Close Reading – Page 28 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Self-Unseeing’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Self-Unseeing’ is a short Thomas Hardy poem that originally appeared in his second volume of poems, Poems of the Past and the Present, in 1901. Like many of Hardy’s poems, ‘The Self-Unseeing’ seems to require no detailed unpicking or analysis; it can be understood on first reading fairly easily. Nevertheless, the poem raises certain questions which it isn’t so easy to answer.

The Self-Unseeing

Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.

She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.

A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘A Cooking Egg’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Cooking Egg’ first appeared in T. S. Eliot’s second collection, Poems, in 1919. You can read ‘A Cooking Egg’ here; below are some thoughts on this elusive and difficult poem, designed to serve as a brief analysis of the poem’s meaning and features.

A Short Analysis of Tennyson’s ‘The Kraken’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92) didn’t write many sonnets, despite being a prolific poet (the definitive edition of his Poems spans three thick volumes). But ‘The Kraken’ is probably his most resounding success with the sonnet form, though whether it is a sonnet is open to debate. In this post we offer a brief analysis of ‘The Kraken’ in terms of its language, form, meaning, and imagery.

The Kraken

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;

A Short Analysis of Philip Larkin’s ‘The Mower’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Philip Larkin wrote ‘The Mower’ in early summer 1979, and the poem was published in Humberside, the magazine of the Hull Literary Club, in autumn that same year. It’s the last truly great poem Larkin wrote, and, like many of his poems, takes a very simple everyday scene as its focus. And, like many of Larkin’s poems, death is one of its main themes.

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 5: ‘Those hours, that with gentle work’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Sonnet 5 in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which begins ‘Those hours, that with gentle work did frame …’ is another ‘Procreation Sonnet’ – many of these sonnets might also be described as carpe diem or ‘seize the day’ poems. A brief analysis of Sonnet 5 follows below. In the poem, Shakespeare once again urges the Fair Youth to have children, because time, which has helped to fashion his beauty, will also rob him of it.

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness every where: