Sonnet: To Science by Edgar Allan Poe Wednesday, Nov 12 2008

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

 

 

I thought because this is a poetry class, this poem would be appropriate to write about. This poem by Edgar Allan Poe hits on a point that has been controversial for a while. Is science good or bad? Many say that it is good, because it is helping humans advance in many ways, but some say that it is not.

 

In this poem, Poe is speaking against science, saying that it is ruining art. In many ways, he is true. Poe says science preys on the poet’s heart, because science takes the mystery out of poems.  Throughout the poem, Poe refers to fictional characters used throughout older literature, which science now proves wrong. His asking of questions to demean science and intrigues the reader to think about what he is saying. I agree with Poe, in the sense that science is in a way ruining the “fun” of art. Something’s are not meant to question and are supposed to be just taken as it is. All of the things written in the past could not be proved as “fake” rather than a mystery, like they should be. Art should be appreciated, not questioned!

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Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe Wednesday, Nov 12 2008

Annabel Lee

By Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me.

 

I was a child and she was a child,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

   I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

   Coveted her and me.

 

And this was the reason that, long ago,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

   My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

   And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

   In this kingdom by the sea.

 

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

   Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

   In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

 

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

   Of those who were older than we—

   Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

   Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

 

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

   In her sepulchre there by the sea—

   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

 

 

I chose this poem because we read it in one of my classes, and I liked how everything in it had a deeper meaning. After doing some research, I found that this poem was written by Edgar Allan Poe about two years after his wife passed away of tuberculosis. After finding this out, it makes sense to me why Poe wrote this poem, he basically was putting all of his feelings down on paper. During this time, sentimentalism was big. Sentimentalism is responding to society, knowledge and technology through feelings. With sentimentalism, people often referred to death and afterlife and they believed you could have a heavenly reunion with the one you lost. People c commemorated the dead—they often keep locks of hair and hold onto it and have many photos of the dead.

In the poem Annabel Lee, the speaker lost his lover, and is just totally lost in the chaos of his life living without her. This poem shows the speakers passion and love.

 

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

 

By his reference that they were happier than angels and that the angels envied their happiness shows how strong their love and relationship was, and shows why he is so sad and upset now. He doesn’t know what to do without her. He sees her in his dream, and cannot get her out of his mind. The speaker lies by his lover’s grave; we think this is very peculiar, but it was normal during that era when sentimentalism was strong. The speaker is saying that he is disabled by his loss, but society is making him live in it. It is interesting that he is referring to the sea. The seashore is the edge of the land, and represents separation and isolation. This poem is beautiful because the feelings that the speaker had for his lover were so strong and thier love was unbreakable. This poem, even though speaking about death and mourning, is a love poem.

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It was not death, for I stood up by Emily Dickinson Wednesday, Nov 12 2008

It was not death, for I stood up,

And all the dead lie down.

It was not night, for all the bells

Put out their tongues for noon.

 

It was not frost, for on my flesh

I felt siroccos crawl,

Nor fire, for just my marble feet

Could keep a chancel cool.

 

And yet it tasted like them all,

The figures I have seen

Set orderly for burial

Reminded me of mine,

 

As if my life were shaven

And fitted to a frame

And could not breathe without a key,

And ’twas like midnight, some,

 

When everything that ticked has stopped

And space stares all around,

Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,

Repeal the beating ground;

 

But most like chaos, stopless, cool,

Without a chance, or spar,

Or even a report of land

To justify despair.

 

I chose this poem because it was difficult to analyze and was a challenge to me. To analyze this poem, I had to use many tools, I had to look up certain words, because the poem is written in old English, and read it quite a few times. I struggled with it, but I think I finally got it down. I think that this poem is speaking about losing someone that is very close to you.

 In the first stanza, Dickinson is saying that she feels that she is dead, but when she stands up, she realizes she is not. She speaks in the next stanza about her “cold feet” which generally means that you are nervous to do something, but in this case, she could be nervous to live her life and move on without the one she loves and lost. The speaker in the third stanza speaks of the burial and funeral arrangements for the person whom she lost. She feels so lost in the world because someone so close to her died, and she is saying that she is being reminded of her own “burial” because she now feels dead.

The speaker says “Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns”, which is significant because she is comparing death to autumn, which is the season in which nature “dies”, meaning the trees become bare, and the flowers shrivel up slowly and get ready for winter.  Autumn is cold and winter is colder, and these are the same feelings people experience when they lose someone close to them.  The poem is ended with the speaker describing the chaos and feeling lost in life.

