Alone
by Edgar Allan Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov'd—I lov'd alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—
In these lines, the reader sees that Poe relates this trouble differently than those commonly plagued with gloom. This darker tone is a facet of his character. He was not as others were. He saw things through a much different light. Where averagely others saw passions and goodness in only the lighthearted things like spring, he saw the beauty of the dark and the peculiar.
This selfsame peculiarity of his personality has also been a great source of pain to the great author. His unique outlook has brought him to the deeply haunted mental pain that is genius. His sorrow was like a deep sleep from which he could not stir. His isolation is found even in the things he loves. All he loves, all he touches, echoes with this same pervasive isolating grief.
In these lines of ‘Alone’, the author discloses the mystery that engulfs him like a storm cloud. All of his life’s goods and evils have been encased in this code that he cannot crack on his own and neither can anyone else give him the answer to it. His mind is enigmatic to himself. This only compounds his problem as he, predisposed to despair, cannot find the hopeful variable in this giftedness. Thus Poe was burdened with a weighty melancholy that led him to a great many addictions and social problems.
In literature, color is often used to elicit a visual emotion. Poe draws our attention to the true shades he sees in his world. His lonely dreams are golden and red. The color of storm clouds. To Poe, the dawn-colors are hidden in the depths. He can see them and judge their distance. This distance again increases his isolation. The great depth of his mind’s machine has separated him from all the things he witnesses with the great wonder of analysis.
“The rest of Heaven” here does not specifically mean Heaven as the sky or the kingdom of the righteous. Here Poe is comparing himself in relation to all the rest of the Universe and the other people he knows to be in it. He is captivated and isolated at once from the sky that is filled with wonderful storms. The storm-like dark that generated a great deal of his inspiration continues to plague him as a factor of isolation. This isolation, at last, suffocates his mind. The demon is thus the author himself. He sees his own distortion as a curse that brings him to greater depths of pain at every turn. He ends on this abruptly hopeless note because this is as far as he can see himself going.
Piano
D.H. Lawrence
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
David Herbert Lawrence (1885 - 1930) was one of the primary shapes of 20th-century fiction in England. He was the son of a coal miner in Nottingham, England. He was a sickly child and devoted to his mother, who encouraged him to study. He graduated from the teacher-training course at University College, Nottingham, in 1905 and became a schoolmaster in a London suburb.
Lawrence lived in England and in Europe, but also travelled to Sri-Lanka, Australia, the United States and Maxico. His first poems appeared in 1909 in the 'English Review'. Lawrence's works include volumes of stories, poems, and essays. He also wrote a number of plays, travel books and volumes of literary criticism.
He died at the age of 45 of tuberculosis, a disease with which he had struggled for years.
Words:
appassionato = to be performed in an impassioned way
clamour = a loud noise
insidious = slow and subtle
parlour = ordinary sitting room in a house
poised = suspended in the air, often just before an action
vista = a long succession of events in the past
Q. 1. What is the main theme of the poem?
Ans: childhood reminiscences
Q.2. What causes the speakers return 'down the vista of years'?
Ans: The song of a woman.
Q.3. What are the implications of the tears in the last line of the poem?
Ans: The speaker has missed the blissful childhood days.
The poem's attention is on certain events that took place in the past.
Where the Mind is Without Fear
Rabindranath Tagore
Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941) was born in Calcutta. He visited England in 1878 to study law, but returned to India, and instead became a writer, playwriter, songwriter, poet, philosopher, and educator. In 1912, he began translating his selections of poems, Gitanjali, into English. Almost all of his selections of poems, Gitanjali, into English. Almost all of his work prior to that time had been written in Bengali.
In 1913, Tagore received the Nobel Prize for literature. He was the first non-westerner to be so honored. In 1915, he was knighted by the British King George V, but renounced the title in 1919, following the Amritsar massacre. He wrote over one thousand poems; eight novels; eight volumes of short stories; plays; and many books and essays on philosophy, religion, education, and social topics. He composed more than two thousand songs. Two of them became the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. In 1929, he began painting, too, and today his paintings hang in many museums.
Words :
domestic = relating to or used in the home or everyday life
dreary = gloomy; unexciting
fragments = pieces, usually broken off when something shatters
perfection = the quality of something that is as good or suitable as it possibly can be
striving = trying hard to achieve something
Q.1. To whom is the poem addressed?
2. What is the poet's request?
3. What vision does the poet have of an ideal land?
Tarantella
Hilaire Belloc
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark verandah)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteeers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the Din?
And the Hip! Hop! Hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of a clapper to the spin
Out and in --
And the Ting, Tong, Tang, of the Guitar.
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar:
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the Halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far Waterfall like Doom.
