British Poetry note

🔰Philip Larkin's poem "Sad Steps" alludes to Sir Philip Sidney's

sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella by referencing its title, Sonnet
XXXI. The poem also alludes to Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode" and
the moonlit scenes in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
🔺Astrophel and Stella is a renowned sonnet sequence by the
Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney that includes 108 sonnets and 11
songs. The poem's meter is typically six-foot lines (twelve syllables),
and the rhyme scheme is ABAB ABAB CDCD EE. However, Sidney
changes the rhyme scheme throughout the poem. Some believe that
Astrophel represents Sidney, and Stella is Penelope Devereux, the
wife of Robert, Lord Rich and sister of the Earl of Essex.
🔺"Sad Steps" is a carefully crafted lyric that balances several
different voices. The poem reflects the post-war disillusionment and
existential angst common in mid-20th century literature. Its
emphasis on loss and the passage of time aligns with the era's
preoccupation with mortality and the meaning of life.

🔰The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a seven-part poem by Samuel

Taylor Coleridge that was first published in 1798 in Lyrical Ballads,
a collaboration between Coleridge and William Wordsworth. The
poem is about a ship that is driven by storms to the South Pole and
then to the Great Pacific Ocean, and the strange events that occur
along the way. The title character tells a young man about his
experiences at sea, including killing an albatross, the deaths of his
fellow sailors, and his eventual redemption.
🔺The central theme of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner is the sanctity of all wild creatures, and that people
should respect and honor all living things. The poem's narrative
shows that the Mariner's impulsive act of killing an albatross curses
him and his crew, and he later realizes that all creatures should be
revered. The Mariner's penance and his mandate to retell his story
signify the importance of respect and love for all living beings.

🔰The Romantic period in literature, which spanned from the late

18th to the mid-19th century, placed a strong emphasis on nature
and its beauty. "To Autumn" by John Keats is a quintessential
example of Romantic poetry due to its vivid descriptions of the
natural world, such as the ripening fruits, the maturing sun, and the
harvest activities. These rich and detailed depictions of nature evoke
a sense of awe and admiration, characteristic of the Romantic
movement's fascination with the natural world and its power to
inspire and uplift the human spirit.
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🔰The General Prologue is the first part of The Canterbury Tales by

Geoffrey Chaucer. It introduces the frame story, which is about a
group of pilgrims who agree to compete in a storytelling contest
while traveling to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Thomas Becket.
The General Prologue also describes the pilgrims themselves, sets
the season, and establishes the rules of the contest.
◾️The General Prologue begins with a lengthy description of spring,
including April showers, budding flowers and leaves, and chirping
birds. The narrator says that people often feel the urge to go on a
pilgrimage around this time of year. The first lines of the prologue,
"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote / The droghte of March
hath perced to the roote" and "The burgeoning flowers and singing
birds", establish the story's time and place in cosmic and cyclical
terms.
🔺The Parson and the Plowman are two characters in The
Canterbury Tales who are examples of deep Christian goodness in
the General Prologue. The Parson is described as poor but holy, and
the Plowman is a devout Christian who pays his tithes in full.
🔺The Parson is a good leader who is honest, appealing, and well-
versed in the Bible. He visits his parishioners on foot and preaches
the Bible dutifully. The Parson is also described as smart and rich in
spiritual gifts, though he is poor in worldly goods.
🔺The Plowman is the Parson's brother and a member of the
peasant class. He wears a modest tunic, loves God and his neighbor,
and works for Christ's sake. He also pays his tithes to the Church
faithfully.

🔰“The Song of Wandering Aengus” is a poem by Irish poet William

Butler Yeats that was first published in 1897 in The Sketch
magazine under the title “A Mad Song”. It was later published in
Yeats' 1899 anthology The Wind Among the Reeds under its current
name.
🔺Ray Bradbury's 1953 short story collection The Golden Apples of
the Sun is named after the last line of the final stanza of W.B. Yeats'
1899 poem "The Song of Wandering Aengus":
And pluck till time and times are done, the silver apples of the moon,
the golden apples of the sun.

