The Darkling Thrush - Thomas Hardy

 

 

The Darkling Thrush  - Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy an English poet and novelist of 19^th century is the author of poem ‘The Darkling Thrush’. The poem describes a desolate landscape which is reflective of the poet’s own feeling of desolation and emptiness. It is written in December 1900. It reflects on the end of the 19^th century. The poem has two parts. The first part deals with the bleakness of nature in winter which inflects the poet who is looking on the scene. In the second part of the poem, the poet talks about the shrill song of the thrush. It symbolizes the indestructible energy of nature.

At the beginning, the poet is leaning on a wooden gate and surveying the surrounding landscape blighted by winter. The sun is setting. The atmosphere looks very bleak. The year has drawn to a close. Hardy uses certain apt images to describe the dismal condition of the time. He says that the year had died. He looks upon the dark clouds in the sky as a tomb containing the dead body of the year. The day is as pale as a ghost. The day is also described as the scum or dregs of the year. The howling wind is regarded as lamentation for the year that has died. Winter has paralysed nature. Hardy observes stagnation everywhere. He says that the cycle of birth and death has stopped. Nature seems to be at standstill. He compares nature to a lyre whose strings are broken with the result that no music is produced.

Hardy is in low spirits. He is ‘fervourless’. The dismal landscape around him reflects his inner emptiness. The poet is lost in sad thoughts. Suddenly the silence is broken by the melodies song of a thrush. The thrush is old. Its feathers have been damaged by a violent storm. Still, the thrush is not disheartened. It continues to pour out its song in the dark night. The poet wonders what could be the motivation or source of the bird’s gaiety. He says that the thrush is hopeful of a future. It is not depressed by the paralyzing effect of winter. It has ‘a blessed hope’ that a better time will be born soon. The bird has this cheerful hope but the poet is depressed.

Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold

 

Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold, a Victorian poet as well a critic. He is the author of the poem ‘Dover Beach’. It was published in 1867. It is in the form of dramatic monologue, lamenting the loss of religious faith during the Victorian age. During the age because of the advancement of science, people lost their faith in religion. In this poem ‘Dover Beach’ Arnold says that true love is the only remedy for all problems. The ‘love’ addressed in the poem is Arnold’s newly married wife Frances Lucy Wightman with whom he visited Dover.

The Poet is the speaker, he is in his room. He begins to describe a calm and quiet sea out in the English Channel. The place is Dover Beach which is in a short distance from the French Coast. The poet asks his beloved to come to the window to watch the beautiful scene. The waves are ebbing and flowing. This to and fro movement produces crashing noise. The poet says that there is something sad about this sound. He feels that sadness is eternal. Even Sophocles, an ancient Greek tragedian might have heard this sound on the Aegean Sea. It reminded him of the emotions of ‘human misery’ and how they ‘ebb and flow’.

In this poem Arnold compares religion to sea. Once people had a strong faith but it dried up in the Victorian age because of the advancement of science. It is symbolically conveyed by the poet through the image of the sea withdrawing from the shore.

In the end of the poem, Arnold stresses the importance of love. Man had nothing to sustain him except woman’s love. He ends the poem with the cynical reflection that absence of religious enlightenment. People behave blindly and self – destructively like soldiers fighting in the dark and killing their own comrades by mistake. There is misunderstanding everywhere only sincere love can console distraught men and women.

Restoration England

 

Restoration England

By the term Restoration England, we mean England of the period between 1660 and 1688. All the practices which were suppressed during the Puritan regime were restored after Charles II was brought back of England as its king. Political monarchy, Parliament and Law were all brought back to their former status.

After the death of Oliver Cromwell there was a confusion and chaos in England. Richard Cromwell came to power. He was incompetent. Unable to bear pressures so he retired from politics. The conventional Parliament was headed by General Monk. He sensed the growing discontentment of the people. He planned to bring Charles II to the English throne. Charles II accepted the Monk’s invitation to be the king of England.

The restoration of Charles II marked the restoration of Parliamentary democracy. The powers of Parliament were considerably weakened during the commonwealth period. During the restoration period the House of Lords was restored. The House of Commons was more powerful than the House of Lords.

The Convention Parliament (1660 - 61) placed Charles II on the throne. It was summoned without a royal writ. It passed many important Acts. The parliament was dissolved in 1661 and a new parliament was elected and continued for 18years. It was called Cavalier Parliament. During Charles II’s reign, divisions arose on religious grounds. Charles II was a staunch Catholic. After his death, his brother James ascended the throne.

