, trying to promote a spirit of compromise. Casting and
gathering are two stages of a same process. Similarly the two parties, apparently in conflict
against each other, actually are two stages of a same process. There is another interpretation of
the poem. According to Andrew Boobier, “In his poem, Casting and Gathering, dedicated to his
friend Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney writes:
I love hushed air. I trust contrariness.

Years and years go past and I do not move
For I see that when one man casts, the other gathers
And then vice versa, without changing sides.
Heaney evokes here the push-pull effect of friendship, the fact that two people can have different
natures, contrary impulses yet be united in the common bond of mutuality and respect for each
other as fishermen and poets. The poem is also about growing up and learning to respect these
differences, There is a dialectical movement in which the two opposing forces of Heaney’s and
Hughes’ language (the ‘hush’ and ‘lush’) are not only synthesised into their bonds of friendship
but also as a resolution within the poem and Heaney’s own contrary. The strong resolutions
within Heaney’s poetic output in general are indicative of his allegiance to his Romantic forbears
and his own particular need for balance and redress”.
CRITICAL APPRECIATION
Casting means throwing or scattering. Gathering means harvesting or collecting. Heaney here
uses the paradox of cultivation. Cultivation consists of two processes—the casting of seeds and
gathering of crops.
Casting and gathering were considered two opposite processes but that is an old idea. Heaney
sees the two as the stages in the sowing process. Immediately Heaney comes to the contemporary
strife of left and right. In the decades following the French Revolution the whole world was
divided into ideological camps of right and left. It started a cold war between the socialists and
the capitalist countries. The poets of the left were committed to revolution, and the forces of the
right insisted on the status quo. Heaney’s consciousness grew in that atmosphere of conflict. In
1936 there was a big international resistance against the fascism of Franco in Spain. All the
intellectual of the world gathered to support the republic against the fascist government. This is
the background of Hemingway’s ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’. Lorca, a great Spanish dramatist
lost his life in that struggle. All the intellectuals of the left supported republic while all the
governments of the left supported fascist regime. The conservatives try to stay neutral in that
struggle.
Heaney, here, is trying to justify his neutralism but then, there was a general saying that in the
strife between the right and the wrong, neutrality means support for the wrong. This is one of the
issues which disturbed Heaney and it created in him a sense of guilt as well as a sense of fear,
perhaps the fear of escaping one’s duty towards the oppressed. In Redress of poetry, Heaney
asserted that the poet’s function is not to help the oppressed but only to console him. Consolation
is only an escape.
He is graphically visualizing this strife in terms of right and left. On the left bank, perhaps it
suggests that the revolutionary spirit has inspired the peasants and the countryside is resounding
to it. Hush and lush may here means a mingled feeling of fear and hope. ‘Entirely free’ means
the movement for the freedom was universal. On the right bank or on the other side there is a
different scene and a sound is coming from there like that of the marsh bird or rail making shrill
sounds and the fisherman gathering the fish. Perhaps we may say that on the left side, there is the
sowing of crops. On the right side there is the harvesting of crops.
The poet is conscious but at the same time, he is dreaming, trying to grasp the reality beyond
consciousness. He feels that now he has become mature and he can see both the sides. He sees
the people on the left as well as people on the right engaged in hard labour. They do not care
about any slogans “proof by the sound he is making” means that these people do not care about
that strife. Perhaps the left is pronouncing that individual is not important, that he is only a part
of the community or only a member of the society.
The other side says that individual is everything. The poet claims that he loves peace (hush). He
believes that life is made above contraries. Perhaps he has Blake in mind who sees life both as
the tiger and the lamb.
The experience of his life has told Heaney that casting and gathering are the two stages of a
process. One throws up and the other gathers. He tries to suggest that the two parties, apparently
in strife against each other, actually are heading towards the same goal and this goes on
sometimes one casts and the other gathers and at another time it is the former who gathers and
the latter who casts. What he is trying to say is that communists and capitalists are not
antagonists against each other. They are actually leading each other to the same common goal.
This poem is a beautiful example of advocating compromise but compromise may be a

commitment and it can also be an escape. His senior countryman, W.B. Yeats, saw the position
of the poet differently from Heaney. He has sympathy for both the fighting factions because both
are honest and fighting for an ideal with a commitment to what they consider to be right. Yeats
appreciates their idealism and commitment but he does not say that both are right. They may
think that they are fighting for a right cause. He has sympathy for them— the sympathy for the
individual but not with their cause. Heaney on the other hand does not distinguish between victor
and the victim.
Seamus Heaney’s “The Toome Road”
“The Toome Road” by Seamus Heaney is a poem that gives readers a glimpse into Heaney’s
childhood as it describes a memory of foreign soldiers invading his homeland. The first thing
that struck me as interesting in this poem was Heaney’s use of the pronouns, “they” and “my.”
These seemingly unimportant words were a subtle clue that Heaney was describing two different
groups of people who were enemies. For instance, Heaney states,
“How long were they approaching down my road / As if they owned them? / The whole
country was sleeping” (5-6).
As I read these lines, I imagine Heaney is full of emotion and frustrated with himself and his
country for letting foreigndomination control his country and lead to the loss of individual rights.
Heaney’s frustrations turn into a call of action for his country to wake up, witness the volatile
attacks and fight back. But, as the soldiers continue to roam the streets, it is obvious that the
people of his country are too scared and helpless to fight back:
“with their backdoors on the latch” (11).
This inability to do nothing anythingagainst the soldiers has garnished the foreigners “untoppled
omphalos,” or from the all-powerful center of the Earth. So, while Heaney is frustrated with the
soldiers, he simply stands dormant and watches in helplessness, as he, too, is scared of the
foreigners and their power. This poem reveals Heaney’s views on war, even though his
intentions may have been simple to speak from experience and not make a political statement.
Despite this, Heaney is clearly against war, which is not an uncommon theme throughout many
of the poems that we have read this semester (Gurney, Rosenberg, Sassoon, Owen).
Keats All Important

Questions
Keats' ODE ON A GRECIAN URN
1. INTRODUCTION
Keats’s Love of Greek Art
The ancient Greeks used to cremate a dead human being and to deposit the ashes in an urn which
was then buried. An urn was a kind of vase generally made of marble or of brass. Often, different
kinds of scenes and situations were carved on the outer surface of an urn.
An urn, therefore, apart from serving as a repository of the ashes of the dead, was also a work of
art. The present poem was partly inspired by a marble Grecian urn which was in the possession
of Lord Holland on which was carved a scene of pastoral sacrifice such as the one that is
described in the fourth stanza. A Bacchanalian procession was also sometimes carved on a
Grecian urn. It seems almost certain that Keats was not merely thinking of the particular urn in
the possession of Lord Holland, but also of Greek sculpture in general as represented by the
famous Elgin marbles which he had seen in the British museum. Keats had a natural affinity with
the Greek mind and this poem shows his love of Greek art.
2. CRITICAL SUMMARY
Various Scenes Depicted on the Urn
Keats addresses the Grecian urn as an “unravished bride of quietness and a foster-child of
silence and slow time”. Thus Keats conveys to us the idea of the silent repose and the great age
of this piece of Greek sculpture. He also calls the Grecian urn a “Sylvan historian” because of
the rural and forest scenes carved on its surface. In a series of questions, which are also vivid
pictures, he gives us an idea of what those carvings represent. He refers to the human beings and
the gods depicted on the urn in the beautiful valleys of Tempe and Arcadia. He refers to the men
in a passionate mood chasing maidens who are struggling to escape from their clutches. Then
there are the flute-players playing wild and ecstatic music.
Art is Superior to Life

