Critical Analysis | Shall I Compare Thee? | Shakespeare

 Fastidiously crafted with beautiful figures of speech, this poem is one of a kind!

The iambic pentameter works flawlessly, the imagery is blissful and rhyming words are icings on the cake.

We understand the importance or appreciate the beauty of certain things only when it gets lost or compared. Shakespeare, here, exploits this psyche in humans to discuss the beauty of someone, who, (according to the poet) has qualities that surpass a summer's day. 

In the Renaissance, when Shakespeare wrote, the sonnet was an extremely popular form of expression. Here, we have the speaker talking directly to his beloved

The sonnet carries a strict rhyme scheme - abab cdcd efefgg.

It is 14 lines in 3 quatrains consisting of 4 lines each and a rhyming couplet intended at the end.

The poet starts with a proposition. "Shall I", says the bard, "compare thee to a summer's day". he starts praising his dear friend without ostentation but as the sonnet progresses, his persona is built up into that of a perfect being.

The poet's beloved's beauty is brought out in comparison. This continues in the octave.

But at the start of the third quatrain is where the "turn" is. And the poet marks this turn with a majestic line, "..But thy summer shall not fade". This sentence reverberates like a stoke on a gong. He gives answers to the proposition he proposed in the preceding eight lines. 

And the couplet is a summary statement/ a resolution to the poem itself.

He says that even summer is mortal as "..it hath all too short a date". A Latin expression, Tempus fugit comes to mind here. It means that time this fleeting. Summer is all too short, spring moves to summer, which moves to fall, which moves to winter, i.e., it is transient. 

This is where one is reminded of pastoral poetry.

In layman's terms, the decrease in the beauty of a beautiful thing is directly proportional to time. It is also spiled by accidental or by natural means. But his beloved's beauty is frozen in time. This is due to the immortalization spell of the Bard.

He achieves that through the couplet. As long as humans live, the sonnet will live on and thus his dear beloved's beauty 'lives'

Time's malevolent character might destroy her physically but not psychologically(in the minds of posterity) This is so beautiful because here we are 400+ years later reading the poet's sonnet and pondering at the beloved's beauty. 

Was she so beautiful that the most expressive man of the Renaissance wanted to immortalize her?

We naturally ponder and as a result, her beauty is reborn upon each reading of the sonnet.

This poem is not performing CPR on his beloved's corpse every time this poem is read. The last lines are a metaphor.

Capturing his beloved's loveliness in a sonnet is a way to defeat the grave. 

This poem has also stood the vagaries of time as poetry is an effective time machine

On His Blindness- Critical Analysis

Some of my thoughts on the poem "On His Blindness" 

                   - by John Milton...

God works in mysterious ways.

For aeons, one question remains unanswered-- is God benefiting from humanity?

This essay tries to answer that proposition and discuss how Milton's personal experiences are universalised as justification of the ways of God to men.

Milton goes blind age of 44 (roughly half his lifetime). 

Losing one's eyesight is obviously a profoundly troubling one. The blind person is suddenly at risk in all kinds of ways. 

The special tragedy of this particular speaker is that he loses his sight at an unusually early stage of his life. He now inhabits a world that seems "dark" as well as "wide", thus doubly challenging.

Predicaments happen to all. Whether one gets out of it or gets inundated in it largely depends on one's outlook. Here we are given an example of a physical disability of Milton.

To help his/her creation God or nature has designed the human psyche in such a way that it has its own distinct way of compensating for a physical disability. 

At the dawn of the new millennium came the news of the human genome had been decoded. All the 20,000 genes that we carry today are similar to those of our ancestors.  

It is said that God or nature has given us this instinct because the need to achieve, like the need to reproduce, the need to eat, and the need to drink, is too important to be left to chance. 

History shows that the hunger for achievement is a highly evolved one and undoubtedly the strongest. Humans have succeeded in the battle of survival of the fittest only due to this inherited psyche. 

It has given man the throne of blue marble.

Losing one's physical ability is a deeply troubling one. For a lucky few their disability can be rectified but others find themselves in a challenging position. For the latter, it is only acceptance that takes them forward. Their worlds are depressing for a while but as they say, time heals everything.