The Puritan age was noted for its excessive restraint. The table turned in the opposite extreme in the Restoration period. Restraint was replaced by the utter abandon in the new age. All theatres were closed down in the Puritan age as they were believed to breed immortality. Theatres were re-opened in the Restoration age, with major changes. The Restoration theatre was roofed in. Plays were staged at night in candle light. Another major change was that women’s roles were played by actresses and not by boys.

Two great national calamities of the Restoration period were the Plague and the Great Fire. The plague of 1665 carried away nearly one-fifth of the London population. The Great fire of 1666 raged for five long days, destroying all the churches and other buildings of the city. The Great fire was in a sense a blessing in disguise because the reconstruction of the city on modern lines was possible after this calamity. The reconstruction of London was accomplished in a comparatively short period of four or five years.

 

God’s Grandeur - Gerard Manley Hopkins

 God’s Grandeur   - Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of the most important poets of the Victorian era. He was also a Jesuit priest. He wrote ‘God’s Grandeur’ in 1877. It is an Italian sonnet. It contains fourteen lines divided into an octave and a sestet. The title word ‘grandeur’ from the French, means greatness, grandness. The poem explores the relationship between God and the world of nature and how the divine is infused in things and refreshes despite the efforts of humans to ruin the whole show.

 

 In the first stanza, the poet says that God’s grandeur is revealed to us in different ways. In one way it flames out with sudden brilliance, as when a silver foil is shaken and it gives out glints of light. Another way is that God’s glory manifests itself slowly over a period of time, so when the oil crushed from olives slowly oozes out and gathers into a thick pool. The poet then continues to say that it has been so in the past and it continues to be so in the present that people do not care for the authority of God. The reason, for people’s inattentiveness is that they have become fatalistic to their misfortune. Hopkins gives more reasons behind it. He says men have now become too much materialistic and business minded. Like a galloping horse, generations have moved onward, have worked hard to threshold an era of industrialization and commercialization. The poet further says that, the filth and dirt of human selfishness have spoilt God’s grandeur and thus have poisoned world of Nature. Men are so much busy at their work that they cannot even think about this decay for a little while. They are confined to their narrow circle of routine life and thus accepted their fate. Man has become quite indifferent to the loss of the beauty of the Nature and also his own natural beauty. As a result he has become too hard, too insensitive and too crude.

      In the second stanza, the poet says that inspite of all the oddities a bright dawn can be expected. Poet has faith in God and so he is optimistic; he thinks that the Holy Ghost is perpetually hovering and brooding over the earth and the mankind as a bird broods over an egg and sustains the life in it with its warmth. This beautiful imagery of the mother-bird brooding over its egg conveys to us a sense of living relationship. The poet expects that Nature can never be exhausted. Though people have become rude and indifferent to the Nature but Nature never betrays the man. She is too benevolent to give her all and thus become inexhausted. It is a perennial source of freshness with which the earth is renewed every time when spring comes; dark night and gloomy days are replaced by the new light of the sun of the horizon.

 

My Last Duchess - Robert Browning

 

My Last Duchess    - Robert Browning

‘My Last Duchess’ is written by Robert Browning. He is a Victorian poet. He wrote the poem in 1842. It is written in the form of dramatic monologue. The poem depicts the condition of women in the Victorian age. Wives were expected to meekly submit to their husbands, however brutish they might be. In this poem, Ferrara is such a brutal husband, who murdered his wife mercilessly for her indiscriminate smile.

The Duke of Ferrara is the speaker of the poem. He addresses the ambassador whose master’s daughter he is planning to marry. He informs the ambassador that he murdered his wife because she was flirtatious. The ambassador remains a passive listener. He knows that it is dangerous to oppose Ferrara.  Ferrara shows the ambassador the picture of his wife’s face. It is painted on the wall by the famous painter Fra’Pandolf. To draw the Duchess’s facial expressions, Fra’Pandolf spent a whole day. The Duchess in the picture is glancing. There is a touch of joy on her face.

Ferrara says that his wife could be easily pleased or impressed. All objects gave her equal pleasure. The costly jewel gifted to her by her husband and the cherry given to her by some foolish servant - both were regarded as equal by the Duchess. According to him, the Duchess had no discrimination.

Ferrara considers it beneath his dignity to instruct her, what she should or should not do. She smiled when he passed by her. She did the same when other men passed by her. Ferrara was not able to tolerate it, so he had murdered. This is the only way he could think of to stop her smiling indiscriminately.