The poet goes on to say that music which is imagined is much sweeter than music which is
actually heard. The music of the flute-players depicted on the Grecian urn cannot be actually
heard by us: we must imagine what tunes they are playing. These unheard, but imaginable
melodies are sweeter than the songs that we actually hear. Besides, the lover who is trying to kiss
his beloved on the urn will always be seen in the same mood of pleasurable anticipation. In real
life, love and beauty decline and fade; but the love and beauty depicted on the urn will remain
ever fresh. In real life, spring is short, and the trees must shed their leaves. Similarly, in real life a
musician will at least feel tired of playing his music and will stop. The enjoyment of the
pleasures of love in real life is followed by disgust and satiety. But the trees depicted on the urn
will never shed their leaves; the melodist will forever play his tunes, and the heart of the lover
will always throb with passion while the beauty of the beloved will never fade. In this way, the
poet wishes to convey the idea that art is, in one sense, superior to real life.
The Town Emptied of its Folk
Then follows a picture of a crowd of people going to some place of worship. A priest leads a
heifer which has been decorated with garlands and which is to be offered as a sacrifice. The
worshippers have come from some little town situated close to a river or on a sea-shore or at the
foot of a hill on which stands a fortress. The town which has been emptied of its people, will
always remain desolate, because the people shown on the urn will always be seen going away to
the place of worship but never returning to the town.
Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty
The poet then addresses the urn as “Attic shape”, “Fair altitude”, and “Cold pastoral”. These
expressions convey the beauty and the poise of the urn and refer also to the rural scenes depicted
on it. The feelings which the urn awakens in the poet are like the overwhelming feeling which
arises when the poet thinks of eternity. The urn, says Keats, will always be a friend to man. The
generations of men will come and pass and will perhaps undergo sufferings and sorrows of
which we have no notion at present. But the urn will have a valuable message for those
generations, the message, namely, that, Beauty and Truth are not separate things but two sides of
one and the same thing. (Or, Beauty and Truth are not two things, not even twin things, but one
and the same thing seen from different aspects.) The knowledge of this great fact is of supreme
importance and this fact represents the very essence of wisdom. Having this knowledge,
mankind needs no other knowledge.
3. CRITICAL APPRECIATION
Inspired by Greek Sculpture
This poem was inspired by a collection of Greek sculpture which Keats saw in the British
museum. Partly, perhaps, the inspiration for the poem was derived from a marble urn which
belonged to Lord Holland. In giving us the imagery of the carvings on the urn, Keats was not
thinking of a single urn but of Greek sculpture in general. Keats had a native sympathy for, and a
natural affinity with, the Greek mind. This ode shows the full force of Hellenic influence acting
on a temperament essentially romantic.
Concrete and Sensuous Imagery
A striking quality of Keats’s entire poetry is fully revealed in this ode. Keats had a genius for
drawing vivid and concrete pictures mostly with a sensuous appeal. The whole of this poem is a
series of such pictures— passionate men and gods chasing reluctant maidens, the flute-players
playing their ecstatic music, the fair youth trying to kiss his beloved, the happy branches of the
trees, the worshippers going to a place of worship in order to offer a sacrifice with a mysterious
priest to lead them, a little town which will always remain desolate—these are pictures which
Keats vividly brings before our minds. The passion of men and gods, and the reluctance of
maidens to be caught or seized is beautifully depicted in the following two lines:
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
Here is the picture of a bold lover trying to get a kiss which will never materialise:
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal—
The ecstasy of the passion of youthful love is depicted in the following lines:
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d
For ever panting and for ever young.
The Superiority of Art Over Life
An important idea in this ode is that, art is superior to real life in certain respects. The trees
depicted on the urn will always enjoy spring. The flute-players shown on the urn will never tire
of playing tunes which are ever new. The passion of the lovers depicted on the urn will never
decline, and the beauty of the beloved will never fade. Heard melodies are sweet but those
unheard are sweeter. The music of the flute-players depicted on the urn has a sweetness which
music in real life can never possess.
The Duality of the Theme of the Poem

Keeping in mind the duality of his theme in the poem, it is clear that Keats deals with two kinds
of experience: (1) human life in actuality, and (2) the appreciation of an imaginary representation
of several human activities (love, music, community life, and religious ritual). The two kinds of
experience are related. Art alone can never satisfy us completely (because the urn is a cold
pastoral); it is only an imitation of reality. But this work of art can tell us something important
about the real or actual experience, the love passion that is so fleeting and transient. That is, the
essence of physical love is participation in the life-force and the continuing life process; only the
individual instance is transient and short-lived. “Beauty is Truth”, then, means that beauty is
total reality properly understood; that is, beauty is the true significance of things in our world and
in the ideal one.
The Significance of the Identification of Beauty and Truth
The line “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty” has troubled almost all critics who have dealt with
this ode. T.S. Eliot looks upon this line as a serious flaw in a beautiful poem. Middleton Murry
calls this line a troubling assertion which is an intrusion upon the poem, which does not grow out
of the poem, and which is not dramatically accommodated to it. Such is essentially Garrod’s
objection also.
Keats' ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

1. INTRODUCTION
The Genesis of This Ode
In the early months of 1819, Keats was living with his friend Brown at Wentworth Place,
Hampstead. In April a nightingale built her nest in the garden. Keats felt a tranquil and continual
joy in its song, and one morning, sitting in a chair on the grass-plot under a plum-tree, he
composed a poem containing his poetic feelings about the song of the nightingale. This was his
Ode to a Nightingale which was first printed in July, 1819. Subsequently it formed part of the
volume which appeared in 1820 entitled Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other
Poems.
The Same Train of Thought in Four of the Odes
Four of Keats’s odes, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode on a Grecian Urn, the Ode on
Melancholy, and To Autumn should be studied together. They were all written in 1819 and the
same train of thought runs through them all. One can even say that these four odes sum up
Keats’s philosophy.
The Most Passionately Human and Personal of the Odes

“The first-written of the four, the Ode to a Nightingale, is the most passionately human and
personal of them all”. It was written soon after the death of Keats’s brother Tom, to whom he
had been deeply attached and whom he nursed to the end. Keats was feeling keenly the tragedy
of a world in which a young man grows pale, becomes a skeleton, and meets his end prematurely
(“Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”). The song of the nightingale aroused
in him a longing to escape with it from this world of sorrows to the world of ideal beauty. The
song of the nightingale somehow symbolised to him a world of ideal beauty. “He did not think
of a nightingale as an individual bird, but of its song, which had been beautiful for centuries
and would continue to be beautiful long after his generation had passed away; and the
thought of this undying loveliness he contrasted bitterly with our feverishly sad and short life.
When, by the power of imagination he had left the world behind him and was absorbed in the
vision of beauty roused by the bird’s song, he longed for death rather than a return of
disillusionment.”
A Key Contrast in the Poem
The poem contrasts the immortality of the nightingale (as symbolised by its song) with the
mortality of human beings. It also contrasts the happiness and joy of the bird with the sufferings,
sorrows and afflictions of the human world where youth, beauty and love are all short-lived.
2. CRITICAL SUMMARY
Stanza 1
The Benumbing Effect of the Nightingale’s Song
The poet’s heart aches and his body is benumbed as he hears the song of a nightingale. He feels
like one who has taken a benumbing poison or a dulling drug. This effect is produced on him by
the happy song of the nightingale who is singing in a joyous, glorious voice among the green
beech-trees; and who is called by the poet a light-winged nymph of the trees.
The Effect of Languor Heightened by the Very Movement of the Verse
It is to be noted that the poet lapses away into a kind of swoon on hearing the ecstatic song of the
nightingale and he seeks oblivion. The following words in this stanza produce a cumulative
effect of drugged languor: “aches”, “drowsy numbness”, “pains”, “dull opiate”, “Lethe-
wards had sunk”. The very movement of the verse here contributes to the total effect of languor
that is produced.
The Excess of Happiness