Hilaire Belloc (1870 - 1953) was born near Paris, a few days before the start of the Franco - Prussian war. He and his sister were taken to England, but on their return, the family found their home had been utterly vandalized by the occupying troops. Belloc was educated in England (Birmingham and Oxford). His first book was a small volume of verse, published in 1896, and from then on a flood of books, pamphlets, letters and more poured from his pen. His work encompasses French and British history, military strategy, satire, comic and serious verse, literary criticism, topography and travel, translations, religious, social, and political commentary, and hundreds of essays; these fill over one hundred and fifty volumes! Belloc is among the great writers of English prose and verse.
In this poem you can see how words and sounds are important to give a poem its lyrical quality. The poet sets the mood or tone by changing the metre. We can almost see and hear the dancers at the end of the first stanza. And then in the second, the tone is more sombre; the pace is slower and the sounds are muted.
Words:
Aragon = a part of northern Spain
din = a loud noise
doom = a terrible fate
glancing = looking quickly
hoar = frost
jeers = taunts; abuses
muleteer = a mule driver
Pyreness = mountains between France and Spain
tarantella= a rapid out , scatter for drying
torrent = a fast or violent flow of water
Q. 1. Which of the following instructional strategies represents the most effective use of literature to promote students' respect and appreciation for diversity?
Ans: including texts by and about people of diverse cultures throughout the general language arts program.
Q. 2. Which of the following function texts would be most effective for finding information about the etymology of a particular word?
Ans: a dictionary
Q.3. In which country do you think the speaker and Miranda were staying?
Q. 4. What noises were heard at the Inn?
Q.5. How does the mood change in the second stanza?
Departures
Manohar Shetty
It was there when I started off
Pale as a woodshaving glued
To windowglass, unmoved by
Thumps of bags, the slamming
Of doors, the cheerless goodbyes.
I forgot it for an hour:
The black and white milestones
A fleeting clockface ticking
The distance away home
What had once been home.
The road was dragged back,
A measuring tape; dark
As an eel it unreeled
Glistening and writhing on land.
The bus heaved
On the tangent bends.
The moth was still, like
Something embossed.
Mindless refugee, would it
Whisper sensible secrets to me?
Wrapped in peace, its wings
A neat canvas tent, distance
Never came to an end; live
Miniscule mummy in a pyramid
Of sky, trees and fertile air!
Midnight halt in a strange town:
Lurid yellow glare of stalls,
Odd brand names, a southern
Tongue which slithered
Like snakes in a glass case.
I made uneasy small talk:
Hotel rates, places of interest,
Rents, the distance left.
A few replied with a sleepy air.
Some didn't know, or care.
Back for the last leg -
the stowaway motionless
As a pinned specimen, at home
On a transparent bed of glass.
Was it asleep or dead?
For sixteen hours it had stuck
To one square inch of space!
Blind to my destination, glimpsed
Corusscating from a high bridge;
The waters below a whirling sheet
Pulled out from under my feet;
I felt like a stone
tensing in the air - hanging fast
To my exemplar
Still rooted to glass.
Manoher Shetty (1886 - 1967) was born in Bombay in 1953. He was educated at St Peter's High School, Panchgani, and the University of Bombay. He has worked mainly as a journalist since 1974. His stories have been published in various magazines, and he has published two collections of verse, A Guarded Space (1981) and Borrowed Time (1988).
Words:
Coruscating = giving off flashes or bright lightembossed = decorated or marked with a design
exemplar = example; an ideal example of something, worthy of being copied or imitated
Lurid = bright and garish; glowing with an unnaturally vivid brightness
minuscule = minuscule
refugee = somebody who is seeking or taking refuge
stowaway = somebody who hides on a ship in the hope of being taken somewhere for free
tangent = touching only at a single point
woodshaving = thin slices of wood shaved off.
Q.1. When do we realize what it is that the poet is speaking of?
2. How are the following described?
a) the milestones
b) the road
c) the town
d) the moth
3. Which words and phrases do the poet use for the month?
4. Where is the poet headed?
5. Why does the poet 'make uneasy small talk'?
6. Does the poet admire the moth? How can we tell?
Matilda
Hilaire Belloc
Who told Lies
Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes;
Her Aunt, who from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her,
And would have done so, had not She
Discovered this Infirmity.
For once, towards the Close of Day,
Matilda, growing tired of play,
And finding she was left alone,
Went tiptoe to the Telephone
And summoned the Immediate Aid
Of London's Noble Fire-Brigade.
Within an hour the Gallant Band
Were pouring in on every hand,
From Putney, Hackney Downs and Bow,
With Courage high and Heart a-glow
They galloped, roaring through the Town,
"Matilda's House is Burning Down!"
Inspired by British Cheers and Loud
Proceeding from the Frenzied Crowd,
They ran their ladders through a score
Of windows on the Ball Room Floor;
And took Peculiar Pains to Souse
The Pictures up and down the House,
Until Matilda's Aunt succeeded
In showing them they were not needed,
And even then she had to pay
To get the Men to go away!
