Literature: An Introduction to
Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, 1/e
© 2007
John Brereton
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E
C H A P T E R
17
A MO MENT IN POET RY
Writing Out Loud
Popular Victorian Narratives
Essayist, scientist, and Harvard professor of paleontology Stephen Jay Gould,
writing of an exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York,
pointed to a problem he once had with poetry:
I could never understand why such abominable and silly doggerel as “Casey at
the Bat” ever became the canonical poem of both American baseball and the
normalcy of failure in general. That is, until I heard the poem in an ancient film
of a vaudeville performer (as the Victor disc also in this exhibition illustrates).
Then I understood. The poem was written to be declaimed, not to be read
silently. Declamation of poetry in the nineteenth century represented a standard social recreation in American life, a fixture of nearly every party, and the
doggerel succeeds marvelously in this intended aural context.
Gould is right: some poems that seem very weak on the page change character completely when they are treated like the performances they were intended
to be. His example, “Casey at the Bat,” comes alive only when it is delivered
aloud, and in fact, hammed up. The DeWolfe Hopper performance Gould refers
to may now sound way over the top, but that kind of exaggeration is what made
the poem succeed with audiences in late nineteenth-century America.
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Victorian Narratives Timeline
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What Gould calls “declamation” of poetry means a formal oral delivery to
an audience, often of something memorized. (This is also called “recitation.”)
Declamation was extremely popular 150 years ago, in an era when tragic, patriotic, or romantic tales were narrated not just in short stories but in poetry, and
when public performances of literature were a common part of life. Today, by far
the most common form of poetry is lyric , defined as a relatively brief poem that
captures a feeling or evokes an intense personal response. But lyric poetry’s almost complete dominance is relatively recent. Narratives , or poems that told
stories, once played a much larger role.
Every educated person in the West once knew about the most ambitious of
narratives: epics such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Milton’s
Paradise Lost. Such poems were a key part of Western culture, built into education
in schools and religion. Other famous narratives include Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales—a mix of different poetic types, ranging from high art to folk stories—and his
Troilus and Criseyde, a narrative romance set during the Trojan War. These famous
and popular poems, often meant for public performance, all told stories, attempting
to capture readers’ and listeners’ attention in the days before novels began to dominate. As novels became popular, beginning around the middle of the eighteenth
century, the reading public’s interest in narrative poems gradually declined, so that
at present they are relatively rare, though not quite extinct. But in the mid-nineteenth century, when such poems were very much in style, huge numbers of people
got their stories not from novels but out loud, through listening to narrative poetry.
VICTORIAN NARRATIVES TIMELINE
1842
1823
1888
1798
1835
1845
1856
1842
1848
1865
Edgar Allan Poe reads his poetry at a paid appearance, with poor
attendance.
“A Visit from St. Nicholas” published anonymously in the Troy,
New York, Sentinel.
Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” published in the San Francisco Examiner. DeWolfe Hopper starts reciting the poem
onstage.
The British navy, led by Admiral Horatio Nelson, defeats the
French in the Battle of the Nile in northern Egypt, restoring
British power in the Mediterranean.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon publishes “The Proud Ladye.”
Edgar Allan Poe achieves international fame with the publication of The Raven and Other Poems.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writes “The Wreck of the
Hesperus.”
Robert Browning publishes “My Last Duchess.”
Italy begins a war of independence that inspires Elizabeth Barrett
Browning to write “Mother and Poet.”
President Lincoln’s assassination leads Walt Whitman to write
“O Captain! My Captain!”
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1842
1854
1860
1855
Alfred Lord Tennyson writes “Ulysses.”
During the Crimean War, the British army leads a misguided attack on Russian forces in the Battle of Balaklava, which Tennyson would immortalize in “The Charge of the Light Brigade”
(1855).
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Poems before Congress” published
to criticism of being “hysterical” and “unwomanly.”
Walt Whitman publishes the first version of Leaves of Grass.
POETRY’S ORAL BEGINNINGS
In the nineteenth-century English-speaking world, literature still celebrated its
oral character—its roots in sound. Poets had always been the bearers of a tribe’s
or nation’s cultural capital. Homer’s great epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, were
created for oral performance and perhaps only written down many years afterwards. Roman poets often wrote their work, but they usually read it aloud; a famous scene depicted in many paintings has Virgil reading his Aeneid aloud to his
patron, Emperor Augustus Caesar. In medieval times, Norse and Anglo-Saxon
poets would recite epics or songs they had composed, as well as others they had
memorized. Beowulf is such a production, probably written down long after it was
composed for recitation. Narrative poems had a tradition of being long, telling a
dramatic story, and favoring oral performance.
V I R T U A L
L O C A L E
Aural Poetry on the Web. Continual advancements in Web technology have
made it easier for audio clips to be readily available online. Consequently, the
number of audio poetry resources on the Internet has increased exponentially.
■
■
■
■
The Academy of American Poets’ Listening Board offers over 150 audio
clips of poets reading their poems: http://www.poets.org/audio.php.
A personal homepage includes audio poetry links from over 475 poets:
http://www.Laurable.com.
The Atlantic magazine provides a “Soundings” page, offering audio clips of a
famous poem read by three or four different poets:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/soundings/.
The BBC’s Poetry Out Loud page offers poets reading their own work:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/index.shtml.
POETRY READINGS AT HOME
Nineteenth-century writers, aware of a time when poetry was central to the life
of a tribe, clan, or royal court, were comfortable with a key site of oral performance: the family reading. Before the movies, radio, TV, and recordings that we
have now, entertainment was live. In the Victorian era, people went out to hear
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lectures or readings or musical and theatrical performances, or they entertained
each other at home, either with members of the family or with invited guests.
Sometimes the father or mother would sit, family gathered around, and read the
Bible or devotional works. At times, fiction was read, though strict Christians often frowned on novels as tending toward the immoral. Often there would be poetry, frequently a long narrative poem. Children might be called on to recite poems they had learned, or a poem might be read aloud, not recited. Many
newspapers published a daily poem. Most of the few Emily Dickinson poems
published in her lifetime appeared in a local newspaper.
Countless pictures of the time illustrate the scene of a middle-class, Victorian family gathered around the reader, listening raptly to the words of the poem
or story. We don’t have to take this scene as universal, of course—many people
were too poor or too illiterate to enjoy such readings—but it was certainly seen
as commonly enacted, and perhaps even more often wished for.
Writers were particularly attuned to this type of performance at home. Byron and Shelley read their work aloud to each other and to their circle of friends.
Tennyson gave readings of his poems to his friends and family. Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow celebrates this type of reading in his Wayside Inn, where each individual traveler recites a tale, one of which is Paul Revere’s ride (“One if by land,
and two if by sea, / And I on the opposite shore will be . . .”). The Brownings—
Elizabeth Barrett and her husband Robert—were known to read their work to
each other. These and other poets wrote for the eye and the ear alike, knowing
that a major way for the public to learn their work would be through hearing it.