🔰“Ulysses” is a dramatic monologue poem written in blank verse by

Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1833 and published in
1842. The poem is about the aged title character's plans to leave his
kingdom of Ithaca to seek lost glory in a final adventure at sea.
🔺In the poem, Ulysses says, “I cannot rest from travel: I will drink /
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd / Greatly, have suffer'd
greatly, both with those / That loved me, and alone, on shore, and
when”. He also says, “I am become a name; / For always roaming
with a hungry heart / Much have I seen and known; cities of men /
And manners, climates, councils, governments”.

🔺In Ulysses, the lines "Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
/ Of common duties, decent not to fail / In offices of tenderness"
(lines 22–24) suggest that Telemachus is a nice guy who is smart
enough to do nice things for people and respect the gods. "Decent
not to fail" means that Telemachus is smart enough not to fail at
doing nice things for people and paying the proper respects to the
gods.

🔰Seamus Heaney's poem "Digging" in his first poetry collection,

Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966, illustrates the poet's
attempt to reconcile his poetic vocation with his rural Irish heritage.
The poem's themes include: Customs and tradition, Search for self,
Memory and reminiscence, and Time and history.
🔺The poem begins with the speaker preparing to write, and then
reflects on the work ethic and skill of his father and grandfather,
who worked as farmers. The speaker contrasts his writing with his
father's digging, but presents writing as its own kind of labor,
vowing to "dig" with his pen. The speaker metaphorically uses his
pen to “dig” through layers of history, memory, and meaning.
🔺The poem "Digging" from his first collection, Death of a
Naturalist, pays tribute to Irish farming life and the poet's ancestors'
labor.

🔰John Milton (1608-1674) was an English poet, intellectual,

journalist, historian, and civil servant. He was a Puritan and
Humanist who wrote during a period of war, religious change, and
political upheaval in England. Milton is best known for his poem
Paradise Lost, but his other notable works include Areopagitica,
Lycidas, and Samson Agonistes.

🔺Book 8 of Paradise Lost by John Milton explores themes of

hierarchy and order, disobedience and revolt, sin and innocence,
free will and predestination, and love and marriage.
🔺In Paradise Lost, Adam's main weakness in Book 8 is his love for
Eve, which he tells Raphael about. Adam falls in love with Eve as
soon as he sees her, and admits that his attraction to her is almost
overwhelming. Raphael warns Adam to keep his feelings in check,
but Adam is unable to stop his love from overpowering his reason.

🔰“Absalom and Achitophel” is a satirical poem by English poet John

Dryden published in 1681. The poem is written in heroic couplets
and is over 1,000 lines long.
🔺The lines “Not that he wished is greatness to create / For
politicians neither love nor hate” appear in Absalom and
Achitophel.
🔺It tells the Biblical story of Absalom's rebellion against King
David, but is also an allegory for a contemporary political crisis
during the reign of King Charles II. In the poem, the Whig party led
by the Earl of Shaftesbury, portrayed as Achitophel, questions the
king's royal credibility.

🔰A Shakespearean sonnet is a poem with 14 lines, divided into

three quatrains and a couplet, written in iambic pentameter and
with a rhyme scheme of ABAB-CDCD-EFEF-GG. The first 12 lines are
divided into three quatrains, each with a rhetorical question, and the
final two lines are a rhyming couplet that resolves the questions.
The structure of a Shakespearean sonnet can be seen as a journey
from complication to resolution, with the first quatrain introducing
the subject, the second developing it, and the third bringing the
poem to a climax. Most Shakespearean sonnets place the volta, or
rhetorical shift, in the final couplet.