It is an excess of happiness, occasioned by the bird’s song, that produces the mood of languor in
the poet. However, the narcotic effect is to some extent relieved by a feeling of renewed life that
is produced by a reference to the “light-winged Dryad of trees”, “the melodious plot of
beechen green”, and “summer”.
Stanza 2
The Poet’s Desire For Some Marvellous Wine
The poet craves for a drink of some marvellous wine brewed in the warm, gay and mirthful
regions of France, or a large cup of red wine fetched from the fountain of the Muses. He wants
this wine to enable him to leave this world of reality and to escape into the forest where he can
join the nightingale.
An Atmosphere of Warmth in this Stanza
The nightingale and its songs have given way, in this stanza, to other thoughts—thoughts of
wine, the colourful lands in which its grapes are grown, and the gaiety which it brings, A general
atmosphere of warmth predominates in this stanza. “Sun-burnt mirth” combines the idea of the
sun’s warmth with the warmth of joy in the merry-makers. This is a richly sensuous stanza with
its references to gaiety and merrymaking, the cool wine, the dancing, the blushful wine with its
bubbles winking at the brim. The poet’s desire for wine does not mean a desire for warmth and
gaiety; it is a desire for escape from the world of realities.
Stanza 3
The Sorrows in Human Life
The poet wishes to forget himself and escape from this world of perplexity and sorrow into the
forest to be in the company of the nightingale. Life, he says, offers a depressing spectacle with its
weariness, fever, and fret. This is a world in which people hear, each other’s groans, a world in
which palsy may attack the old and consumption may attack the young, in which merely to think
is to become sad, and in which both beauty and love are short-lived.
Most Pessimistic Lines
Here we have some of the most pessimistic lines in English poetry. Of course the picture of life
depicted here is one-sided, but it is nonetheless realistic and convincing. It cannot be doubted
that the amount of suffering in this world is far greater than the amount of happiness. Apart from
that, these lines echo the poet’s personal grief caused by the premature death of his brother Tom.
Although these lines are prompted chiefly by personal grief, yet their universal character has to
be recognised.
The Nightingale’s Happiness
The Nightingale is believed by the poet to be happy because it is not human, because it has never
known the weariness, the fever and fret of human existence. “And the poet knows too well that
the happiness is mentally following the bird into its world among the leaves cannot last, for he
is a human being after all, and what is human must pass away. His depression is thus implicit
in the happiness itself.”
Stanza 4
The Poet’s Use of His Imagination to Escape from Life
Dismissing the idea of wine, the poet decides to fly into the forest on the wings of his poetic
imagination. He rejects Bacchus and seeks the help of Poesy. The next moment he feels
transported into the forest. The moon is shining, surrounded by the stars, but the forest is dark
because very little light can penetrate the thickly-growing leaves of trees.
The Beauty of Nature
After having given expression to thoughts of human sorrow in the third stanza, the poet here
makes a vigorous effort to get back into a happy mood. Gloomy thoughts about the human lot are
now brushed aside, together with the possibility of wine. Seeking refuge in poetic fancy, he
draws pleasure from the glory of Nature. However, the picture of Nature in the second half of the
stanza has been criticised as being “affected” because of the reference to the “Queen-Moon”,
and the idea of the stars as fairies. “Keats is being self-consciously poetical in the bad sense, as
though he had gone back to the ‘pretty’ manner of Endymion. It is not accidental that he has
used the rather affected word “Poesy” here. The lines are exceedingly charming, and when we
have said that, we have made a point against them. This kind of charm is not what we have
come to accept from the mature Keats.”-—(Robin Mayhead)
Stanza 5
The Flowers in the Forest
The poet cannot see what flowers grow at his feet in the forest and what blossoms are on the fruit
trees. However, by the scents that fill the dark air, he can guess that the forest is full of white
hawthorns, sweet-briers, violets, and buds of musk-roses which will in due course attract
multitudes of flies on summer evenings.
A Richly Sensuous Stanza
This is again a richly sensuous stanza. The poet makes a delighted response to the sensuous
beauty of the world of Nature.
Stanza 6
The Poet’s Desire for Death
As he hears the nightingale’s song in the darkness, he remembers how on many occasions in his
life he has wished for death that would bring a release from the burden of existence. More than
ever before, he now feels a desire to die, though he would like to die a painless death: “To cease
upon the midnight with no pain.” The nightingale will continue to pour forth its ecstatic melody
even when he is dead and become completely deaf to it.
A Morbid Mood
The mood of the poet has again changed. He started the poem in a mood of ecstasy which
changed, into a mood of extreme sorrow in the third stanza. In the fourth and fifth stanzas, he
changed back into a joyous mood. Now he expresses a wish to die. In this stanza he is therefore
in a most morbid mood. The desire for death is obviously an unhealthy one and, though the
reader may have been sharing the preceding moods of the poet, he may not be able to share this
desire for death.
Stanza 7
The Mortality of Human Beings Versus the Nightingale’s Immortality
The poet now contrasts the mortality of human beings with the immortality of the nightingale.
The nightingale’s song, he argues, has not changed for centuries.
The voice of the nightingale which he now hears is perhaps the same as was heard in ancient
times by emperor and clown, the same as was heard by the miserable Ruth as she stood in the
alien corn. It is the same voice which has often cast a spell upon the enchanted windows of a
castle situated on the shore of a dangerous ocean in “fairy lands forlorn”.
Illogical Reasoning in this Stanza
There is something illogical about the poet’s attributing immortality to the nightingale but, of
course, he is referring to the continuity of the bird’s song which has remained unchanged through
the centuries. He certainly does not mean that the bird is literally immortal. He only takes the
nightingale’s song as a symbol of permanence. Generations pass, yet the song of the nightingale
continues from age to age. In the Ode On Melancholy, Keats accepts impermanence as
inevitable, but here he dwells upon the idea of permanence.
The Famous Closing Lines of this Stanza
The last two lines of the stanza have become famous for the sense of wonder and mystery which
they arouse. It is said that in these two lines Keats has touched the high watermark of
romanticism.
Stanza 8
The Poet’s Disillusionment
The word “forlorn” acts on the poet’s mind like the ringing of an alarm bell and reminds him of
his own forlorn condition. As the song of the nightingale becomes more distant, his imagination
which had carried him into the forest also decline and the poetic vision fades. He knows that he
is moving back from the region of poetic fancy to the common world of reality. After all, “the
fancy cannot cheat so well as she is famed to do.”
The Note of Frustration in the Final Stanza

In the concluding stanza, the poet introduces two new ideas. One is that even the song of the
nightingale cannot be heard constantly and that it must fade away before long. Secondly, the
poetic imagination itself has only brief flights and that, at the end of a poetic flight to beautiful
regions, one must return to the painful realities of life-. Thus the ode, which had opened on a
note of ecstasy, ends on a note of frustration.
3. A NOTE ON THE POET’S MOOD IN THE ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

Joy and Ecstasy in the Opening Two Stanzas
The poet’s mood in the two opening stanzas is one of joy and ecstasy which almost benumbs his
senses. This mood is due to the rapturous song of the nightingale. This mood leads him to a
desire for a beaker of wine by drinking which he can forget this world or sorrows and
misfortunes and fade away into the forest where the nightingale is singing its joyous song.
The Sense of the Tragedy of Human Life
The poet then expresses the sense of the tragedy of life and the sadness resulting therefrom. He
refers to the weariness, the fever, and the fret of human life. This is a world where men sit and
hear each other groan, where palsy shakes the few last hair of aged people, where young people
fall a prey to fatal diseases (like tuberculosis), where merely to think is to become sorrowful, and
where beauty and love are short-lived. Thus the mood of ecstasy with which the poem had
opened changes here into a mood of deep pessimism and despair.
The Mood of Delight in the Midst of Natural Beauty

The mood of deep pessimism and despair gives way to a mood of delight occasioned by his
imaginative contact with the beauty and glory of Nature. He has flown into the forest on the
wings of his imagination in spite of the retarding effect of the dullness of the brain. (The pure
reason or intellect hinders the free play of the imagination.) The moon, the stars, the flowers
growing at his feet relieve his sense of the tragedy of life.
A Pessimistic Mood Once Again
Next, we find the poet “half in love with easeful death”. He refers to this desire for death on
earlier occasions but at this moment especially he thinks it “rich to die”. This desire for depth
shows a morbidity in the poet. He strikes an unduly pessimistic note. Life has its sorrows and
griefs; beauty and love and youth are short-lived; but Nature has its joys, its charm, its glory. The
reason why the poet yields to a feeling of utter despair is that his personal circumstances are at
the back of his mind when he is writing the poem. His brother Tom had died of tuberculosis; he
himself suffered from this dreaded disease; and his love for Fanny Brawne had not been fulfilled.
The Poet’s Envy of the Nightingale’s Joy
The thought of his own death makes the poet contrast the mortality of human beings with the
immortality of the nightingale. He feels that the song of nightingale which he is now hearing is
the same as was heard in ancient times by emperor and clown, and by the tearful Ruth, the same
that often in the past had unlocked magic casements in the solitary countries of the fairies or the
legendary countries of romance. Having denied a feeling of envy of the nightingale’s joy in the
opening stanza, he now is undoubtedly in a mood of envying the immortality of the nightingale.
A desire to die, expressed in the preceding stanza, here imperceptibly leads him, though
implicitly, to envy the supposed immortality of the bird. In the final stanza, he is again overcome
by a feeling of melancholy because, not only is the nightingale’s song fading away, but also
because his imaginative flight into the forest has ended and he finds himself face to face with the
stern realities of life.
He finds that the nightingale’s song gives rise to an illusion, and illusion which fails, leaving the
listener alone with his cares and griefs.
A Masterpiece
The Ode to a Nightingale shows the ripeness and maturity of Keats’s poetic faculty. This poem is
truly a masterpiece, showing the splendour of Keats’s imagination on its pure romantic side, and
remarkable also for its note of reflection and meditation. The central idea here is the contrast of
the joy and beauty and apparent permanence of the nightingale’s song with the sorrows of human
life and the transitoriness of beauty and love in this world.
Its Melancholy, and the Note of Pessimism
A passionate melancholy broods over the whole poem. The passage describing the sorrows and
misfortunes of life is deeply pessimistic. The world is full of weariness, fever, and fret, and the
groans of suffering humanity. Palsy afflicts the old and premature, death overtakes the young. To
think here is to be full of sorrow; both beauty and love are short-lived.
The Reason for the Poet’s Despondency
Keats wrote this poem shortly after the death (from consumption) of his brother Tom to whom he
was deeply attached. He was also perhaps thinking of the premature death of Elizabeth Taylor.
He was therefore weighed down by a profound sense of the tragedy of life; and of that sense of
tragedy, this poem is a poignant expression.
The Desire to Die
The note of pessimism is found also in the lines where the poet expresses a desire to die, “to
cease upon the midnight with no pain”. When we remember that Keats actually died a
premature death, we realise the note of unconscious prophecy in these lines, which for this
reason become still more pathetic.
Sorrows of Life in General; and the Personal Griefs
The passionately personal and human character of this poem is thus obvious. It reveals Keats’s
sense of the tragedy of human life in general and his sense of personal suffering in particular.
The poem brings before our eyes a painful picture of the sorrows and griefs of human life, and at
the same time it conveys to us the melancholy and sadness which had afflicted Keats for various
reasons. The poem is the cry of a wounded soul.
Its Rich Sensuousness and Pictorial Quality

The poem is one of the finest examples of Keats’s pictorial quality and his rich sensuousness.
We have an abundance of rich, concrete, and sensuous imagery. The lines in which the poet
expresses a passionate desire for some Provincial wine or the red wine from the fountain of the
Muses have a rich appeal:
O for a draught of vintage, that hath been

Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
These lines bring before us a delightful picture of Provence with its fun and frolic, jollity, merry-
making, drinking and dancing. Similarly, the beaker full of the sparkling, blushful Hippocrene is
highly pleasing.
Then there is the magnificent picture of the moon shining in the sky and surrounded by stars,
looking like a queen surrounded by her attendant fairies:
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne.

Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays.
The rich feast of flowers that awaits us in the next stanza is one of the outstanding beauties of the
poem. Flowers, soft incense, the fruit trees, the white hawthorn, the eglantine, the fast-fading
violets, the coming musk-rose full of sweet juice—all this is a delight for our senses.
Apart from these sensuous pictures, there is also the vivid and pathetic image of Ruth when, sick
for home, she stood tearful amid the alien corn. This is a highly suggestive picture calling up
many associations to the mind of one who is acquainted with the Bible.
Its Lyric Intensity
The poem is a beautiful example of lyrical poetry, poetry which is the impassioned expression of
passionate feelings. The poem opens with a passionate feeling of joy akin to the benumbing
effect of some drug. This is followed by a passionate desire for wine. Then comes a passionate
melancholy born of the spectacle of sorrow in this world. Next is the passionate delight in
flowers and blossoms, followed by & passionate desire for death. The lyrical intensity of this ode
is, indeed, one of the reasons of its greatness as poetry.
Its Style
The poem is written in a superb style. It displays Keats’s power as a master of poetic language at
its highest. Keats here shows consummate skill in a choice of words and in making original and
highly expressive phrases. Certain phrases, expressions and lines continue to haunt the mind of
the reader long after he has read the poem.
A Striking Contrast in the Poem
In this poem the world of mankind and the world of the nightingale are contrasted with each
other. The listener in the human world responds to the song of the nightingale, and feels an
intense desire to find his way into the world in which the bird sings “of summer in full-throated
ease”. For the poet, the world of the nightingale is a world of richness and vitality, of deep
sensuousness, of natural beauty and fertility; this world appeals to the imagination and has its
own ideality.
The Poet’s Reverie and its End
The reverie into which the poet falls carries him deep into the “embalmed darkness” out of
which the bird is singing and deep into a communion in which he can make his peace even with
death. But the meditative trance cannot last. With the very first word of the eighth stanza, the
reverie is broken. The word “forlorn” occurs to the poet as the adjective describing the remote
and magical world suggested by the nightingale’s song. But the poet suddenly realises that this
word applies with greater precision to himself. The effect is that of an abrupt stumbling. With the
new and chilling meaning of “forlorn”, the song of the nightingale itself alters: it becomes a
“plaintive anthem”. The song becomes fainter. What had before the power to make the sorrow
in man fade away from a harsh and bitter world, now itself “fades” (line 75) and the poet is left
alone in the silence.
Two Issues in the Poem
The Ode to a Nightingale is a very rich poem. Two particular issues in it deserve attention. One
is the close connection that the poet establishes between pleasure and pain; and the other is the
connection between life and death.
The Double Effect of the Bird’s Song
The song of the nightingale has a curious double effect. It makes the poet’s heart “ache”, but this
ache results from the poet’s being too happy in the happiness of the nightingale. The song also
acts as an opiate, making the poet feel drowsy and benumbed. Opiates are used to deaden pain,
and in a sense the song of the bird does give the poet momentary relief from his unhappiness,
oppressed as he is with the “weariness, the fever, and the fret” of the world of humanity.
The Yearning to Escape from the Human World
Secondly, the nightingale’s song makes the poet yearn to escape from a world overshadowed
with death—”Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”, “Where but to think is to
be full of sorrow”. Yet when he has approached closest to the nightingale’s world, the highest
rapture that he can conceive of is to die—”To cease upon the midnight with no pain”. The
world of the nightingale is not a world untouched by death, but one in which death is not a
negative and blighting thing. The question that arises is, “What is it that prevents the poet from
entering the world of the nightingale ?” He tells us himself:
it is the dull brain that perplexes and retards. The beaker of wine for which he had earlier called,
and the free play of the imagination (“the viewless wings of Poesy”)—both have this in
common: they can release a man from the tyranny of the dull brain. The brain insists upon clarity
and logical order; it is an order that must be dissolved if the poet is to escape into the richer
world of the nightingale.
Keats' ODE TO AUTUMN