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS
ON THE STAGE
Another type of performance began when professional authors gave public readings,
at first for charity benefits but soon as a paying proposition. One of the first to try,
Edgar Allan Poe read his poems to a paying audience in Boston in 1842, but with
poor results. Charles Dickens, much impressed with Poe when they met, offered
readings of his own and, unlike Poe, made a great success of it. Between 1858 and
1870, Dickens gave some 500 readings throughout England and America, cashing in
on the tremendous popularity of his novels. These readings were spectacularly successful affairs, filling auditoriums, theaters, and opera houses in cities and towns
throughout Britain and America and providing Dickens with a rich monetary reward. Here was the most famous novelist in the world, appearing nearby, reading
from his most popular works. And he was good at it! Dickens always had a talent and
a passion for amateur theatricals, and he would thoroughly practice his readings,
watching himself in a mirror. He did not possess a rich voice, but critics observed
that he had a great ability to emote and express. Dickens’s readings paid off handsomely, and they allowed him to indulge in his desire to reach a live audience. During the time of his reading tours, he also wrote A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, though the demands of his work and the incessant travel damaged his health.
Many other famous nineteenth-century poets and fiction authors toured with
readings of their works, among them Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom’s
Cabin), James Whitcomb Riley (who had great success with Hoosier dialect poetry),
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and of course Mark Twain, whose tours
were extremely popular. These are in
addition to the many writers who got
paid for their lectures and lecture tours,
as did Henry David Thoreau and, especially, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who
made a living as a lecturer and whose
lectures were later published as essays.
Walt Whitman toured with his popular
lecture on Abraham Lincoln, which he
always ended by reciting from memory
“O Captain! My Captain!”—a poem
much more suitable for declaiming from
the stage than his much longer, more
complex requiem for Lincoln, “When
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
(p. •••). Whitman claimed to detest
“O Captain,” but he always recited it at
his lectures.
Poetry was also presented in a mix
Mark Twain on stage during one of his lecture
of lecture and performance by foreruntours, 1885.
ners of stand-up comics. These humorists were called “wits,” and their one-man shows involved topical humor combined with certain set-piece stories, which later were collected in popular books.
Twain got his start on the lecture circuit this way, before he became truly famous for
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Additionally, there were music hall and stage performers whose specialty was reciting a particular piece. One of the most well-known
of these was DeWolfe Hopper, who declamed Ernest L. Thayer’s poem “Casey at the
Bat” all around the country, appearing on a varied bill that offered singers, comics,
jugglers, trapeze artists, and animal acts. It’s useful to remember that poetry and
declamation were not thought of as refined arts; they were part of mainstream or
popular culture, and they might even appear in some decidedly odd venues.
INSPIRATION Modern Poetry Out
Loud: From the Beats
to Def Poetry
The poetry readings in Victorian lecture halls and family drawing rooms may seem
like a distant echo of a quaint but long-gone past that bears no resemblance to poetry’s role in today’s fast-paced age. But even in the wake of flashier entertainments
that compete for our attention—television, films, music, the Internet, video
games—the tradition of reading poetry out loud has not disappeared. It has actually
made a major resurgence in the public consciousness over the past half-century.
During the 1950s and 1960s, poetry’s oral traditional was carried on by Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg, who famously performed “Howl” for the first time in 1955 at
(continued on next page)
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Modern Poetry Out Loud: From the Beats to Def Poetry
Hip-hop producer Russell Simmons (in front of microphone) and the cast of Simmons’s Broadway hit Def Poetry Jam, accept their 2003 Tony Award in the special
theatrical event category.
San Francisco’s Six Gallery, and musicians like Bob Dylan, who is still regarded by
many as a poet who sets his poems to music. A great example of spoken-word mixed
with music is Dylan’s 1965 “Subterranean Homesick Blues”; a clip of what might be
called an early music-video version of the song appears in D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967
documentary about Dylan’s 1965 tour of England, Don’t Look Back. In the 1970s and
1980s, spoken-word was integrated into both the hard-core and punk music scenes
by artists like Patti Smith and Black Flag’s Henry Rollins, as well as into the rap and
hip-hop movements that dominate the music scene in America today.
In more recent years, “poetry slams” have become a well-known outlet for performed poetry. In a slam, poets recite their own work and are then judged by the audience based not only on what they say but how well they perform it. Since 1985,
when Chicagoan Marc Smith jumpstarted a reading series, now called the Uptown
Poetry Slam, first at a jazz club and then at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, slams
have grown in popularity and frequency. Events like the annual slam hosted by Poetry Slam, Inc., have been organized in cities and town across the country.
The wild success of hip-hop producer Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry project,
which Simmons started in 2001, has brought poetry out loud to a larger, younger audience, through its long, successful run as a live Broadway show, Def Poetry Jam, and
the corresponding television series on HBO, Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry.
The Broadway show gathered a troupe of nine slam poets and one DJ for performances of their work. The ongoing TV version, hosted by hip-hop artist and actor
Mos Def, presents a wide range of poetic voices—both newcomers and more seasoned performers—in front of a live audience, interspersed with guest appearances
by celebrities trying their hand at spoken-word poetry. Special guests have included
comedian Dave Chapelle, dancer Savion Glover, playwright Eve Ensler, actress
Phylicia Rashad, Motown icon Smokey Robinson, R&B sensations Alicia Keyes
and John Legend, and hip-hop artists Kanye West, Lauryn Hill, and Wyclef Jean.
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PROFESSIONAL READERS
One more group of performers deserves
attention, the well-known stage performers of the nineteenth century who
made a practice of offering “readings” to
audiences, frequently with a mix of “uplifting” material like Shakespeare along
with popular Victorian poems. The
English actress Sarah Siddons, for instance, traveled around Great Britain
offering evenings of Shakespeare. Siddons, with a famous stage career behind
her, specialized in readings in which she
presented some popular Shakespeare
scenes (taking on male as well as female
roles) and poems like “The Charge of
the Light Brigade.” Her niece Fanny
Kemble, from the same well-regarded
family of performers, gave a series of
readings in America, concentrating on
Shakespeare but also including contem porary verse by Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow. Longfellow attended one of
English actress Sarah Siddons in the charac- her readings in Boston, along with
ter of the Tragic Muse, 1812; Siddons trav- 3,000 other people, and wrote a poem in
eled as a professional performer and reader
commemoration of how well she read
of poetry.
(p. •••).
V I D E O
L OC A LE
Fooling with Words with Bill Moyers. Bill Moyers’s 1999 PBS documentary
Fooling with Words, directed by Catherine Tatge and produced by Judy Doctoroff
O’Neill and Judith Davidson Moyers, captures the energy of America’s largest
poetry festival and interviews dozens of contemporary American poets on the
meaning and power of poetry. For more information, see the PBS website at
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/foolingwithwords/main_tv.html.
ELOCUTION
The nineteenth-century craze for performance fit in nicely with a very old and
still potent strand in American and British education, the part of rhetoric
known as “elocution,” which stresses pronunciation, stage bearing, and delivery.
