Paraphrase – Page 8 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 37: ‘As a decrepit father takes delight’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Sonnet 37 is not a classic Shakespeare sonnet. But it does contain some interesting aspects which careful analysis can help us to elucidate. The poem is an extended riff on the idea of Shakespeare as an old, lame, decrepit figure, contrasted with the Fair Youth’s young sprightliness.

As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth;
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,
I make my love engrafted to this store:
So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give
That I in thy abundance am sufficed,
And by a part of all thy glory live.
Look what is best, that best I wish in thee:
This wish I have; then ten times happy me.

A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 36: ‘Let me confess that we two must be twain’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Let me confess that we two must be twain.’ Things are beginning to fall apart here, and the honeymoon period between Shakespeare and the Fair Youth gives way to Sonnet 36, the first of what are sometimes called the ‘separation sonnets’. Analysing his relationship with the young man, Shakespeare comes to the conclusion that, whilst their love for each other makes them one, they must remain two separate people. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (who made some rather odd choices when discussing Shakespeare’s Sonnets) thought this one of the finest in the whole sequence; whether we agree with him, it’s certainly worthy of closer analysis.

Let me confess that we two must be twain,
Although our undivided loves are one:
So shall those blots that do with me remain,
Without thy help, by me be borne alone.
In our two loves there is but one respect,
Though in our lives a separable spite,
Which though it alter not love’s sole effect,
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight.
I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
Unless thou take that honour from thy name:
But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

A Short Analysis of John Donne’s ‘Batter my heart, three-person’d God’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Batter my heart, three-person’d God’: a typically blunt and direct opening for a John Donne poem, from a poet who is renowned for his bluff, attention-grabbing opening lines. This poem, written using the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet form, sees Donne calling upon God to take hold of him and consume him, in a collection of images that are at once deeply spiritual and physically arresting.

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘A Light Exists in Spring’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Light Exists in Spring’ is not Emily Dickinson’s best-known poem, but it is a fine poem about the spring season, so we wanted to offer a few words of analysis of it here. The poem doesn’t appear to be online anywhere already in the ‘correct’ form – i.e. how it’s rendered in the Complete Poems, with the right words capitalised and those trademark dashes in the right place. Here is ‘A Light Exists in Spring’ as it appears in the Complete Poems.

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period –
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

A Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Road Not Taken’ is one of Robert Frost’s most famous poems. It appeared in his first collection, Mountain Interval, in 1916; indeed, ‘The Road Not Taken’ opens the volume. For this reason, it’s natural and understandable that many readers take the poem to be Frost’s statement of individualism as a poet: he will take ‘the road less travelled’.