All of us get frustrated at times and many blame the creator. Milton in his poem too gets frustrated and angry at God, but only during those periods of nebulous drift that one introspects and gets an understanding of life.

Thus, every problem is an opportunity.

At the volta of the sonnet, the answer to Milton's foolish question is given by patience- a virtue that has been decorated by Christian art because of its role in helping one to achieve courage and wisdom.

God does not need man's work (= his own gifts), it is like a child trying to feed its mother. Of course, the love is appreciated but it is obvious. 

Milton, for example like a true Christian desires, to work for God by serving him, but this desire of his stems from his wish to avoid being chided on the judgment day. 

Milton compares God to a king. Kings have unlimited resources, especially if they control land as large as earth (= God). 

The comparison is done to contrast God with the Lord in the biblical parable.

He has plenty of minions to do their bidding. It does not matter if one fulfills the role or not.

To answer the proposition posted in the introduction, we must understand why we are on this planet. Charles Darwin made a monkey out of us and the theory of evolution given by him 150 years ago says that we are here by chance, from inanimate things life evolved; so the question of whether God benefits from humanity is answered in the negative. 

They only serve him who "best bear his mild yoke".

When we exercise humble acceptance of the circumstances and rely on God to sustain us, we inevitably become stronger.

Childhood (Poem Analysis)

 Childhood -  Markus Natten

When did my childhood go?

Was it the day I ceased to be eleven.
Was it the time I realised that Hell and Heaven,
Could not be found in Geography,
And therefore could not be,
Was that the day!
When did my childhood go?
Was it the time I realised that adults were not
All they seemed to be,
They talked of love and preached of love,
But did not act so lovingly,
Was that the day!
When did my childhood go?
Was it when I found my mind was really mine,
To use whichever way I choose,
Producing thoughts that were not those of other people
But my own and mine alone
Was that the day!
Where did my childhood go?
It went to some forgotten place,
That is hidden in an infant’s face,
That’s all I know.

This poem encapsulates the reality- that is the unveiling of the shade the childhood inundates oneself into.

This reality is felt at the onset of mental maturity, as early as the age of 11, when innocence starts to erode.

Childhood days are, for most of us; nothing less than utopia (at least when we compare them with the current situation!). You may be aware of your rights as a citizen of this country but do you know that during childhood, children have the fundamental right to enjoy? 

Yes. This role in the "second stage" played by any human in the drama of life is a period for trying new things, failing and rising up with a smile without knowing that you have failed; and experiencing bliss under the protective fear of parents or guardian.

Adults who have made a mess out of their lives will tell you that childhood is a golden age in one's life. 

What they need to know is that, there's a "second childhood" waiting for them near the end of their lives. 

Here, in his poem, Marcus Natten explores when he lost his childhood. 

This poem however does not tell us the good experiences in childhood nor it is about childhood. 

So the name appears to be a misnomer.

In short, it is a poem packed with remorse and refrain.

Critical Analysis of the Poem - Father to Son

Father to Son

- A Poem by Elizabeth Jennings

I do not understand this child
Though we have lived together now
In the same house for years. I know
Nothing of him, so try to build
Up a relationship from how
He was when small. Yet have I killed
The seed I spent or sown it where
The land is his and none of mine?
We speak like strangers, there's no sign
Of understanding in the air.
This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share.
Silence surrounds us. I would have
Him prodigal, returning to
His father's house, the home he knew,
Rather than see him make and move
His world. I would forgive him too,
Shaping from sorrow a new love.
Father and son, we both must live
On the same globe and the same land.
He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief.
We each put out an empty hand,
Longing for something to forgive.

A father can only grow his son, growing up is in the child's hand.

Jist:

Surfacing a troubled relationship with a concerned father's lament over his son's behaviour, the poem's crux is tactile to every father.

This poem evokes similar emotions in every man in the father's shoes.

Fixed with universality in thought, the poem enjoys solitude in the literature concerning the relationship between two grown-up men.

It is highly capable of malleability and the following account serves to do the same

Introduction:

The lines are written after extensive emotional turmoil inside the father's mind.

This is apparent by the first line in which he says, he does not 'understand this'.

By calling his son, a 'child', his desire to keep him within his arms and reach is evident.