Much of this training in the nineteenth century took place outside of schools;
many cities and towns had private teachers of elocution who offered lessons to
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969
improve a person’s ability to orate or declaim in public, since those skills were
very highly valued. Many books were written on the subject, explaining how to
memorize a passage or poem, how to prepare the voice, and how to enhance the
performance through appropriate body gestures. In his 1902 book The Popular
Elocutionist and Reciter, J. E. Carpenter wrote:
LOVE must be approached with the utmost delicacy; it is best expressed by a
deep, impassioned, fervent tone; the right hand may be pressed over the heart,
but the “languishing eyes” recommended by some authors borders too closely
on burlesque. A steady, respectful gaze on the assumed object of affection may
be permitted.
As Carpenter suggests, the line between sincerity and burlesque was easy to
cross. By the end of the nineteenth century, elocutionists had become figures of
some ridicule, stressing as they did the outward manifestations of character and
personality. George Bernard Shaw’s 1893 play Pygmalion, later transformed into
My Fair Lady on Broadway, has as its hero a fussy, proud elocutionist, Henry Higgins, who transforms a working-class waif into a fine English lady by changing
her speech patterns. Elocutionists may have been slightly ludicrous with their
promises of verbal makeovers, but they were important nonetheless. Their craft
later became fixed in the school subject of “oral interpretation of literature,” still
playing an active role in many departments of communication, both in training
aspiring actors and giving students the confidence and skills to speak in public.
THE PUBLIC’S CHOICE
What stories and poems were most popular? It’s no surprise to learn that what
worked best were simple, dramatic narratives with suspense and melodrama.
Dickens had great success with his most straightforward set pieces, such as A
Christmas Carol. Whitman’s simplest, least characteristic poem, “O Captain! My
Captain!” was his most popular. The most complex, subtle writings of Longfellow didn’t have the attraction of his simpler narratives like “The Song of
Hiawatha.”
Robert Browning’s experience in reading many of his poems aloud to family
and friends led him to write a good many to be declaimed or acted, especially the
ones he called “dramatic monologues” such as “My Last Duchess” (p. •••).
These were enormously popular at the time, and the Browning Society was established so his fans could discuss his poetry and have an opportunity to declaim
it in front of other admirers. At the first Browning Society meeting in 1881, in
London, over 300 people attended and a number gave readings. One was
Eleanor Marx—daughter of Karl Marx and herself a literary translator—who
read two Browning poems, “Count Gismond” and “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.”
The Victorians, highly influenced by sentimental dramas, responded well to
stories of shipwrecks and train crashes, with the subsequent heroism and tragic
loss of life. The death of children was another common theme in Victorian poetry, since childhood was such a dangerous time of infections and accidents. One
of Dickens’s most famous scenes is the overly sentimental “death of Little Nell”
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from The Old Curiosity Shop, a favorite with certain of his readers but the target
of barbs from less sentimental types. As Oscar Wilde put it, “It takes a heart of
stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell.”
Finally, we must acknowledge two paradoxes. First, the poems chosen most
frequently for public performance are some of the most famous poems ever written, cultural touchstones that generations have grown up with, yet since they are
“popular” poetry, often written for declamation and performance, they are often
overlooked or dismissed by critics. Some of these poems, whether performed or
read silently, are superb works of art, while others are incomplete or inadequate
without performance. Second, narrative poems might be out of fashion, but performance of poetry is back with us today and is perhaps more important than
ever. As the poet Donald Hall wrote in 1985, the poetry reading is by far the
most common form of “publication” for a poem nowadays. Many more people
hear poems aloud than actually buy and read books of poetry. Consequently, the
nineteenth-century concept of poetic performance has once again come round
in popularity. On any given night in most large cities, there are poetry readings,
slams, and performances at colleges, bookshops, bars and cafes, churches, and
theater auditoriums. The way more and more people get their poetry is out loud.
VICTORIAN NARRATIVE POEMS
A few of the most popular nineteenth-century narrative poems are included
here. They would have been known widely in the Victorian era and recited by
amateurs and professionals alike. (The “Starting Points for Further Research”
sections for poets in this chapter appear after their respective biographies in
chapter 19.)
CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE
(1779–1863)
The son of an Episcopal bishop who was president of Columbia University, Clement Clarke
Moore was a member of New York City’s upper crust. Moore graduated from Columbia in
1798 and donated some of his land holdings in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood to help
found the General Theological Seminary, where he served as a professor of oriental and ancient languages. (Next to the seminary is Clement Clarke Moore Park.) Moore’s major
scholarly work is a two-volume Hebrew lexicon published in 1809. But Moore is best
known for “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” a poem first published anonymously in the Troy,
New York, Sentinel in 1823. Besides its obvious cultural significance—it helped establish
some of the Christmas mythology still observed today—the poem is interesting for the way it
plays with the “elevated” language of epic poetry, as in these lines:
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
In these two couplets, Moore makes use of Homeric language and an extended simile. He
also uses deflation: “coursers” is a decidedly fancy or high word for horses, while “toys” is
very much not high-flown language or imagery.
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Clement Clarke Moore A Visit from St. Nicholas
A Visit from St. Nicholas
’Twas the night before Christmas,
when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring,—not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter’s nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
“Now, DASHER! now, DANCER! now, PRANCER and VIXEN!
On, COMET! on CUPID! on, DONDER and BLITZEN!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
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A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT.”
In Moore’s poem we see the literary imagination actually inventing customs
that would later become popular. His poem helped create the legend, but in
1822 that legend was still in the making, and fairly far from our own current
mythology around Santa Claus. Note some oddities here: St. Nick is called just
that, not Santa Claus. He is small, an “elf” with a “miniature sleigh and eight
tiny reindeer.” And he uses the old-fashioned expression “Happy Christmas”
rather than “Merry Christmas.” Rather than the modern-day Santa, he looks
like an old New York Dutchman, not unlike the figures Washington Irving wrote
about at the time, such as Rip Van Winkle. Interestingly, the legend continues
to evolve: the politically incorrect fur suit and the pipe he smokes persisted in
the tradition until fairly recently.
ERNEST L. THAYER
(1863–1940)
Like Clement Clark Moore, Ernest Thayer was a blueblood who never thought of himself as
a poet, and he too is now famous for a single poem that he never took much credit for in his
lifetime. He was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and studied philosophy under William
James at Harvard, where he and George Santayana were co-editors of Harvard’s humor
magazine, the Lampoon. William Randolph Hearst, who also worked on the Lampoon, recruited Thayer to write a humor column for his paper, the San Francisco Examiner, where
“Casey at the Bat” appeared under a pseudonym in June 1888. Thayer, who never thought
much of his poetry, eventually returned to Massachusetts to run his family’s textile business.
“Casey at the Bat” became a success through the efforts of DeWolfe Hopper, who
made a career of performing it on stage, doing so some 10,000 times, beginning in a New
York theater in August 1888. He recorded it in 1907. Hopper had the genius to declaim the
poem in a brogue, in keeping with the Irish names that dominate the Mudville team. Professional baseball in 1888 had working-class roots and was associated more with poor, recent
immigrants than with long-term Americans.
The high and low elements that characterized “A Visit from St. Nicholas” are present
here as well, as in these lines:
So upon that stricken multitude, grim melancholy sat;
for there seemed but little chance of Casey getting to the bat.