1. INTRODUCTION
The Striking Beauty of Autumn
This poem was written by Keats in September, 1819. He was greatly struck by the beauty of the
season. The air was fine, and there was a temperate sharpness about it. The weather seemed
“chaste”. The stubble-fields looked better than they did in spring. Keats was so impressed by the
beauty of the weather that he recorded his mood in the form of this ode.
One of Keats’s Finest Poems

The Ode to Autumn ranks among the finest poems of Keats. The treatment of the subject is
perfectly objective or impersonal. The poet keeps himself completely out of the picture. He only
describes certain sights and sounds without expressing his personal reaction to these sights and
sounds. The poem is a perfect Nature-lyric. No human sentiment finds expression; only the
beauty and bounty of Nature during autumn are described.
An Autobiographical Element in the Poem

Sometimes this ode is taken as having an autobiographical quality: it is possible to connect its
serenity with the way of Keats’s own life. However, it is almost certain that he simply tried to
catch the spirit of an autumn afternoon.
2. CRITICAL SUMMARY
The Progress of Thought and Feeling in the Poem
Here is a poem in which a season has been personified and made to live. In the first stanza, the
poet describes the fruits of autumn, the fruits coming to maturity in readiness for harvesting. In
the second stanza, autumn is personified as a woman present at the various operations of the
harvest and at cider-pressing. In the last stanza, the end of the year is associated with sunset; the
songs of spring are over and night is falling, but there is no feeling of sadness because autumn
has its own songs. The close of the ode, though solemn, breathes the spirit of hope.
The Fruits of Autumn
Autumn is a season of ripe fruitfulness. It is the time of the ripening of grapes, apples, gourds,
hazelnuts, etc. It is also the time when the bees suck the sweetness from “later flowers” and
n\ake honey. Thus autumn is pictured in the stanza as bringing all the fruits of earth to maturity
in readiness for harvesting.
The Occupations of Autumn
In the second stanza, autumn is seen in the person of a reaper, a winnower, a gleaner, and a
cider-presser. Reaping, winnowing, gleaning and cider-pressing are all operations connected
with the harvest and are, therefore, carried on during autumn. Autumn is depicted firstly as a
harvester sitting carelessly in the field during a winnowing operation; secondly, as a tired reaper
fallen asleep in the very midst of reaping; thirdly, as a gleaner walking homewards with a load
on the head; and fourthly, as a cider-presser watching intently the apple-juice flowing out of the
cider-press.
The Songs of Autumn

Autumn is not altogether devoid of music. If spring has its songs, autumn too has its sounds and
songs. In the evening, when the crimson light of the setting sun falls upon the stubble-fields, a
chorus of natural sounds is heard. The gnats utter their mournful sounds; the full-grown lambs
bleat loudly; the hedge-crickets chirp; the robin’s high and delicate notes are heard; and the
swallows twitter in the sky. In this last stanza the close of the year is associated with sunset and
night-fall.
Its Faultless Construction
This is the most faultless of Keats’s odes in point of construction. The first stanza gives us the
bounty of Autumn, the second describes the occupations of the season, and the last dwells upon
its sounds. Indeed, the poem is a complete and concrete picture of Autumn, “the season of mists
and mellow fruitfulness”.
Its Sensuousness
The bounty of Autumn has been described with all its sensuous appeal. The vines suggesting
grapes, the apples, the gourds, the hazels with their sweet kernel, the bees suggesting honey—all
these appeal to our senses of taste and smell. The whole landscape is made to appear fresh and
scented. There is great concentration in each line of the first stanza. Each line is like the branch
of a fruit-tree laden with fruit to the breaking-point.
Its Vivid Imagery

The second stanza contains some of the most vivid pictures in English poetry. Keats’s pictorial
quality is here seen at its best. Autumn is personified and presented to us in the figure of the
winnower, “sitting careless on a granary floor”, the reaper “on a half-reaped furrow sound
asleep”, the gleaner keeping “steady thy laden head across a brook”, and a spectator watching
with patient look a cider-press and the last oozings therefrom. The reaper, the winnower, the
gleaner, and the cider-presser symbolise Autumn. These pictures make the poem human and
universal because the eternal labours of man are brought before the eyes of the reader.
The Poet’s Keen Observation of Nature
The third stanza is a collection of the varied sounds of Autumn—the choir of gnats, the bleating
of lambs, the singing of crickets, the whistling of red-breasts, and the twittering of swallows.
Keats’s interest in small and homely creatures is fully evidenced in these lines. The whole poem
demonstrates Keats’s interest in Nature and his keen and minute observation of natural sights and
sounds. Keats’s responsiveness and sensitivity to natural phenomena is one of the striking
qualities of his poetry.
Its Objectivity and its Greek Character

The poem is characterised by complete objectivity. The poet keeps himself absolutely out of the
picture. Nor docs he express any emotion whether of joy or melancholy. He gives the objects of
feeling, not the feeling itself. The poem is written in a calm and serene mood. There is no
discontent, no anguish, no bitterness of any kind. There is no philosophy in the poem, no
allegory, no inner meaning. We are just brought face to face with “Nature in all her richness of
tint and form”. The poem breathes the spirit of Greek poetry. In fact, it is one of the most Greek
compositions by Keats. There is the Greek touch in the personification of Autumn and there is
the Greek note in the poet’s impersonal manner of dwelling upon Nature.
Felicity of Diction
We have here the usual felicity of diction for which Keats is famous. Phrases like “mellow
fruitfulness”, “maturing sun”, “hair soft-lifted”, “barred clouds” which “bloom the soft-
dying day”, “hilly bourn” are examples of Keats’s happy coinages. Nor is poetic artifice
wanting to add beauty to the verse. The alliteration in the following lines is, for instance,
noteworthy:
To smell 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.
Several words here contain the same “z” sound—hazel, shells, flowers, bees, days, cease, cells.
The abundance of “m” sound in these lines is also noteworthy: plump, more, warm, summer,
brimni’d clammy.
Its Form
The rhyme-scheme in this ode is the same (except for a little variation) in all the stanzas each of
which consists of 11 lines. Thus it is a “regular” ode.
A Critic’s Comment
“Most satisfying of all the Odes, in thought and expression, is the Ode To Autumn. Most
satisfying because, for all the splendour of diction in the others, there are times when the poetic
fire dwindles for a moment, whereas in this ode, from its inception to its close, matter and
manner are not only superbly blended, but every line carries its noble freight of beauty. The first
stanza is a symphony of colour, the second a symphony of movement, the third a symphony of
sound. The artist shapes the first and last, and in the midst the man, the thinker, gives us its
human significance. Thus is the poem perfected, its sensuous imagery enveloping as it were its
vital idea.” (A. Compton-Rickett)
PHILIP LARKIN All

Important Questions
PHILIP LARKIN AS A MOVEMENT POET
What is a Movement Poetry?