🔰William Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet, painter,

engraver, and visionary. He is considered a leading figure in
Romantic Age poetry and visual art, though his work was largely
unrecognized during his lifetime.
🔺Blake's notable poems:
◾️"The Tyger"
◾️"The Lamb"
◾️"Auguries of Innocence"
◾️"Songs of Innocence and Experience" (a collection of poems)
◾️"The Chimney Sweeper"
◾️"London"
◾️"The Garden of Love"
◾️"The Divine Image"
◾️Holy Thursday
◾️"A Poison Tree"
◾️"The Sick Rose"
◾️"The Little Boy Lost"
◾️ "The Little Boy Found"

🔰An Essay on Criticism is a poem by Alexander Pope, first

published anonymously in 1711. The poem is a work of literary
criticism that sets out poetic rules and maxims. It is written in heroic
couplet, which is two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter, and is
structured as a three-part argument.
🔺“Some are bewildered in the maze of schools, And some made
coxcombs Nature meant but fools. In search of wit these lose their
common sense, And then turn critics in their own defense” The lines
are from “An Part II of the poem "Essay on Criticism” in which Pope
discusses the different types of critics.
◾️ The critics he describes in these lines are those who are so caught
up in the rules and theories of criticism that they lose their ability to
think for themselves. They are also those who are more interested
in finding fault with others than in appreciating the good. Pope's
criticism of these types of critics is still relevant today, as there are
still many people who are more interested in tearing others down
than in building them up.

🔰Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) was an English poet and

administrator during the Renaissance. He is considered one of the
greatest poets in the English language and is known for his
unfinished epic poem The Faerie Queene, which celebrates Elizabeth
I and the Tudor dynasty. Spenser's other works include
Epithalamion and The Shepheardes Calender (1579), which is
considered the first work of the English literary Renaissance.
🔺The Shepheardes Calender is a 1579 poetic work by Edmund
Spenser that is considered his first major work. It is a series of 12
eclogues, one for each month, that together symbolize the entire
human life through the changing seasons. The eclogues are framed
by two complaints by the shepherd boy Colin Clout, and the
remaining 10 are rustic dialogues that use pastoral poetic
conventions.
◾️The Shepheardes Calender is dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney
(1554—1586), an author and courtier.

🔰John Milton (1608-1674) was an English poet, intellectual,

journalist, historian, and civil servant. He is best known for his epic
poem Paradise Lost, but also wrote Areopagitica, Lycidas, and
Samson Agonistes.

🔺Some of Milton's notable publications

◾️1628: “On the Death of a Fair Infant dying of a Cough”.
◾️1629: “On the Morning of Christ's Nativity”.
◾️1630: “The Passion” (unfinished).
◾️1631: “L'Allegro” and “Il Penserro”.
◾️1632: “On Shakespeare”.
◾️1637: “Comus”.
◾️1638: “Lycidas.” “Justa Eduardo King”. “Mansus”.
◾️1640: “Epitahium Damonis”.
◾️1667: “Paradise Lost” (published).
◾️1671: “Paradise Regained”. “Samson Agonistes”.
🔰Philip Arthur Larkin (1922 - 1985) was an English poet, novelist,
librarian, and jazz critic. He is considered one of the greatest English
poets of the second half of the 20th century.
🔺He was offered the Poet Laureateship after the death of John
Betjeman but declined the position. Larkin was known for being a
solitary Englishman who disliked fame and the public literary life.

♈Larkin published four volumes of poetry during his lifetime:

◾️The North Ship (1945)
◾️The Less Deceived (1955)
◾️The Whitsun Weddings (1964)
◾️High Windows (1974).

♈“Death of a Naturalist” is a poem by Irish poet Seamus Heaney,

published in 1966 as the title poem of his first book of poetry, also
titled Death of a Naturalist.
Responsibilities is a poem written by William Butler Yeats (1865-
1939). Responsibilities and Other Poems is a collection of Yeats's
work that explores the complexities of human existence.