The elevated language of “stricken multitude” and the inversion of “grim melancholy sat”
suggest that we are in a poem that moves in a wide range from the very elevated to the very
low, given its topic. It’s a familiar genre called the mock heroic (see p. •••), in which
everyday or minor events are treated like the struggles of the mighty heroes of old.
50
55
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Ernest Thayer Casey at the Bat
Casey at the Bat
973
1888
The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play.
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.
A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast.
They thought “If only Casey could but get a whack at that—
We’d put up even money now, with Casey at the bat.”
But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a lulu, while the latter was a cake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat;
For there seemed but little chance of Casey’s getting to the bat.
But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all.
And Blake, the much despisèd, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.
Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat;
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.
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There was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey’s bearing and a smile on Casey’s face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt ’twas Casey at the bat.
Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.
Then, while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance gleamed in Casey’s eye, a sneer curled Casey’s lip.
And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped –
“That ain’t my style,” said Casey. “Strike one.” the umpire said.
From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.
“Kill him! Kill the umpire!” shouted some one on the stand;
And it’s likely they’d have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.
With a smile of Christian charity, great Casey’s visage shone,
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on.
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, “Strike two.”
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“Fraud!” cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn’t let that ball go by again.
The sneer is gone from Casey’s lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s blow.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light.
And, somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.
Talking about the Text
1. How familiar were you with “A Visit from St. Nicholas” before you read it here?
Do you remembering hearing it read or reading it yourself? What parts were wellknown to you? What was a surprise? How has the image and myth of “St. Nick”
changed from Moore’s depiction?
2. Try reading “A Visit from St. Nicholas” or “Casey at the Bat” aloud. What elements make the poem a successful oral narrative? What words and phrases stand
out when read aloud? What effect do the meter, rhythm, and rhyme scheme have
when the poem is read aloud?
3. Stephen Jay Gould makes a distinction between poems that are made to be read
on the page and poems made to be performed. Now that you have read either “A
Visit from St. Nicholas” or “Casey at the Bat” aloud, what are clues that this is a
poem made to be performed?
Writing about the Text
1. Write a short analysis of the point of view in “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Who is
the speaker? What do you know about him? Why do you think Moore chose to
show St. Nicholas from this perspective? How would the poem be different if the
point of view was a child’s?
2. Write an imitation of Moore’s poem about a holiday tradition of your own, or
write an imitation of Thayer’s poem using a sports event you know about. Try to
mimic the original poet’s rhyme and rhythm patterns as closely as possible to create a poem that has strong oral characteristics.
Linking the Text to Other Texts
1. Popular narratives like “A Visit from St. Nicholas” and “Casey at the Bat” are frequent targets of parodists. Find a parody of either poem and compare it to the original.
What elements in particular does the parody derive its humor from? What elements of
the original poem are clearly visible and what elements are new? What do you think is
the appeal of parodying “A Visit from St. Nicholas” or “Casey at the Bat”?
2. Moore’s poem has done much to further our contemporary mythology of Santa
Claus and Christmas rituals. But what is the origin of the character Moore helped
create? Research the original Saint Nicholas and write a paper that places Moore’s
creation in a historical context. What can you assume Moore knew about Saint
Nicholas when he wrote his poem?
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Felicia Hemans Casablanca
FELICIA HEMANS
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(1793–1835)
In her short lifetime, British writer Felicia Hemans became one of the
most famous poets of her era, but after her death she was quickly forgotten and even now, when many excellent women poets of the past
are being rediscovered, she is known only for a few poems, above all
“Casabianca.” As a young child, Hemans read and recited large
amounts of poetry; her sister noted that she could “repeat pages of poetry from her favorite authors, after having read them but once over.”
She was precocious, publishing her first book of poems at age fourteen.
Many of her subjects were patriotic and involved death in battle. “Casabianca” recounts a well-known story from the Battle of the Nile, where the British navy defeated the
French in 1798. Casabianca, the thirteen-year-old son of the French commander of
L’Orient, received orders to stay at his post until his father relieved him. Unaware that his
father had been killed, he did so, remaining until the ship exploded. This enormously popular
poem celebrates unthinking devotion, duty, and bravery; it has also come to stand as a symbol for the whole nineteenth-century genre of declamatory poetry.
Casabianca
(1829)
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck
Shone round him o’er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though childlike form.
The flames roll’d on—he would not go
Without his father’s word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.
He called aloud: “Say, Father, say
If yet my task is done?”
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.
“Speak, Father!” once again he cried,
“If I may yet be gone!”
And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames rolled on.
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Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death
In still, yet brave despair.
And shouted but once more aloud,
“My father! must I stay?”
While o’er him fast, through sail and shroud,
The wreathing fires made way.
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They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child,
Like banners in the sky.
There came a burst of thunder sound—
The boy—oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea!—
With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part,
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart
INSPIRATION Elizabeth Bishop
Responds to Felicia
Hemans
“Casabianca” quickly became one of the most
popular poems for declamation. All over Great
Britain, Canada, and America, young students labored to memorize it, then nervously stood to recite it aloud at school or family occasions. Elizabeth Bishop’s witty response to Hemans’s
compares a lover to that nervous boy, standing
with “stammering elocution,” trying to say what
matters most. Bishop’s wit also involves the notion of “burning,” since lovers are traditionally
depicted in poetry as aflame. Being in love,
Bishop’s poem asks us to imagine, is like being
the boy in “Casabianca.”
Elizabeth Bishop
(1911–1979)
Casabianca (1946)
Love’s the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite “The boy stood on
the burning deck.” Love’s the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.
Love’s the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love’s the burning boy.
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The Proud Layde
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Talking about the Text
1. What is the meter of Hemans’s “Casabianca”? What are the common characteristics of this kind of meter, and how successful is it in “Casabianca”?
2. How do you judge the boy’s actions? Do you consider him patriotic? Obedient?
Naive?
3. What emotions does Hemans’s poem draw on for its impact?
Writing about the Text
1. The Battle of the Nile would have been well-known to Hemans’s readers. Research the 1798 battle and its importance in British history. Then write a short
analysis of the poem that places the poem in its historical context.
2. Write a paper that argues the extent to which Hemans’s “Casabianca” should be
considered a patriotic poem. What qualities of character does the boy display that
patriots might aspire or relate to?
Linking the Text to Other Texts
1. Compare Hemans’s “Casabianca” to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Mother and
Poet” (p. •••).
2. In a short paper, analyze Elizabeth Bishop’s “Casabianca” as a response to Hemans’s poem.
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON
(1802–1838)
The poetry of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, like the work of her contemporary Felicia Hemans,
sold enormous quantities during her short lifetime and then fell out of fashion. Written for
reading as well as for performance, “The Proud Ladye” takes the form of a medieval ballad
and is full of archaisms, deliberately old-fashioned terms and style. What is unusual about it
is its reversal of the common resolution: in this medieval setting, the fair maiden fails to win
the brave knight.
The Proud Ladye
Oh, what could the ladye’s beauty match,
An° it were not the ladye’s pride?
An hundred knights from far and near
Woo’d at that ladye’s side.