Despite a togetherness of several years, their bond seems to break as the father knows almost nothing of his son. Here we do not get whether the son knows anything about his father.

This one-way approach,, in sense, supplements the poem’s charm and is intriguing in another sense.

The father feels he has killed the relationship with his son. Anyways, he tries of building it again.

The father questions his rightful authority over his son's ''land' (=his place).

They speak like strangers and there is nothing sort of any a personal touch to their communication.

The generation cap is perhaps felt stronger over here, where the father cannot share what his son loves. This gap is built over the innocent claim by the father that his son is built to 'his design'.

Miscellaneous Thoughts:

It seems somewhat ironic that while growing up, everything matures, except relationships.

The father wants his son back. The erstwhile prodigal boy returning to his 'father's home that he knew'

The tone of poetic deliverance, suggests that the father's fear is that his son is kind of lost in his 'new home'(= the newly found liberty and privacy)

He needs his son back- badly.

He says his anger stems from grief yet he chooses not to say anything further to justify it.

Review - Poem - La Belle Dame Sans Merci

La Belle Dame sans Merci 

                                                    --- John Keats

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

  Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing!

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
'I love thee true'.

She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt

    On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

My Critical Analysis:

Introduction:

Captivating!

This is how I'd best describe this sacred piece of work. 

 It's aura being strange yet mesmerizing, its theme in partnership with Gothic literature revealing the strife between temptation and duty, love and love failure, ecstacy and its aftermath, are echoed in the poets' own feverish condition.

Keats, who has written this paean; borrows a question and response form to structure the poem's narrative.

This account of mine scrutinizes the ballad and tries to surface it's microscopic intricacies in the form of poetic spotlights, while intending to shove its literal meaning aside for the purpose of expounding the metaphorical rhetoric contained it.

The Crux:

Do you believe in love at first sight ? If not, perhaps death at first betrayal?! 

Whatever side your psyche flanks to, there is this universal abstraction called love that inundates us all.

If not in your life, then by listening to offers experiences. it does so.

In the poem, an unknown person, whose anonymity is guarded till the end of the poem, asks a series of questions to a "Knight -at arms".

The purpose of these queries falls behind the knight's disposition. The Knight does not behave as a man should - in triumph and glory, but is gloomy. This is further cemented by the use of suggested vocabulary. 

What is 'ail'{ing} him forms the crux of the stranger's question.

The Knight is loitering by himself at the edge of the lake and he is pale. 

Apparently the knight doesn’t answer immediately so he has to repeat the question.

This time we get two more adjectives to describe the night - 

he is 'haggard' and 'woe-begone'. 

The speaker continues to address this depressed being. 

He makes use of  floral imagery to carry on. He asks about the 'lily' on the Knights brow. 

The scene is set:

Even nature cooperates. '...No birds sing' suggest that this is autumn or even early winter.

The Knights response makes up the rest of the poem.

The knight says he met a beautiful 'fairy' lady in the field. 

He starts hanging around with her making flower garlands for her, letting her ride his horse and the like.

She invites him to her Grotto. There, she 'lulls' him asleep.

So far the landscape cooperated but that too suddenly changes from idyllic to horrific, has the fairy tale romp turns into imprisonment on a cold hill.

The knight has a nightmare about all the heroic men that the woman had previously seduced.

They were experiencing death-in-life. He then wakes up to find himself lonely on a cold hillside.

The lady's abandonment of the knight is emphasized as an important theme, through repetition of the word 'alone '

When you are in love, everything seems to go in your way-

  

the Birds sing for you guys,

the sun rises up for you, and 

the whole of nature seems to be there for you.

But when things go awful, you feel lonely. 

You only hear squeaks when the birds sing.

Critical Analysis:

Keats' poetry possess a vibrant senselessness, passionate thinking, sweet and mellifluous music, and an artistic finish.

The word charms are warm and the ballad has a sort of an auto-biographical tone.

The more we consider the night story, the more we uncover parallels with Keats life.

A mind trained to think out of the box might offer a whole new perspective to the ballad.

Consider this :

What is the fairy is not an evil but a misunderstood one? 

Maybe in the fairy world promiscuity is practiced and the feminine gender has to leave her male lover, or perhaps the lady of 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' could be simply read as a mortal woman who broke the heart of the knight.