🔰Richard Lovelace (1618-1657) was a 17th-century English poet

and Cavalier who fought for King Charles I during the English Civil
War. His best-known works are "To Althea, from Prison" and "To
Lucasta, Going to the Warres".
🔺Lucasta: Postume Poems is a collection of poems by English poet
Richard Lovelace (1618-1657) that was published in 1660 after his
death. The book includes the poem "A Mock-Song", which has a
darker tone than Lovelace's previous works. The collection also
includes poems such as "The Toad and Spyder", "The Triumphs of
Philamon and Amoret", "Advice to my best Brother", and "An
Anniversary On the Hymeneals of my noble Kinsman Tho. Stanley
Esquire".

🔰John Milton (1608-1674) was an English poet, intellectual,

journalist, historian, and civil servant. He is best known for his epic
poem Paradise Lost, but also wrote Areopagitica, Lycidas, and
Samson Agonistes.

🔺John Milton (1608-1674) wrote the lines, "What needs my

Shakespeare for his honored bones, The labor of an age in piled
stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-
ypointing pyramid?" in his 1630 poem On Shakespeare. The poem
continues, “Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame, What need'st
thou such weak witness of thy name?” .
🔺Milton was a younger contemporary of Shakespeare and an
attentive reader of his work. Milton is best known for his poem
Paradise Lost, which tells the biblical story of Adam and Eve's fall
from grace.

🔰Sir Geoffrey William Hill (1932-2016) was an English poet,

professor, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute at Boston
University.
🔺For the Unfallen is a 1959 poetry collection by English poet
Geoffrey Hill. The book is Hill's debut collection and established his
reputation as a talented poet. The poems in the collection are
described as vatic in nature and cover a range of subjects, including
historical events, personal experiences, and religious
contemplations.
🔺 Hill's works often explore the dark sides of British history and
the Christian faith. The collection includes the famous poem
"Genesis" and the longer sequence "Of Commerce and Society".

🔰Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892) was a leading Victorian poet

and England's Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign.
His poetry is known for its rich imagery, metrical variety, and verbal
melodies. His best-known work is The Idylls of the King, and other
well-known poems include Ulysses and The Lady of Shalott.

🔺“The Princess: A Medley” is a narrative poem written by Alfred,

Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) that satirizes women's education. The
poem is about a princess who establishes a women's university, but
her plans are disrupted by a prince. The poem was published in
1847 and a third edition was published in 1850 with new lyrics.

◾️A narrative poem is a type of poetry that tells a story and uses
poetic devices like rhyme, meter, and verse to create a narrative.
Narrative poems are usually longer than other types of poetry and
often include a plot, characters, setting, problem, and resolution.

🔰Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was an English Romantic poet

and writer. His poetry is still widely read and studied today, and he
influenced the literary community of his time and future
generations of writers.
🔺 Shelley is known for his poems Ozymandias and Ode to the West
Wind, and his plays Prometheus Unbound, The Cenci, and
Proserpine. He was also friends with fellow Romantic poets John
Keats and Lord Byron, and was married to Mary Godwin (later Mary
Shelley), who wrote Frankenstein.

🔺Best-known works

◾️The Masque of Anarchy: a long ballad poem written by Percy

Bysshe Shelley in 1819 in response to the Peterloo Massacre.
◾️Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem is a long-form poem written in
blank verse by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) that was first
published in 1813.
◾️The Revolt of Islam: a 12-canto poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley,
first published in 1817 under the title *Laon and Cythna; or, The
Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century*.
The poem is about two young people, Laon and Cythna, who lead a
bloodless revolution against the Ottoman Sultan, but the poem
doesn't specifically address Islam.
◾️"Ozymandias": This sonnet is one of Shelley's most famous poems,
exploring the theme of the transience of power and the inevitable
decline of all empires.
◾️"Prometheus Unbound": This lyrical drama is considered one of
Shelley's masterpieces, expressing his radical ideas on politics,
society, and the power of the human spirit to overcome tyranny.
◾️"Adonais": A pastoral elegy written in memory of John Keats,
"Adonais" mourns the death of the young poet while celebrating his
artistic genius.
◾️"The Masque of Anarchy": This political poem was written in
response to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, advocating for non-
violent resistance to oppression and tyranny.
◾️"To a Skylark": A lyrical ode celebrating the beauty and freedom of
the skylark, this poem is one of Shelley's most beloved works.
♈A Vision of Judgement is a poem written by Robert Southey and
published in 1821. The poem is written in hexameters and is about a
poet who sees George III rise from the tomb and go to the gates of
Heaven.