(1825)
if
The rose of the summer slept on her cheek,
Its lily upon her breast,
And her eye shone forth like the glorious star
That rises the first in the west.
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There were some that woo’d for her land and gold,
And some for her noble name,
And more that woo’d for her loveliness;
But her answer was still the same.
“There is a steep and lofty wall,
Where my warders° trembling stand;
He who at speed shall ride round its height,
For him shall be my hand.”
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Many turn’d away from the deed,
The hope of their wooing o’er;
But many a young knight mounted the steed
He never mounted more.
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At last there came a youthful knight,
From a strange and far countrie,
The steed that he rode was white as the foam
Upon a stormy sea.
And she who had scorn’d the name of love,
Now bow’d before its might,
And the ladye grew meek as if disdain
Were not made for that stranger knight.
She sought at first to steal his soul
By dance, song, and festival;
At length on bended knee she pray’d
He would not ride the wall.
But gaily the young knight laugh’d at her fears,
And flung him on his steed,—
There was not a saint in the calendar
That she pray’d not to in her need.
She dar’d not raise her eyes to see
If heaven had granted her prayer,
Till she heard a light step bound to her side,—
The gallant knight stood there!
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And took the ladye Adeline
From her hair a jewell’d band,
But the knight repell’d the offer’d gift,
And turn’d from the offer’d hand.
“And deemest thou that I dared this deed,
Ladye, for love of thee?
The honour that guides the soldier’s lance
Is mistress enough for me.
“Enough for me to ride the ring,
The victor’s crown to wear;
But not in honour of the eyes
Of any ladye there.
“I had a brother whom I lost
Through thy proud crueltie,
And far more was to me his love,
Than woman’s love can be.
“I came to triumph o’er the pride
Through which that brother fell,
I laugh to scorn thy love and thee,
And now, proud dame, farewell!”
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The Proud Layde
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And from that hour the ladye pined,
For love was in her heart,
And on her slumber there came dreams
She could not bid depart.
Her eye lost all its starry light,
Her cheek grew wan and pale,
Till she hid her faded loveliness
Beneath the sacred veil.
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And she cut off her long dark hair,
And bade the world farewell,
And she now dwells a veiled nun
In Saint Marie’s cell.
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Talking about the Text
1. How is love represented, by both the ladye and the knight, in Landon’s “The Proud Ladye”?
2. What is the meaning of the word “proud” in the title? How is pride characterized
in the poem?
3. How is the ladye’s experience of love described in the poem? What effect do the
knight’s words have on her?
Writing about the Text
1. Examine the techniques Landon uses to characterize the proud ladye. Choose two
to three techniques—such as metaphor, simile, imagery, diction—and write an essay that comes to a conclusion about how she is portrayed.
2. Write a paper that examines the conventions of courtship and love suggested by Landon’s poem. How does the ladye represent a rejection of these conventions? What
does the knight represent in relation to these conventions? What does the poem suggest about the costs of deviating from traditional norms of love and courtship?
Linking the Text to Other Texts
1. Compare “The Proud Ladye” to one poem in the “Women’s Voices in the Renaissance” section in chapter 16 (p. •••).
2. Compare “The Proud Ladye” to another ballad, Longfellow’s “The Wreck of the
Hesperus.” What makes these poems ballads? What do the two poems have in
common? How do they use meter and rhyme to tell a story? Which poem do you
think displays a more effective use of the form?
3. Compare and contrast the way that three poets in this chapter use figurative language to describe female characters in their poems.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
(1809–1849)
One of the most famous American poems, “The Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe, is also one of the most parodied, as a quick Web search will reveal. In his essay “The Philosophy of Composition” (excerpted below,
p. •••), Poe gave an account of how he wrote the poem, though like
all of Poe’s accounts it should not be taken as gospel. Existing in a
number of versions, “The Raven” became extraordinarily popular
upon publication and remains so today. The first version of “The
Raven” appeared in the American Review in 1845. The version included here was published in the Richmond Semi-Weekly Examiner on September 25, 1849. For other versions,
see the website of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, http://www.eapoe.org.
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Illustration from the 1884 edition of The Raven and Other Poems, illustrated by renowned
artist Gustave Doré.
The Raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
“ ’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
(1845; 1849)
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Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
“ ’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”
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Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore.’ ”
But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
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Edgar Allan Poe
Annabel lee
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And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
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L C O M M E N TAR Y
Poe on the Composition of “The Raven”
From “The Philosophy of Composition,” first published in Graham’s Magazine, April 1846
I had gone so far as the conception of a Raven—the bird of ill omen—monotonously repeating the one word, “Nevermore,” at the conclusion of each stanza,
in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length about one hundred lines. Now,
never losing sight of the object supremeness, or perfection, at all points, I asked
myself—“Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” Death—was the obvious reply. “And
when,” I said, is the most melancholy of topics most poetical?” From what I have
already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious—“When it
most closely allies itself to beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world—and equally is it beyond
doubt that the lips best suited for such a topic are those of a bereaved lover.
L I T E R A RY
L O C A L E
Edgar Allan Poe Historical Sites Several eastern cities, including Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and New York, all claim historical sites related to poet Edgar Allan Poe. For more information, visit the websites listed here.
■
■
■
Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, http://www.poemuseum.org.
Edgar Allan Poe Society in Baltimore, Maryland, http://www.eapoe.org/balt/
poebalt.htm.
National Historic Site of Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
http://www.nps.gov/edal.
Among Poe’s most popular poems for recitation was “Annabel Lee,” written
about the death of a beautiful woman, which Poe considered “unquestionably,
the most poetical topic in the world.”
Annabel Lee
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
(1849)
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I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than loveI and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me:—
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we
Of many far wiser than we
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:—
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
And so all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride
In the sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
V I D E O
LOC A LE
Poe and the American Masters Series PBS’s American Masters film series
includes an episode on the life and career of Edgar Allan Poe. For more information on the series and how to order to the video, go to the PBS American
Masters website at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/
poe_e.html.
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Talking about the Text
1. Take one stanza of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and paraphrase it in your own
words. Then compare your paraphrase to the original. What is unique about Poe’s
diction? His syntax (word order)? His use of rhyme and rhythm?
2. Make a list of the allusions in the poem, such as the bust of Pallas and night’s “Plutonian shore.” What is the meaning of these allusions? What sources does Poe
draw his allusions from and why?
3. How does Poe set the tone in the opening lines of “The Raven” and foreshadow
his trademark suspense?
Writing about the Text
1. Pick three major symbols in “The Raven” and analyze them.
2. Write an explication of the structure of “The Raven.” How is the storyline set up?
How does Poe use the refrain? How does the poem create rising tension, and
where is the climax?
Linking the Text to Other Texts
1. Compare Poe’s depiction of love in “Annabel Lee” with Robert Browning’s in “My
Last Duchess.”
2. The dramatization of death is seen in many of the poems in this chapter, from the
death of a young woman in Poe’s “Annabel Lee” to the death of sons in Elizabeth
Barrett Browning’s “Mother and Poet” and Felicia Hemans’s “Casabianca” to the
death of anonymous troops in Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
Compare and contrast the way that two poems in this chapter dramatize death.
