By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
A. E. Housman (1859-1936) was one of the greatest classicists of his age, and was also, following the success of his (self-published) first volume of poems, A Shropshire Lad (1896), a hugely popular poet.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
George Herbert (1593-1633) is widely regarded as one of the greatest religious poets in all of English literature. His work is also associated with the Metaphysical Poets. ‘The Pearl’ is a tricky poem to decipher and analyse, but the effort is worth it. What follows, then, is a brief summary and analysis of ‘The Pearl’ in terms of its language and meaning.
The Pearl
Matth. 13. 45
I know the wayes of Learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the presse, and make it runne;
What reason hath from nature borrowed,
Or of itself, like a good huswife, spunne
In laws and policie; what the starres conspire,
What willing nature speaks, what forc’d by fire;
Both th’ old discoveries and the new-found seas,
The stock and surplus, cause and historie;
All these stand open, or I have the keyes:
Yet I love thee.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
It may be just sixteen words long, and consist of eight short lines, but ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ by William Carlos Williams has generated more commentary than many longer twentieth-century poems. In this post we offer a short analysis of Williams’ poem, which you can read here.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Twice’ is not one of Christina Rossetti’s most famous poems, but it deserves to be better known. Its songlike quality shows up its kinship with many of Rossetti’s more celebrated poems, and its emotional power is as great as ‘A Birthday’ or ‘Remember’. Written in 1864 and published in Rossetti’s second collection, The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems in 1866, ‘Twice’ takes as its theme the fallen women who is wronged by a man.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 6, which begins ‘Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface / In thee thy summer’, is not the most famous of the 154 Sonnets Shakespeare wrote. And yet it develops the theme of procreation – seen in the first 17 poems in the sequence – in interesting ways. Here is Sonnet 6, along with a brief analysis of its language and a summary of its argument.
Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-killed.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That’s for thy self to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;