The movement poetry stands for a group of poets who were writing their poems in the fifties and
sixties of the 20th century. A Dictionary of Literary Terms by MARTIN GRAY defines the term
of 'The Movement' in these words:
"The Movement to the kind of poetry written by a group of poets in 1950s which was quite
different from the modernist poetry.”
‘The Movement’ in 1953s for poems written by KINGSLEY AMIS, JOHN WAIN,
ELIZABETH JENNINGS, THOM GUM, DONALD DAVIE and D.J.ENRIGHT. After some
time a work of the above poets was published with the name 'New Lines Anthology' by
ROBERT CONQUEST.”
LARKIN is known as the movement poet. In the introduction to this anthology, ROBERT
CONQUEST wrote that these poems were quite different from the poems written in the thirties
and forties. This new poetry does not follow the great system or fixed rules of poetry. This new
poetry is free from mystical and logical elements. It is most empirical in its attitude to all things.
The Temperate Zone of the Movement
Actually, the poets of the Movement were not an organized group with any well-defined purpose
of poetry. Each poet of this group wrote in a different way from the poetry of each member of
this group. Even then there were certain features in their poetry. About the common features,
LARKIN comments:
“The members of this group did not have many artistic aims in common but that they agreed,
in general, in things which they found funny or humorous.”
LARKIN has not given any clear definition of the poetry of the Movement. Talking about his
own poetry, he emphasized the expository, documentary, empirical, and rational elements in his
poems; and these qualities were evident in the work of other members of the group. While
LARKIN gave high praise to the poetry of THOMAS HARDY, he tried to discredit the work of
the modernist poets such as T.S. Eliot, EZRA POUND, and even W.B. Yeats. Actually,
LARKIN had, in the beginning, been deeply influenced by the symbolist poetry of W.B. YEATS
and of the French poets of the late nineteenth century. As a critic views that:
"Larkin’s poetry belongs to a temperate zone"
But subsequently, he tried to shed this symbolist and modernist influence in favour of the kind of
poetry that THOMAS HARDY and other traditionalists had written.
The Nature of Modernist Poetry and the Aims of the Movement
The poetry of the Movement aims at stark realism. It is rational, empirical, and argumentative; it
employs traditional syntax, using ordinary diction; and it is most often colloquial in style. It
employs symbols which tend to make it difficult to understand; it is most often vague in its
meaning. It is highly allusive. It is very learned and demands from the reader a high degree of
intelligence and vast knowledge. It generally tends to obscurity. The poetry of the Movement
seeks to establish a direct relationship between the poet and his audience, and that is why it deals
with ordinary and common themes in an ordinary and plain style. Thus one can say that the most
of LARKIN ’s poems represent the aims of the Movement and that some of his poems represent
the symbolism or the modernist mode of writing. Another critic remarks:
“LARKIN is a middle course between movement and modern poetry.”
Various poems of the Movement Poetry
The poem entitled At Grass is realistic in every detail. One of the horses is depicted as eating the
grass growing on the ground, while another is depicted as moving about and then standing
‘anonymous’ once again. This poem then contains a picture of how these race-horses were at one
time the cynosure of all eyes, and how they won the races, thus bringing honour to themselves
and financial gain to those spectators who had staked their money on the hopefuls.
The poem Church Going is also realistic in almost every detail. This poem depicts the decline
of religious faith and a decrease in the number of people attending church services. Entering a
church, LARKIN looks around himself and describes everything that meets his eyes, the small
neat organ, the fading flowers which had been placed there on Sunday last, the Bibles, and so on.
He wonders what would happen to the churches when people have lost their faith completely. He
speculates upon the future of these churches some of which might become museums with their
display. He says:
“A few cathedrals chronically on show, / Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases, /
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.”
In course of time, he says, superstitious women might visit the forsaken churches to look for
remedies for the ailments of their children. And thus the poem proceeds in a realistic manner,
also employing argument and reasoning. The poem is written in regular stanzas of nine lines
each, with nothing innovative or fanciful either about the diction or about the imagery. Although
it is a poem about religion and religious faith, there are no transcendental effects or flourishes.
Even the final stanza, which acknowledges the enduring value of a certain aspect of the
churches, is based on stark common sense.
He says :
“Since someone will forever be surprising / A hunger in himself to be more serious, / And
gravitating with it to this ground, / Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in ...”
What is more, the poem is written in a colloquial style which is one of the conspicuous features
of the anti-modernist poetry. Here, then, is a poem which belongs wholly to the category known
as the Movement.
The poem Mr Bleaney is again wholly argumentative and wholly realistic in its imagery and
even in its theme. Even the criterion suggested for the judging of the value of a man’s life is
based on sheer common sense. The use of irony to links it with the poetry of the Movement.
There is nothing in this poem to suggest the symbolist influence. And the most conspicuous
feature of this poem is the use of irony. He says:
“How we live measures our own nature”
Here is, then, a full specimen of the poetry of the Movement. Faith Healing is, again, a
Movement poem. Here we have a realistic description of the scene and the event which
constitute the main substance of the poem. The diction and the syntax are of the traditional kind,
as is the rhyme-scheme. There is also a marked element of irony behind the poem. The words
‘twenty seconds only, scarcely pausing and directing God imply ritualistic and mechanical
attitudes instead of an attitude of humility which we expect from a preacher. The use of such
words as exiled (from the presence of the evangelist) and losing thoughts is intended as a
mockery of the procedure being followed by the evangelist. Furthermore, the poem is written in
a colloquial style:
“Now, dear child, /What’s wrong”
Though in some lines the diction does become unusual:
“Their thick tongues blort, their eyes squeeze grief, a crowd / Of huge unheard answers jam
and rejoice”
The process called faith healing is well-known to people, not only to the people in the West but
also to the Indian people who are even more gullible than the Westerners. So the poem belongs
to the Movement more from the point of view of its content than from that of style.
Another Movement poem is Dockery and Son. Here we have an argumentative poem, with
logical reasoning about a man’s having a wife and a son, and a man’s not having a wife and a
son. The poem is analytical, and more of an intellectual piece than an emotional one. The diction,
the syntax, and the rhymes-scheme are traditional in this poem too. The opening of the poem
contains a bit, of realistic conversation. The realism of the lines such as the following is also
noteworthy:
“And ate an awful pie, and walked along / The platform to its end to see the ranged / Joining
and parting lines reflect a strong / Unhindered moon.”
The poem called Water begins like a Movement poem because of the irony behind the poet’s
presumption that he might be invited to construct a new religion. There is irony even in the use
of the word ‘construct’ and behind the notion of anybody being asked to construct a religion.
But the closing lines are obviously symbolic. The poet’s intention to raise the glass of water
reminds us of the raising of the chalice by the priest during the Holy Communion. “Any-angled
light congregating on the water” in the glass indicates the radiance of both the light and the water
on which the light would congregate. This phrase also suggests the essence of all religions
because of the consecration of water which is the symbol of life. Indeed,-the closing lines are
replete with associations and suggestions, though these are of a vague nature and somewhat
mystifying. Here, then, is a poem in which we have a combination of the Modernist and the anti-
Modernist elements so that the poem really belongs to the temperate zone of the poetic scene of
the Movement.
High Windows is another poem in which a couple of the characteristics of Movement poetry
combine with some Modernist ones. This poem has a colloquial beginning, but it ends with
symbolic lines. The colloquial manner is obvious in the opening lines:
“When I see a couple of kids / And guess he’s f-ing her and she’s / Taking pills.”
These lines and some of those which follow contain a realistic picture and realistic thinking.
The poem Sad Steps also has a colloquial opening. The poet says that after a piss, walking back
to his bed, he looked at the sky through the window-curtains and saw the moon dashing through
the clouds. Then the picture of the moon and the clouds are perfectly realistic. But the Modernist
quality of symbolism is found in the lines which follow. The moon is regarded as a medallion of
art and a lozenge of love. These epithets for the moon are evidently- Modernist. Then there is the
unusual diction:
‘wolves of memory and commencements.’
And then the moon acquires a symbolic significance because its ‘wide stare’ reminds the poet of
the strength which he possessed and the pain he experienced during the years of his youth.
To Conclude, one can say that LARKIN belongs to the movement which was shaping itself in
the 1950s and it is commonly called as “The Movement”. The poets of this movement were
quite new in their approach to the purpose of poetry. They were united by a negative
determination to avoid that principle and follow stark realism. A more positive trade which
bound them together was their detestation of the modernism which EZRA POUND and T.S.
ELIOT had ushered into English poetry.
Themes in Larkin’s poetry