3. In a letter to a friend, Elizabeth Barrett Browning gives the following interpretation of “The Raven”:
There is certainly a power—but does not appear to me the natural expression of a sane intellect in whatever mood; and I think that this should be
specified in the title of the poem. There is a fantasticalness about the “sir
or madam,” and things of the sort, which is ludicrous, unless there is a
specified insanity to justify the straws. Probably he—the author—intended it to be read in the poem, and he ought to have intended it.
Browning is vague about her evidence—“the ‘sir or madam’ and things of the
sort.” Examine the poem for evidence that supports or refutes Browning’s reading.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
(1807–1882)
America’s most revered poet of the nineteenth century was Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, a master of the narrative poem. During his
lifetime he was famous for “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “Hiawatha,” and
many others. But when narratives fell out of fashion, so did Longfellow. His poem “The Building of the Ship” is a narrative about the construction of an oceangoing vessel in a New England shipyard (Longfellow was from Portland, Maine), but the vessel also stood as a metaphor for the ship of state,
and this widely recited poem was commonly regarded as a strong argument for all the states
to remain united during the troubled days before the Civil War.
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From The Building of the Ship
(1850)
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
’Tis of the wave and not the rock;
’Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee,—are all with thee!
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390
395
INSPIRATION Fanny Kemble’s Reading
and Longfellow’s
Sonnet
An entry in Longfellow’s diary recounts his excitement following a poetry reading by the stage performer Fanny Kemble:
February 12, 1850. In the evening Mrs. [Fanny] Kemble read before the
Mercantile Library Association, to an audience of more than three
thousand, portions of As You Like It; then The Building of the Ship,
standing out upon the platform, book in hand, trembling, palpitating
and weeping, and giving every word its true weight and emphasis. She
prefaced the recital by a few words, to this effect; that when she first
saw the poem, she desired to read it before a Boston audience; and she
hoped she would be able to make every word audible to that great
multitude.
(continued on next page)
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Fanny Kemble’s Reading and Longfellow’s Sonnet
Longfellow was so moved by Kemble’s reading that he wrote the following poem
as an homage:
Sonnet on Mrs. Kemble’s Reading from Shakespeare (1850)
O precious evenings! all too swiftly sped!
Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages
Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages,
And giving tongues unto the silent dead!
How our hearts glowed and trembled as she read,
Interpreting by tones the wondrous pages
Of the great poet who foreruns the ages,
Anticipating all that shall be said!
O happy Reader! having for thy text
The magic book, whose Sibylline ° leaves have caught
The rarest essence of all human thought!
O happy Poet! by no critic vext!
How must thy listening spirit now rejoice
To be interpreted by such a voice!
prophetic
One impulse behind this poem might come from the fact that Longfellow
had been criticized heavily and sharply by Poe and Whitman, so he no doubt
appreciated a “straight” reading, not by an interfering critic but by an artistic interpreter who saw herself simply as the transmitter of his work. His title seems
to praise Kemble for her reading of Shakespeare, but there is no doubt that
Longfellow admired her way with his own poem as well.
As one late-nineteenth century writer noted about Kemble’s Boston
performance,
the vast multitude was stirred to its depths not so much by the artistic
completeness of the rendition, as by the impassioned burst with which the
poem closes, and which fell upon no listless ears in the deep agitation of
the eventful year 1850. Mr. Noah Brooks in his paper on Lincoln’s Imagination (Scribner’s Monthly, August, 1879) mentions that he found the President one day attracted by these stanzas, quoted in a political speech.
“Knowing the whole poem,” he adds, “as one of my early exercises in
recitation, I began, at his request, with the description of the launch of the
ship, and repeated it to the end. As he listened to the last lines, his eyes
filled with tears, and his cheeks were wet. He did not speak for some minutes, but finally said, with simplicity: ‘It is a wonderful gift to be able to stir
men like that.’ ”
One of Longfellow’s most often recited (and oft-parodied) poems is based on
a well-known shipwreck that, like Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” involves the death of a
beautiful young woman.
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The Wreck of the Hesperus
(1856)
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope° in the month of May.
5
open
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish Main,°
“I pray thee, put into yonder port,
for I fear a hurricane.
“Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!”
The skipper, he blew whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.
10
in the Caribbean
15
20
Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable’s length.
“Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow.”
He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
“O father! I hear the church bells ring,
Oh say, what may it be?”
“Tis a fog-bell on a rock bound coast!”—
And he steered for the open sea.
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Wreck of the Hesperus 989
“O father! I hear the sound of guns,
Oh say, what may it be?”
Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!”
“O father! I see a gleaming light.
Oh say, what may it be?”
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.
45
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.
50
Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,
On the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow’rds the reef of Norman’s Woe.°
55
reef near Gloucester, Mass.
60
And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed,
On the billows fall and rise.
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75
80
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Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s Woe!
85
Longfellow set his poem as a ballad, deliberately employing archaic diction
(“Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax”) and an almost fairy-tale simplicity in order to create a timeless quality. It worked then, making this one of his most popular poems. It was so popular, in fact, that to this day some say of a messy house
or room, “It looks like the wreck of the Hesperus.”
INSPIRATION George Harrison’s
“Wreck of the
Hesperus”
In his lyrics for the Longfellow-inspired “Wreck of the Hesperus,”
which he wrote after he left the
Beatles, George Harrison picks up
on the tendency of some poetry to
turn into cliché. Harrison’s piece
can be heard on his 1987 album
Cloud Nine.
George Harrison
(1940–2002)
Wreck of the Hesperus
1987
I’m not the wreck of the Hesperus
Feel more like the Wall of China
Getting old as Methuselah
Feel tall as the Eiffel Tower
I’m not a power or attorney
But I can rock as good as Gibraltar
Ain’t no more no spring chicken
Been plucked but I’m still kicking
George Harrison, c. 1990.
But it’s alright, it’s alright
(continued on next page)
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Inspiration: George Harrison’s “Wreck of the Hesperus”
991
George HArrison’s “Wreck of the Hesperus”
Poison penmen sneak, have no nerve to speak
Make up lies then they leak ‘m out
Behind a pseudonym, the rottenness in them
Reaching out trying to touch me
Met some Oscars and Tonys
I slipped on a pavement oyster
Met a snake climbing ladders
Got out of the line of fire
(But it’s alright)
Brainless writers gossip nonsenses
To others heads dense as they is
It’s the same old malady
What they see is faulty
I’m not the wreck of the Hesperus
Feel more like Big Bill Broonzy
Getting old as my mother
But I tell you I got some company
(But it’s alright)
But it’s alright, it’s alright
But it’s alright, it’s alright
It’s alright, alright
It’s alright
Talking about the Text
1. How does Longfellow’s “The Wreck of the Hesperus” suggest we should judge the
death of the young woman? What emotions does Longfellow appeal to in telling
this story, and for what reason?
2. What is the purpose of the young daughter’s repeated questions to her father?
Writing about the Text
1. “The Wreck of the Hesperus” is commonly considered a ballad. What characteristics define a ballad? Write a short explanation of how the poem fits the definition
of a ballad.
