Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label English Literature

'THE EXPRESS' by Stephen Spender summary and analysis

Stephen Spender's ' THE EXPRESS ' glorifies the express train. The train here is a symbol of the modern industrial civilization. The poem begins with a description of the movement of the express train from a station. Its sound of horn suggesting its movement from the station and its slow royal movement is likened or is compared to the movement of a ‘queen’. The majesty that is hinted in the opening lines is continued in the next lines when the poet describes how the train passes "without bowing and with restrained unconcern". Just as crowds lineup humbly in the passage of the ‘queen’, the houses, the gas works and the graveyard lineup in the passage of the train. Later, the majesty turns into mystery when the queen-like express leaves the town and enters the countryside. The poet now finds the train as self possessed and brilliant. Consequently, the train now begins to sing. The song of the train has its movement, low and loud and screaming and deafeni...

Victorian and Modern Poems (Part II)

Ulysses - Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1842 "Ulysses" was written in 1833 (but not published until 1842) by Alfred Lord Tennyson, the future Poet Laureate of Great Britain. The poem takes the form of a dramatic monologue spoken by Ulysses, a character who also appears in Homer's Greek epic The Odyssey and Dante's Italian epic the Inferno (Ulysses is the Latinized name of Odysseus). In The Odyssey, Ulysses/Odysseus struggles to return home, but in Tennyson's "Ulysses," an aged Ulysses is frustrated with domestic life and yearns to set sail again and continue exploring the world. Dante seems to condemn Ulysses's recklessness as an explorer, but in Tennyson's poem, there is nobility and heroism in Ulysses' boundless curiosity and undaunted spirit. It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know n...

Line by Line Summary of Romantic Poems (Part I)

Ode to the West Wind - Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1820 O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! You, the unruly west wind, are the essence of the Fall. You are invisible, but you scatter the fallen leaves: they look like ghosts running away from a witch or wizard. The leaves are yellow and black, white and wild red. They look like crowds of sick people. You carry the seeds, as if you're their chariot, d...