His retelling of the story however casts her as a supernatural in order to excuse his own weakness

Could the knight himself be a figment of the speakers imagination? 

---- this would completely change the reading of the poem!!

The purpose of education is to train the mind to think. 

While reading the poem it is obvious that every person who does it has a different viewpoint. 

This is the beauty of English literature!

Interpretations and 'wild' perceptions have the ability to change the whole discourse of the poem and the curious leader finds warmth correspondingly.

Justification the Title:

The French language has been generous in lending words to the English.

Here, Keats borrows five French words :

- 'La' --> the French definite article means 'the'

-'Belle'--> the adjective means 'beautiful' (Fe)

 'Dame' --> {as we say(ma)dame -->  means (my)lady. 

- sans Merci' -->is literally 'without mercy'

The use of a French title for an English poem highlights the fact that French is the language of love(and love failure!). They are the themes that constitute the heart of the poem.

'I love thee(true) -- perhaps the tree most powerful words in any language; has universality attached to it. 

Told only at special moments, these words have great evocative powers. 

It can make anyone go crazy!

Given the intensity of raw intimacy, betrayal at such points can really be heart-breaking.

In the movies and literature, women are stereotyped like this.

Feminist critics, have; in this case, criticized the title.

The knight's ornamentation of the lady's 'fragrant zone' suggests that he is celebrating her feminity.

A combination of these two factors, thus; justifies the title.

The Solitary Reaper - William Wordsworth

Celebrating the Ordinary.... 

Beauty !

This is how one can best describe this sacred piece of art! 

Placed at the Peak of Romanticism, by English poets, this paean scales new heights when imagery is addressed. It's aura being strange yet soothing, the description of English Landscape being blissful and the rhyming words are like icings on a cake. In layman terms, this poem functions to appreciate the beauty of music.

Composed in four stanzas containing 8 lines each, Wordsworth introduces us to a damsel singing and reaping in Scotland vales. Without commenting upon her physical appearance, the poet shifts our imagination quickly towards the song that comes out from that heavenly being. The words of the song are not comprehendible to the poet, so he begins naturally to examine its tone. He concludes it to be a melancholic one, but fails to understand the reason behind such a rendition. Judging by the song's strain, he suggests reasons - war/battles, recent calamities and disasters, loss of a person and the like.

Wordsworth places her sound over the nightingale chant and is in lavish appreciation of its beauty as he thinks..'A voice so thrilling never was heard'

'What'er the theme the maiden sang', he was spellbound experiencing an iota of complete bliss.

The poet would then visualize the scene later in his life as to cherish 'those' moments of strange yet beautiful aura.

If Oscar Wilde is the doyen of personification, Wordsworth seems to be his counterpart in imagery!

Blissful, is what I'd say about the apposition of beautiful landscapes with the mental frontiers of the human mind. The lines are rhetorical. Each succession of words elicits the scene, the poet has witnessed in Scotland. For example, the poet says,'...for the vale profound is overflowing with the sound'. This conjectures musical notes and ethereal vibrations that loiter the picturesque valley.

Receding a few lines back, the poet who says us to 'to stop here, or gently  pass'. Here, it is understood that William wants to share his experience of trance with the passerbys. Such a selfless soul! Auditory imagery is also something not to be missed in this discussion.

True to his ideal of using 'common speech', Wordsworth uses words of rustic simplicity which have great evocative power. The words used by the poet engulfs our consciousness and we stand at the edge of infinity. Thus, the poem has delighted its readers in this manner.

 

Solitude is often perceived to be a dull moment in one's life. however, it is during these times of life when the clock seems to be ticking slow; that one's true self surfaces. It is buoyed by innate abstractions. Loneliness brings negative emotions only...Solitude brings out important decisions and/or ideas. Why? Well, God/Nature has created us in such a way. 

There ought to be a release of happy hormones one's body while skimming through poems of this level. My personal advice is to read the poem while listening to some sad music as they are the most thrilling ones.

In a nutshell, this poem reminds us of the eternal spell that Mother Nature has cast on mankind - something that lures him always. i.e, wondering at the feminine aspects of 'Her'.