PHILIP LARKIN' s poetry has a variety of themes: such as religion, melancholy, pessimism,
realism, isolation, love, nature, social chaos, alienation, boredom, death, time and sex etc. Some
critics have pointed out the narrowness of his range of themes, while his admirers have expressed
their praise for his distinctive treatment of these themes but his limited work has unlimited depth.
There are many themes in his poetry which are as follow:
1- Religion is the most prominent and dominant theme of his poetry. Larkin has composed his
poetry in the context of his temperament and of his personal views on life, religion, and religious
dogmas. He shares his thoughts about God, religion and the existing scenario of religious beliefs
of different classes of society in one of his poems, ‘Church Going’ in a realistic manner. His
poem ‘Church Going’ chronicles the account of that time, when people had become suspicious
of the existence of God and religion. Larkin’s sarcasm is seen from the very first line of the
poem:
“Once I am sure there's nothing going on.”
The description of the church would be familiar to anyone who has visited a small parish church
in Britain. The layout is typical of the architecture prevalent in the Church of England, with a
central aisle flanked by wooden pews with cushioned kneelers and prayer books placed on small
shelves on the backs of the pews. An altar rail separates the sanctuary on the east end from the
rest of the church. Behind the altar rail, one sees a pulpit on the left, a lectern on the right, and in
the centre a large altar or communion table. Large Bibles are normally kept open to the day's
reading from both pulpit and lectern. Although the narrator himself is not an active member of
the Church, he nonetheless mounts the lectern and reads the lesson, even closing with the words
"Here endeth the lesson," (which would not be in the Bible itself -- suggesting the narrator
recalls them from memory) precisely as a lay reader would during a service. He then returns to
his persona as a non-religious tourist, dropping a sixpence (roughly equivalent to a quarter in
U.S. terms) into the collection box and signing the visitor book.
The narrator resolves this contradiction with an understanding that the value of churches and
religion lies in what he calls their seriousness, or their long tradition of being a place concerned
with the great and meaningful issues of life and death, as opposed to the ordinary and every day.
The narrator finally understands his own reason for seeking out churches and the purpose of the
churches he seeks in the final two stanzas:
“It pleases me to stand in silence here; / A serious house on serious earth it is, ... / And that
much never can be obsolete, / Since someone will forever be surprising / A hunger in himself
to be more serious, / And gravitating with it to this ground, / Which, he once heard, was
proper to grow wise in ...”
2- Melancholy which means "a deep feeling of sadness that lasts for a long time and often
cannot be explained". Melancholy embraces all his themes. This is also the most prominent and
dominant theme of his poetry. It is because of his incurable pessimistic attitude. ERIC
HOMBERGER, in 'The Art of the Rea', describes him as:
"The saddest heart in the post-war supermarket".
LARKIN 's attitude in his poem "Ambulances" is pessimistic with an atmosphere of pathos and
melancholy hovering over it. The poem shows the hollowness and emptiness of a modern man
who has no time to show love and sympathy for a sick man, he says:
"And since the solving emptiness / That lays just under all we do."
That modern man is devoid of sympathy, he only pays lip service to the sick man, but no
practical solution.
3- The element of Chaos which means "a state of complete confusion and lack order" and
Destruction is distinct in LARKIN' s poetry, as his poem MCMXIV(1914).It illuminates the
poet's impression of the post-war world. LARKIN fails to come out of the horrors of war. His
poetry revolves around the disastrous and chaotic effects of war. He minutely observes the
chaotic social, political, economic and theological system. He discusses the chaotic situation in
which people were forced to migrate to villages in search of shelter. LARKIN sympathises with
the lost generation and criticizes at the craze for war.
4- His poem, "Church Going" shows Nihilism which means ''a philosophical doctrine that
suggests the lack of belief in one or more reputedly meaningful aspects of life'' and Pessimism
which means ''a state of mind in which one anticipates undesirable outcomes or believes that the
evil or hardships in life outweigh the good or luxuries.'' ANDREW MOTION says that:
"Larkin has often been regarded as a hopeless, inflexible pessimist" Church Going deals with
contemporary agnosticism. The narrator in this poem is very skeptical about churches. LARKIN
's dilemma is not whether to believe in God or not, but what a man can replace with God.
Though the 'Church' is the symbol of faith, peace and purity yet in the modern age people have
lost faith in Church. He says:
"Who will be the last, the very / Last to seek this place for what It was."
And further, he says that:
"Shall we avoid them as unlucky places? "
As for as the nihilism is concerned, LARKIN talks about the negation of life and shows his
disgust with the modern civilization.
5- Realism is also a dominant theme in LARKIN 's poetry. In Church Going, it shows the
disintegration of religion and church as an institution, that people are losing faith in existing
Church and Christianity. And Church has failed to prove its importance and value in the society.
In "Mr Bleaney", Larkin has described the life of an ordinary man. Mr Bleaney is actually a post-
war tattered person who doesn't realise the importance of time. He observes that the room is dirty
and there is no room for books. It also contains autobiographical elements. MCMXIV is based
on reality, it shows the condition of people just before the war, it also highlights the miserable
condition of the people whereas, the people are simple and innocent the title of the poem also
stresses that the era of peace before the war can never retreat. He says:
" Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently / As if they were stretched outside the Oval
and Villa Park. "
"Ambulances" is also a very realistic poem, it shows the picture of the post-war world, where
people are sick and dying day and night.
6- Loneliness and Alienation which means "a sense of not belonging, either to a community or
to one's own sense of self" are the recurrent themes of LARKIN. His poem "Mr Bleaney" is
about the wretched plight of modern man and its pleasures. MR . BLEANEY lives in abject
poverty because of economic pressures. The poet satirises at the modern civilization which is
going to dogs. It is full of chaos and there is no hope for betterment in the life of a common man.
7- Love is another significant theme of his poetry. He regards love as a supreme illusion. Love
comes in the guise of melancholy. His poetry shows that modern man has no love and sympathy
for others. So, he doesn't depict love as very ardent or satisfying passion. He believes that
everyone is sure to be disappointed in love. His poem "No Road" depicts the impossibility of
the fulfilment of love. He always tries to explore the gap between what one expects in love and
what he receives in it as MR BLEANEY and the man in Ambulance both are deprived of love in
their lives.
8- LARKIN’s pessimism leads him to contemplate about Death. It is the dominant theme in his
poetry. His imagination is always gripped with the idea of death which made him a
contemplative soul. Almost every critic noted his obsession with death. He emphasizes on the
omnipresence of death. His poem "Ambulances" represents death. He says that the busy routine
of an urban neighbourhood is disturbed by the sudden emergence of an ambulance. ANDREW
MOTION r emarks:
“The poem "Ambulances" modestly and devoutly collects evidence of ordinary life to create a
truth which can be universally acknowledged.”
The sight of the graves makes a man wiser, therefore, every grave reminds the thoughts of death.
It is ‘Ambulances’, however, that provides us with the bluntest depiction of human mortality,
with its vivid descriptions of illness and death. The poem exposes:
“The solving emptiness / That lies just under all we do.”
Death itself figures as a subject in 'Aubade'. He works all day long and drinks at night while
'unresting death' draws nearer to him every day and his mind is blank without any thought
about how and when he will die. Work may also help to combat the thought of death, but it
cannot stave it off. So, the poet says in 'Toad Revised':
"Give me your arm, old toad: / Help me down Cemetery Road."
9- The theme of Boredom and Sadness also rules over LARKIN 's poetry. The insignificance of
man is described in his poem going. LARKIN writes in 'Dockery and Son' that 'life is first
boredom'. His rejection of life was due to the fact that it never exercised any fascination for
him. He says:
"Whether or not we use it live, it goes. "
Again, in "Dockery and Son", he says:
"Childhood for him was a forgotten boredom."
10- Nature is represented in LARKIN 's poetry as impersonal and neutral. He doesn't take nature
as holy mother; rather it comes in the clock of chaos and destruction. He says:
"Nature is impersonal and neutral."
So, he doesn't highlight the beauty of nature but he only gives the description of canals, civic
life, village and industry. However, he imparts a moralizing power to nature as he says that the
trees don't allow people to believe in their immortality. The trees renew themselves every year
and invite men to follow their example of refreshing the life.
11- LARKIN' s poetry reveals his awareness of the passing of Time, that's why he considers that
the man is a salve of time. He vividly discusses the adverse effects of time on man. Like
HARDY , he is obsessed with the destructive nature of time. The three phases of time, present,
past and future are mutually exclusive but not oblivious. He says himself in "Reference Back":
"Though our element is time,/ We are not suited to the long perspectives / Open at each
instant of our lives. / They link us to our losses."
Deep and profound is the influence of the social and political atmosphere of his time on Larkin’s
poetry. Larkin’s realistic approach towards his Time makes him write what he has written. We
can see the true portrait of post-war England in Larkin’s collection of poetry, or it can be said
that his poetry is greatly reinforced by the cataclysmic scenario of post-war England.
Time links us to our past. The dreams and hopes which we fondly cherished are blasted as we
grow old and we are overcome with a sense of loss. "There is a double cruelty in time'. P.R.
KING comments:
"It both reminds us what we might have had, and turns what we do have into a sense of
disappointment."
12- Sex is one of Larkin’s main themes. He talks about people doing it, his lack of it, and his
desperate desire for some of it. Larkin obviously isn’t getting any sexual fulfilment from anyone
and he is unafraid to show that. BRUCE MEYER , a poetry critic, said of Larkin’s book High
WINDOWS,
“Larkin’s poetry shows his pathetic and unattainable desires for love, passion, and human
contact.”
Another thing that LARKIN 's poetry does is make people relate to his problems and feelings
and also desire the things he wants. LARKIN invokes his own jealousy of people who are having
sex with his readers.
LARKIN targets people who aren’t getting sexual fulfilment and makes them feel the same way
he does: unhappy with their current predicament (not having sex) and possessing a desire to
change this situation. Again BRUCE MEYER , “High Windows is about the sexual
“When I see a couple of kids / And guess he’s fucking her… Everyone old has dreamed of all
their lives- Bonds and gestures pushed to one side.”
In Conclude , one can say that LARKIN , being a modern poet, has taken up the themes of
religion, melancholy, pessimism, realism, isolation, love, nature, social chaos, alienation,
boredom, death, time and sex in his poetry. This approach is quite clear from his treatment of the
questions of belief knowledge and perceptions. All these things were necessary because of the
conditions of Post War England and also his treatment of these themes is very unique, realistic
and convincing.
S.T Coleridge
Important Question
S.T Coleridge As A Supernatural Poet
The term supernatural is used for events and beings which are above the order of nature and
which are out or beyond the ordinary laws of cause and effect in the human world. Coleridge is
indisputably poet of the supernatural and he introduces a new type of supernaturalism.
1: Refined and subjective:
The supernaturalism in Coleridge is refined and subjective. His supernatural is as “the spot on
the brain that will show itself out”. Its pleasure is not seen by the eye, it is felt by the mind as in
“The Ancient Mariner”, the horror of the mariner’s face excites in the mind.
“I moved my lips, the pilot shrieked