Ferrara says that he will not openly demand any dowry but that he expects the ambassador’s master’s daughter to bring him much dowry. Before leaving the hall the Duke shows the ambassador the sculpture of Neptune, the sea-god taming the powerful sea-horse. What Ferrara indirectly conveys is that he will tame his future wife also as Neptune tamed the sea-horse.

Thus the poem depicts the harsh reality of a controlling marriage and a dominating husband who enjoys tyrannical power.

 

Ulysses - Alfred Lord Tennyson

 

Ulysses   - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson is the author of the poem ‘Ulysses’. He wrote the poem in 1833. It is written in the form of a dramatic monologue spoken by Ulysses. The character appears in Homer’s Greek epic ‘The Odyssey’ and Dante’s Italian epic ‘The Inferno’. Tennyson wrote this poem after the unexpected death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. In this poem, the author tells us the tale of Ulysses who sets out for a final voyage before his death.

Ulysses has just returned from the Trojan War. Ulysses is old but is still full of wanderlust. Having led an adventurous life for many years, he finds that he has to remain idle in Ithaca. He complains that life in Ithaca is very dull. His wife is aged. There is no scope for romance at home and adventure in the country. The people of Ithaca are sluggish and do not understand his greatness as a leader. He wants to go on a voyage again so that he can enjoy the richness of life till the last moment of his life.

 Ulysses wants to hand over the kingdom to his son Telemachus. He says that his and his son’s talents are quite different. Ulysses has wandered all over the world and had many rich experiences. He has observed a variety of cultures and governments. He was respected wherever he went. In spite of his extensive travelling, he does not want to take rest. He has an unquenchable thirst for wandering and adventure. He wants to have more and more experiences. Telemachus is an administrator par excellence. He is immensely patient and can civilize the rugged Ithacans by degrees. He can win over the people by exhibiting love and concern for them.

Ulysses explains his plan to his brave followers. He tells them frankly that his purpose is to take them to the very end of the western horizon where the stars are supposed to bathe. He also wants to go to the Happy Isles, the abode of the souls of the illustrious dead. He hopes to meet there the brave Achilles who got killed in the Trojan War. Ulysses points to the mariner that in the process of discovering these new lands they may meet their death. Ulysses’ followers are as brave as he is. None of them are discouraged by the prospect of death.

All of them have the same mind set. Though they are weakened by time and fate, they are still mentally strong to work hard and find what they searched for. They are determined not to yield to despair.

A Patch of Land - C.Subramania Bharati

 

 A Patch of Land     - C.Subramania Bharati

C.Subramania Bharati is the author of the poem ‘A Patch of Land’. He was born on 11^th December 1882 at Ettayapuram in Tamilnadu and died on 11^th September 1921 in Chennai. He was a poet, journalist, social reformer and polyglot. He is bestowed the title "Mahakavi Bharathi" for his excellence in poetry. He was a pioneer of modern Tamil poetry and is considered one of the greatest Tamil literary figures of all time. His well known works are ‘Kannan Pattu’, ‘Panchali Sapatham’, ‘Kuyil Pattu’. The poem ‘A Patch of Land’ depicts the desire of the poet for a peaceful, beautiful and natural atmosphere in which he wants to live.

The poet starts the poem by requesting the Goddess Parashakti, the goddess of power to grant him a patch of land. In Tamil text, ‘A Patch of land’ is called ‘Kanni nilam i.e.1.32acres. In the midst of the land, he desires to have a bungalow with the decorative pillars. He wishes to have balconies in that house and to be painted in white. The white color will give the poet peace of mind. In the land, nearby the well, he dreams to have ten to twelve coconut trees with long fronds and tender nuts.

The wish list of the poet continues. Being the lover of nature, he wants to sit and watch the moonlight entering through the groves like a shining pearl. He also wants to listen to the songs of the cuckoos while there is a gentle breeze. The gentle breeze will bring pleasure to his soul. He further appeals to the Supreme power to provide him a young woman with chastity as his life partner. He wants to share the joyous moment with her. Finally the poet appeals to the Supreme power to protect him and his wife for the sake of his powerful poetry. He assures to Parashakti that he is ready to submit his poetic abilities to save this earth. He concludes the poem with a note of prayer to protect the whole world. From this poem we can understand the poet’s love towards nature and the well being of others.