It happened that a few Weeks later
Her Aunt was off to the Theatre
To see that Interesting Play
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.
She had refused to take her Niece
To hear this Entertaining Piece:
A Deprivation Just and Wise
To Punish her for Telling Lies.
That Night a Fire did break out-
You should have heard Matilda Shout!
You should have heard her Scream and Bawl!
And throw the window up and call
To People passing in the Street-
(The rapidly increasing Heat
Encouraging her to obtain
Their confidence) - but all in vain!
For every time she shouted "Fire!"
They only answered "Little Liar"
And therefore when her Aunt returned,
Matilda, and the House, were Burned.
Words:
deprivation = a long succession of events in the pastfrenzied = hysterical; full of activity and emotion (excitement, range)
gallant = brave, spirited, and honorable
galloped = the fire -carriage in those days was drawn by horses
infirmity = ill-health; a weakness or failing in someone
Putney, Hackney Downs, Bow = districts of London
regard = respect
score = twenty
souse = drench; to make something completely wet
the Second Mrs. Tanqueray = a play by Arthur Wing Pinero, first performed in London in 1893
Q.1. How do we learn that the Aunt thought Matilda was a difficult child?
2. Which 'words' does the poet use to describe Matilda's habit of telling lies?
3. What made Matilda summon the fire brigade?
4. What is meant by 'took Peculiar Pains to Souse'?
5. How was Matilda punished?
6. Why did Matilda have to 'obtain' the confidence' of people? Did she succeed?
Nicholas Nye
Walter de la Mare
Thistle and darnel and dock grew there,And a bush, in a corner, of may;On the orchard wall I used to sprawl!In the blazing heat of the day;Half asleep and half awake,While the birds went twittering byAnd nobody there my lone to shareBut Nicholas Nye.
Nicholas Nye was lean and grey,
Lame of a leg and old,
More than a score of donkey's years
He had seen since he was foaled;
He had seen since he was foaled;
He munched the thistles, purple and spiked,
Would sometimes stop and sign,
And turn his head, as if he said,
'Poor Nicholas Nye!
Alone with his shadow he'd drowse in the meadow,
Lazily swinging his tail;
At break of day he used to bray, -
Not much too hearty and hale.
But a wonderful gumption was under his skin,
And a clear calm light in his eye,
And once in a while he would smile a smile
Would Nicholas Nye.
Seem to be smiling at me, he would,
From his bush, in the corner, of may -
Bony and ownerless, windowed and worn,
Knobble-kneed, lonely and grey;
And over the grass would seem to pass
'Neath the deep dark blue of the sky,
Something much better than words between me
And Nicholas Nye.
But dusk would come in the apple boughs,
The green of the glow-worm shine,
The birds in nest would crouch to rest,
And home I'd trudge to mine;
And there, in the moonlight, dark with dew,
Asking not wherefore nor why,
Would brood like a ghost, and as still as a post,
Old Nicholas Nye.
Walter de la Mare (1873 - 1956) was brought up in an affluent family in Kent. He attended St Paul's School in London. He left school at the age of sixteen, to take up a job in accountancy. During his working career, he began to write and continued to do so long after he left service when he received an annual pension from the Government. HE is well known for his poetry, but also wrote prose fiction and non-fiction and a large number of short stories. Many of his works were written for children. His most famous poem is The Listeners. De la Mare is buried in St Paul's Cathedral, London.
Words:
brood = to loom or hang heavily and ominously
darnel = a type of grass commonly found growing in fields in Europe
dock = a plant of the buckwheat family with greenish or reddish flowers and long, broad leaves
gumption = courage; bravery
knobble-kneed = knees that are misshapen and bent inwards
lone = lonely
may = the May blossom, a hawthorn plant
sprawl = slump; lounge; to lie with the arms and legs spread awkwardly
thistle = a prickly plant with purple flower heads surrounded by thorny leaves
wherefore = for what reason or purpose
Q.1. In what way does the poet feel close to the donkey?
2. How does the poet pass his day?
3. How does the donkey pass his day?
4. What physical description does the poet give of the donkey?
5. What characteristics does the poet see in the donkey? Which phrases give us clues about his character?
6. How are the natural aspects of the field and its surroundings described by the poet?
William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) was born in Paris. He was orphaned at 10 and came to school in England. He later qualified as a surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital in London. His first novel in 1897 (Liza of Lambeth) became a minor success, which prompted him to become a full-time author. HE wrote many plays (performed with great success in London ) and novels. He is remembered for his very entertaining short stories.
Words:
Deauville = a coastal town in Francedote on = to be fond of
humbug = somebody who deceives others by taking on a false identity
melancholy = gently sad
Monte Carlo = a part of Monaco known for its gambling casino
precarious = unstable; unsteady; uncertain
remonstrate = to reason or argue forcefully with somebody
submissive = giving in or tending to give in to the demands of others
stupendous = impressively large, excellent, or great in extent or degree