2. How does Longfellow use repetition in “The Building of the Ship” and for what
purpose? Compare the repetition in “The Building of the Ship” to that in “The
Wreck of the Hesperus.” Does it create the same effect or a different one?
3. Very little criticism or research has been devoted to Longfellow in the last hundred years. What do you think accounts for his general lack of popularity today?
What do modern readers expect from poetry that Shakespeare, Whitman, and
others can still provide that Longfellow cannot?
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Linking the Text to Other Texts
1. Compare the tragic accounts of death in “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and
“Annabel Lee.” What emotions do the poems rely on for their effect? What characterizes the young women in each poem?
2. Longfellow is often criticized for using sentimentality as a major device in his poetry. Analyze the sentimentality in “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and one other
poem in this chapter and compare the two. What evidence of sentimentality do
you see in other poems of this genre? Does Longfellow appear to use sentiment
more or less than his peers?
3. Analyze the theme of tragedy and responsibility in Hemans’s “Casabianca” and
Longfellow’s “The Wreck of the Hesperus.”
ROBERT BROWNING
(1812–1889)
In an age of recitation and declamations, it was only natural that some
poems would get written as if they were parts of stage performances.
Robert Browning is most famous for these, which he called “dramatic
monologues.” The idea is that one speaker tells someone else what he
sees and thinks. We assume a listener is present and addressed directly
by the speaker. Here, in Browning’s most famous monologue, an evil
Renaissance duke is showing off his palace to the emissary of a count
whose daughter he is arranging to marry. The duke stops at a portrait of his last wife and explains what happened to her. Naturally, the audience is able to take in more than the poem’s
speaker intends.
My Last Duchess
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s° hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat”: such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
(1842)
fictional painter
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Robert Browning
My Last Duchess
993
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—which I have not—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Talking about the Text
1. In Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” who is the duke addressing, and why is his audience’s visit significant?
2. Why is it significant that the duchess’s portrait hangs among the duke’s prized art
collection? Why does the poem end with the duke pointing out the statue of
Neptune?
3. What is the duke’s motivation for telling the count’s emissary about the duchess?
How much does he reveal about himself willingly in his monologue and how
much does it unwittingly reveal?
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40
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Writing about the Text
1. Write an analysis of Browning’s “My Last Duchess” as a dramatic monologue.
What does Browning achieve by telling the story from the first-person perspective
of the duke?
2. Write an intervention of the poem that reimagines it as a dialogue between the
duke and the count’s emissary. Imagine what questions the emissary might interject and how the duke would respond.
Linking the Text to Other Texts
1. Critic Ina Beth Sessions defines a dramatic monologue as having seven characteristics: a speaker, an audience, an occasion for speech, a revelation of character, interplay between speaker and audience, dramatic action, and action that takes
place in the present. How well does “My Last Duchess” fit this definition? Which
characteristics does the poem best represent?
2. Compare “My Last Duchess” with another dramatic monologue in this chapter
and decide which better fits Sessions’s definition.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
(1806–1861)
In addition to her many famous sonnets and her verse novel Aurora
Leigh (p. •••), Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a few narratives
aimed at public performance. “Mother and Poet,” one of her last poems, deals with the struggle to free Italy from tyranny, a long contest
that took place between 1850 and 1870. It was a perfect subject for a
poem, since Browning had lived many years in Italy and viewed its
struggle favorably. And she was eager to tell heroic narratives of contemporary life, rather
than search for her tales in the Renaissance (as her husband did) or the middle ages (as did
so many Victorian poets). In “Mother and Poet,” Browning tells the story of Laura Savio,
of Turin, a poet and patriot whose sons were killed at Ancona and Gaeta, battles in which
Italy attempted to win independence from royal rule.
Mother and Poet
(1861)
Turin, after News from Gaeta, 1861
DEAD! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said;
But this woman, this, who is agoniz’d here,
—The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
For ever instead.
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Mother and Poet
995
What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you press’d,
And I proud, by that test.
15
What art’s for a woman? To hold on her knees
Both Darlings; to feel all their arms round her throat,
Cling, strangle a little, to sew by degrees
And ’broider the long-clothes and neat little coat;
To dream and to doat.
20
To teach them . . . It stings there! I made them indeed
Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt,
That a country’s a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant cast out.
25
And when their eyes flash’d . . . O my beautiful eyes! . . .
I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise
When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels!
God, how the house feels!
30
At first, happy news came, in gay letters moil’d
With my kisses,—of camp-life and glory, and how
They both lov’d me; and, soon coming home to be spoil’d,
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel-bough.
35
Then was triumph at Turin: “Ancona was free!”
And someone came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,
While they cheer’d in the street.
40
I bore it; friends sooth’d me; my grief look’d sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remain’d
To be leant on and walk’d with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strain’d
To the height he had gain’d.
45
And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand, “I was not to faint,—
One lov’d me for two—would be with me ere long:
And Viva l’ Italia!—he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint.”
50
My Nanni would add, “he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turn’d off the balls,—was impress’d
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how ’t was impossible, quite dispossess’d,
To live on for the rest.”
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On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line,
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta:—Shot.
Tell his mother. Ah, ah, “his,” “their” mother,—not “mine,”
No voice says “My mother” again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot?
60
Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,
They drop earth’s affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not. Themselves were to lately forgiven
Through THAT Love and Sorrow which reconcil’d so
The Above and Below.
65
O Christ of the five wounds, who look’dst through the dark
To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray,
How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,
Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turn’d away,
And no last word to say!
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Both boys dead? but that’s out of nature. We all
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
’T were imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;
And, when Italy’s made, for what end is it done
If we have not a son?
75
Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta’s taken, what then?
When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?
When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short?
80
When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,
When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red,
When you have your country from mountain to sea,
When King Victor has Italy’s crown on his head,
(And I have my Dead)—
85
What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low,
And burn your lights faintly! My country is there,
Above the star prick’d by the last peak of snow:
My Italy’s THERE, with my brave civic Pair,
To disfranchise despair!
90
Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into wail such as this—and we sit on forlorn
When the man-child is born.
95
Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea,
Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me.
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Walt Whitman
997
Talking about the Text
1. What is the overall tone of Browning’s “Mother and Poet”? Describe how the feelings of the mother change from before the war to her current state.
2. Why does the mother refuse to write a “great song” for the free Italy? What statement does she make with this refusal?
Writing about the Text
1. In her essay “Diverting the Gaze: The Unseen Text in Women’s War Writing,” in
the spring 2004 issue of College Literature, a scholarly journal, Carol Acton argues
that “Much war writing by women consciously negotiates the space between the
woman’s experience as non-combatant and the man’s combatant experience of
war.” Write a paper that argues how “Mother and Poet” either supports or refutes
this thesis.
2. What did the mother in Browning’s “Mother and Poet” teach her sons about patriotism, self-sacrifice, and the purpose of war? What position do you think the
mother comes to regarding these ideas after her sons’ deaths. Using specific quotes
from the poem, explain what the mother’s position is concerning the idea that “a
country’s a thing men should die for at need” (l. 23).