 

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The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Wednesday, Nov 12 2008

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.	20

 

I have chosen a Robert Frost poem again. This poem is an interesting one and again, has different meanings depending on how you read it and look at it. The poem describes a man’s journey and how he took the road “less traveled by”. Frost describes how the road not traveled was “grassy and wanted wear”, which shows how the road is not traveled by many. He thought for long thinking about which road to choose, and did eventually choose the road not traveled.

                You can also look at this poem, and find a deeper meaning to it. If you look deeper into this poem, you can see that Frost is speaking about the journey of life. I have found this to be a reoccurring theme in many of Robert Frosts’ poems. In this poem, he is saying that during your life, you have to make many decisions. When you make those decisions, one way is usually the easy way, and one is usually the harder way, which in this poem, is the road not traveled. Frost is saying that not many people take the road not traveled, which is why it is “grassy and wanted wear”. Frost is saying that when you take the road not traveled, it will benefit you. Don’t take the easy way out in life, you should challenge yourself.  No work goes unpaid, you will always be rewarded for your hard work!

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Gitaanjali 35 by Rabindranath Tagore Wednesday, Nov 12 2008

Gitanjali 35

By 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.

 

I chose this poem for many reasons. I like this poem because it shows the strong patriotism many people have for their country and sometimes I feel that patriotism is not as strong in America as it is in other countries.  This poem was written by an Indian poet, and he is speaking about India. Because I am of Indian descent, I feel I can relate to this poem on a deeper level.

 

India, like many countries, was not always a free land, and when this poem was written, India was still under Great Britain’s rule and freedom to Indian citizens was very limited. Along with Gandhi, Tagore was a nationalist, who wanted India to be a free nation. In the poem Tagore speaks very highly of his mother land. In America, we have the opportunity to literally be anything we want to be and the freedom to do anything we desire. I feel that many people take this for granted, because they think it is their born right to do so, but other people in this world were not born with the same rights. They cannot be anything they want to be, and they cannot do anything they want to do.  I think that everyone should feel the same way about their country that Tagore did about his, especially in America.  

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Apple Picking by Robert Frost Wednesday, Nov 12 2008

Robert Frost

Apple Picking

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

 

I chose this poem because I felt that it is a very appropriate season. The summer days are dwindling down, and the fall season has begun. This poem has very many meaning, depending on how you look at it. When you look at this poem in a literal way, it is just saying that there is a man who picks apples all day. He was not done his job for the day yet because there were still many apples that needed to be picked as well as an empty barrel but the man is very tired and falls asleep. While sleeping, his dreams are filled with vivid images of large apples coming in and out of sight.

And then there is of course the more in depth approach to reading this poem.  After reading it a few times, I see that there is a deeper meaning. At first I thought it was just about a man’s life apple picking, but then saw the true meaning of the poem. I felt that Frost was describing things in certain ways on purpose. I feel that this poem is explaining a man trying to reach his dreams and goals in life. The barrels he has to fill would be the dreams and goals he wants to fulfill, there are many “empty barrels” in this man’s life. In the poem Frost decribes a ladder, which I feel is describing the man’s lifeline. He is trying to reach all of his dreams and goals in life, and climb the ladder to heaven.

 

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Where the Sidewalk Ends By Shel Silverstein Monday, Sep 29 2008

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends

This is a poem that reminds me of my childhood. I remember exactly what Shel Silversteins book looks like, and can paint a vivid picture of it in my head. I can remember sitting in my room, and my mother reading me this poem. Now that I am older, I read this poem a different way, and interpret it differently. When I was younger of course, I thought there was a place, almost like a cliff, where the “sidewalk ended”, but now I understand the true meaning of this poem.

This poem is trying to remind readers of a place they forgot about. I place where they had not visited since their childhood. Silverstein is reminding you of taking a journey in your imagination, and letting go of the worries of your life, even if it is only for a few minutes. It is a shame that the innosence you have as a child is lost as you get older, and you lose the ability to go to the place “where the sidewalk ends”.

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends

This passage is reminding adults that children always go to the place “where the sidewalk ends”, because they still have the ability to use their imagination, and break away from the world, and just be children. Silverstein is trying to get adults to do the same, and making sure we did not forget about the place at the end of the sidewalk.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends

I like in that passage how Silverstein talks about the world as an evil place, because it truely is! Silversteins careful word choice really gets his point across in this passage. He is reminding adults to escape this dark place, which is everyday life in the world, and be a child again.

This poem was one of my favorites growing up, and now that I am older, it still it. It was nice to read it again and be reminded to go to the place at the end of the sidewalk, and not to forget about it! We all need to take a step back from our busy, chaotic lives, and do something for ourselves once in a while and go to the end of the sidewalk.

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Hello world! Wednesday, Sep 10 2008

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

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