And fell down in a fit.”
2: Suggestiveness:
Coleridge’s supernaturalism is highly suggestive, intuitive and subjective that makes it effective.
He drops hints of supernatural happenings. The mariner’s holding the Guest with glittering eye
suggests some supernatural events to follow. These suggestions also prepare our mind for further
supernatural incidents. So, Coleridge’s supernaturalism has a long lasting effect on our minds.
3: Vagueness:
Mystery surrounds the supernatural of Coleridge. Everything is dim and vague; nothing is made
very apparent and clear. Coleridge does not place all his cards on the table; much is held back for
the sake of mystery and suspense. So mystery surrounds everything and the readers are left
guessing. The poet excites curiosity, but does not gratify it.
4: Indefiniteness:
The supernatural in Coleridge does not have any definite or fixed character. It is difficult to say
how much of it is real and how much of it is merely a subjective illusion. It becomes difficult to
access an objective as a particular experience or pure hallucination.
5: Occult Forces:
Coleridge makes the supernatural look like natural and convincing manner. The nature of the
supernatural in Coleridge makes the suspension of disbelief easily possible. He uses occult forces
as in “The Ancient Mariner” the wedding-guest is held by the glittering eye af the mariner.
Garaldine’s spell in “Christabel” holds the tongue of Christabel by a ‘hissing sound’. Such
forces create delusion.
6: Creation of Proper Atmosphere:
The creation of proper atmosphere is the triumph of Coleridge’s art. A proper atmosphere is a
remarkable way in which Coleridge secures the willing suspension of disbelief, is skilfully
weaving for the appearance of the supernatural.
(i) Is the night cilly and dark?

The night is chilly, but not dark.
(ii) The thin grey cloud is spread on high
It covers but not hides the sky.
7: The Fusion of the Natural and the Supernatural:
Another trait which makes Coleridge’s supernatural poetry more valuable is the Fusion of the
natural with supernatural. Actually he presents the natural things in a supernatural and
mysterious way.
8: Flight to Medieval World:
S.T. Coleridge’s treatment of the supernatural is connected with his medievalism. He takes his
flight to the medieval world and arouses a sense of the supernatural mystery by taking the
imagination to far off lands and unknown places, as an ancient castle in “Christabel” and “The
Ancient Mariner” has medieval touch as ‘the cross-bow’, ‘the shivering hermit’ and ‘prayer to
Mary Queen’.
9: Symbol of the Mystery:

Coleridge’s supernaturalism is the symbol of the mystery of love and love is the mystery of all
the creation of God. Love is the major theme of “The Ancient Mariner”. Coleridge thinks that
love is not only a human instinct, but it is also the instinct of all the living organisms.
“He prayeth well’ who loveth well’

Both man, and bird, and beast.”
10: Psychological Manner:
S.T. Coleridge handles the supernatural in a psychological manner. He does not invent wonders
but presents the supernatural as subtle mental states. He took up the marvellous not for the sake
of thrill and excitement’ but for the sense of mystery that it awakens in the mind. There is little
mystery visible in Garaldine; but the effect is more successful because it is psychological.

Poetry 2

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MA English Part 2

Paper 1 (Poetry) All Important notes

William Blake All Important Questions

PHILIP LARKIN All Important Questions

Notes Prepared By Prof. Tahir Islam

William Blake All

“Is that trembling cry a song?

“Then cherish pity, lest you drive

“Is this a holy thing to see

Critical Analysis of William Blake’s Tyger

‘Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright

‘What immortal hand and eye,

“What the hammer? what the chain?

“Did he smile his work to see?

William Blake’s Romanticism

“Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

“These flowers of London town!

Seated in companies they sit

“When the stars threw down their spears,

“In every voice, in every ban.

William Blake’s Symbolism

“O Rose, thou art sick!”

“And their ways are fill’d with thorns

“In the morning glad I see

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

Seamus Heaney All

‘Any other root crops’?

The constable is questioning; he is inquiring. It is an allegory of fault finding by the authorities

Heaney as a Non-Political Poet

This other man I had dreamed

To some who are near my heart,

She tightened her tore on him

Tell-tale skin and teeth

Heating in sunlight, the ‘spud’

It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass

Seamus Heaney's Casting and Gathering (for Ted

I love hushed air. I trust contrariness.

This poem is a beautiful example of advocating compromise but compromise may be a

Seamus Heaney’s “The Toome Road”

“with their backdoors on the latch” (11).

Keats All Important

Art is Superior to Life

The Town Emptied of its Folk

Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty

Concrete and Sensuous Imagery

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

The Superiority of Art Over Life

The Duality of the Theme of the Poem

The Significance of the Identification of Beauty and Truth

Keats' ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

The Same Train of Thought in Four of the Odes

The Most Passionately Human and Personal of the Odes

A Key Contrast in the Poem

The Effect of Languor Heightened by the Very Movement of the Verse

The Excess of Happiness

An Atmosphere of Warmth in this Stanza

Most Pessimistic Lines

The Nightingale’s Happiness

The Beauty of Nature

The Flowers in the Forest

A Richly Sensuous Stanza