Linking the Text to Other Texts
1. Compare the depiction of young soldiers in Browning’s “Mother and Poet” and Felicia Hemans’s “Casabianca.” How do the depictions of patriotism and bravery
compare?
2. After her book Poems before Congress was published in 1860, reviewers strongly
criticized Elizabeth Barrett Browning for being “unfeminine.” One critic in particular laid out his standards for feminine expression, which he obviously
thought Browning deviated from: “To bless and not to curse is woman’s function.” By modern standards, how much do you think “Mother and Poet” expresses “feminine” characteristics? What in particular do you think the critic
found objectionable about Browning’s poem? How do you think our ideas about
what is expected from female writers has changed in the last one hundred and
fifty years?
WALT WHITMAN
(1819–1892)
During his long life, Walt Whitman was a newspaperman, a
teacher, a housebuilder, a nurse, and as he became famous, a wellregarded public lecturer. In his fifties and sixties he attained a growing reputation for his poetry, and he also became well known for his
writings on Abraham Lincoln. He spoke in public many times about
Lincoln, reading both his character sketch of the president (whom he
had seen but never met) and the poetry he wrote after Lincoln’s
Walt Whitman, c. murder. Hardly any of Whitman’s great poems are written in such a
1888, several years regular form as “O Captain! My Captain!” This elegy for Lincoln,
prior to his death.
in rhyme, was by far Whitman’s most popular poem in his lifetime,
and he was called upon to recite it again and again. For an account of Whitman, see
chapter 13, which is devoted to his work.
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O Captain! My Captain!
(1865)
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Talking about the Text
1. Who is the speaker of Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!”? Who does the
speaker figuratively represent?
2. Read “O Captain! My Captain!” aloud. Then hypothesize on why this was the
public’s favorite of Whitman’s poems. What makes it compelling: its subject matter, rhyme scheme, point of view, tone?
3. Why didn’t Whitman write a literal poem about the loss of Lincoln as a leader?
What does figurative language do in “O Captain! My Captain!” to strengthen the
poem’s impact?
Writing about the Text
1. Research Whitman’s role in the Civil War and the political beliefs that lead him
to honor Lincoln in his poetry. Use this research to support your reading of “O
Captain! My Captain!”
2. Explicate “O Captain! My Captain!” line by line, explaining both the literal
and figurative meanings. How do you as a reader know to read the poem on two
levels?
Linking the Text to Other Texts
1. Compare “O Captain! My Captain!” to one of the elegies in chapter 11 (p. •••).
What common techniques do they use?
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2. Whitman wrote another poem about Lincoln that literary critics consider more
successful. Do a critical comparison of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
Bloom’d” (p. •••) and “O Captain! My Captain!” Pick two or three poetic techniques and discuss their success or failure in each poem.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
(1809–1892)
The British counterpart of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was Alfred,
Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), the poet laureate from 1850 to 1892.
He was by far the most popular English poet of his time; one of his poems was issued in a book that sold 40,000 copies in its first week, at a
time when 500 copies a year was considered a success. His poems were
often patriotic and usually artfully composed with performance in
mind. The two poems below, “Ulysses” and “The Charge of the Light
Brigade,” show Tennyson’s immense range: the first is a wistful interior monologue delivered by an ancient Greek hero still seeking adventure, the other a patriotic piece celebrating
bravery in the face of official stupidity.
“Ulysses” dramatizes the speech of the Greek warrior who fought at Troy and became
the subject of Homer’s Odyssey. Now old and close to death, he hands over his kingdom to
his son and prepares to set off with his remaining band of warriors one more time, “to seek a
newer world,” or to die trying.
Ulysses
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all—And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch where through
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
(1842)
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Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, my own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me—That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—-you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Charge of the Light Brigade 1001
“The Charge of the Light Brigade” was inspired by news of a contemporary
military disaster, a mistaken order for British cavalry to charge into the face of
Russian cannons at the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War. In the poem,
Tennyson celebrates unthinking bravery in the face of overwhelming odds,
much like Felicia Hemans had in “Casabianca.” A French military observer,
watching the British troops charge, said, “C’est magnifique, mais c’est ne pas la
guerre” (“It’s magnificent, but it’s not war”). In 1890 the aged Tennyson was prevailed upon to record the opening of the poem (which can be heard on the CD).
He brings a special gift to the performance, with his own sound effects, even
though the recording is 115 years old.
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
”Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
(1854)
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Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
Talking about the Text
1. In Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” what does the speaker mean when he says “I am become a
name”?
2. What is Ulysses’ attitude toward his current state in life? How much can you infer
from his actual words and how much from his omissions, tone, self-characterization, and diction?
Writing about the Text
1. Write a summary of Ulysses’ life story, which is dramatized in The Odyssey. What
should a reader of Tennyson’s “Ulysses” know about this character that will better
inform the poem? How well do you think a reader would understand the poem
without previous knowledge of Ulysses?
2. Write a paper arguing whether the Ulysses in Tennyson’s poem is a tragic or heroic
character.
3. Analyze Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” as either a critique of battle or a celebration of it.
Linking the Text to Other Texts
1. Compare the depictions of battle in Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade”
and Felicia Hemans’s “Casabianca.” How do the poems suggest a judgment about
the tragedy?
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2. Compare the speakers in Tennyson’s “Ulysses” and Browning’s “My Last Duchess.”
How much does each speaker reveal unwittingly about himself, and what are his
motivations for speaking?
QUESTIONS FOR WRITING AND
RESEARCH
1. Find five examples of special diction or vocabulary in poems in this chapter.
(Examples: archaism, such as “whilst” in Longfellow, or mock-heroic, such
as “spheroid” in “Casey at the Bat.”) Then, “translate” these five terms into
the normal language of the twenty-first century.
2. Describe some of the terms associated with women in at least two of the poems in this chapter. What characteristics do you notice? Suggested starting
places: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (p. •••), Robert Browning (p. •••),
and Letitia Landon (p. •••).
3. Write an essay about how men are characterized in three poems in this
chapter. Suggested starting places: Tennyson (p. •••), Landon (p. •••),
and Hemans (p. •••).
4. How can a poem seem “abominable and silly” when read silently, yet it still
“succeeds marvelously” when declaimed? (See the Stephen Jay Gould quotation on p. •••.) What is it about the process of declaiming—reading
aloud with dramatic emphasis—that can take hokey language on a page and
transform it into something different?
5. Write your own one-page ballad or narrative of an event, making it dramatic, mock heroic, or a parody.
6. Choose one poem from this chapter and prepare ten to fifteen lines to present out loud, spending time rehearsing and listening to samples.
7. What connections do you see between the kinds of narrative poetry in this
chapter and the kind of poems popular in today’s poetry slams? A good place
to start is at poetry slam websites, such as http://www.poetryslam.com and
http://www.austinslam.com.
8. Find a parody of one poem from this chapter and discuss how it works. Does
it depend on a knowledge of the original? Is there mockery? Is it an affectionate or a savage parody? The Web is an excellent place to begin a search.
Another place is early issues of Mad magazine, which often parodied old
chestnuts like “The Wreck of the Hesperus.”