🔰Robert Browning (1812-1889) was a major English poet and

playwright of the Victorian era. He was known for his dramatic
monologues, psychological portraits, and use of dark humor, irony,
and challenging vocabulary. His most famous work is The Ring and
the Book (1868–69), a 21,000-line narrative poem about a Roman
murder trial.

🔺Abt Vogler is a dramatic monologue written by Robert Browning

in 1864. The poem is about Georg Joseph Vogler, a German
composer, organist, teacher, and theorist who was an innovator in
baroque and early classic music. In the poem, Browning imagines
Vogler as an old man who is growing infirm and contemplating the
purpose of his life. The poem reflects on finding peace in old age,
trusting in God, and taking comfort in what has been accomplished.

🔰Phrase to the ode

🔺Beechen green" is a line from John Keats' poem, Ode to a
Nightingale, which reads, "Of beechen green, and shadows
numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease".
🔺“And gathering swallows twitter in the skies” is a line from John
Keats' poem “To Autumn” that refers to swallows gathering in flocks
to return to their nests for the night. The line appears at the end of
the poem, which is structured and rhymed similarly to Keats' spring
1819 odes and is known for its rich imagery. The line alludes to the
end of autumn and the beginning of winter, and the poem's main
themes include the power of nature, beauty, and the tension
between mortality and immortality.

🔺"Globed peonies" is a line from John Keats's poem Ode on

Melancholy that appears in the first two stanzas. The line reads, "Or
on the wealth of globed peonies".

🔺In John Keats's poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn", the speaker refers
to a "green altar" in the fourth stanza, which is covered in leaves and
vegetation. The speaker imagines the figures on the urn as
experiencing human time, with the altar as their destination and a
"little town" as their origin. The speaker asks the priest on the urn
where he is taking a cow, or "heifer", and to "what green altar". The
speaker also describes the cow as a holy object, with garlands of
flowers on its flanks and a moan or "low" at the sky.

◾️beechen green- “Ode to a Nightingale

◾️gathering swallows- “To Autumn”
◾️globed peonies-“Ode on Melancholy”
◾️green altar-“Ode on a Grecian Urn”

🔰Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was an English poet

who was popular in her lifetime and is still frequently anthologized
today. She is known for her love poems, including Sonnets from the
Portuguese and Aurora Leigh, which is now considered an early
feminist text. Her literary reputation was greater than her
husband's, Robert Browning, who was also a poet.
🔺Browning is the Victorian poet who wrote the lines, “God Himself
is the best Poet, And the Real is His song”.

🔰The lines, “You are your words. Your listeners see Written on your
face the poems they hear Like letters carved in a tree's bark The
sight and sounds of solitudes endured,” are from Stephen Spender's
poem, Auden's Funeral. The poem includes the lines, “Whose
absence now becomes incarnate in us. Tasting the meats, we imitate
your voice. Speaking in flat benign objective tones. The night before
you died. In the packed hall. You are your words. Your listeners
see”.

🔰Philip Arthur Larkin (1922 - 1985) was an English poet, novelist,

librarian, and jazz critic. He is considered one of the greatest English
poets of the second half of the 20th century. ◾️He is regarded as one
of the foremost poets of the post-World War II era in Britain.
Larkin's poetry often explores themes of disillusionment, alienation,
and the passage of time, and he is known for his precise language,
wry wit, and keen observation of everyday life.
🔺"An Arundel Tomb" is a poem by Philip Larkin that ends with the
lines "What will survive of us is love". It reflects on the enduring
nature of love and the legacy left behind by the deceased,
contrasting the physical decay of the tomb with the enduring power
of love.