ENGL passage identification Flashcards
Of the literature of France and Germany, as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for now many years, has been a critical effort; the endeavour, in all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as in itself it really is…. (N 450)
Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
[Criticism’s] business is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas. (N 458)
Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
The critical power is of lower rank than the creative. True; but in assenting to this proposition, one or two things are to be kept in mind. It is undeniable that the exercise of a creative power, that a free creative activity, is the true function of man; it is proved to be so by man’s finding in it his true happiness. But it is undeniable, also, that men may have the sense of exercising this free creative activity in other ways than in producing great works of literature or art; if it were not so, all but a very few men would be shut out from the true happiness of all men; they may have it in well−doing, they may have it in learning, they may have it even in criticising. This is one thing to be kept in mind.
Another is, that the exercise of the creative power in the production of great works of literature or art, however high this exercise of it may rank, is not at all epochs and under all conditions possible; and that therefore labour may be vainly spent in attempting it, which might with more fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering it possible. This creative power works with elements, with materials; what if it has not those materials, those elements, ready for its use? (N 451-452)
Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
This is why great creative epochs in literature are so rare; this is why there is so much that is unsatisfactory in the productions of many men of real genius; because for the creation of a master-work of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment; the creative power has, for its happy exercise, appointed elements, and those elements are not in its own control. Nay, they are more within the control of the critical power. (N 452)
Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
[E]very one can see that a poet, for instance, ought to know life and the world before dealing with them in poetry; and life and the world being in modern times very complex things, the creation of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies a great critical effort behind it; else it must be a comparatively poor, barren, and short-lived affair. This is why Byron’s poetry had so little endurance in it, and Goethe’s so much; both Byron and Goethe had a great productive power, but Goethe’s was nourished by a great critical effort providing the true materials for it, and Byron’s was not. . . .
It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative activity in our literature, through the first quarter of this century, had about it in fact something premature; and that from this cause its productions are doomed, most of them, in spite of the sanguine hopes which accompanied and do still accompany them, to prove hardly more lasting than the productions of far less splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes from its having proceeded without having its proper data, without sufficient materials to work with. . . . (N 452)
Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
In other words, the English poetry of the first quarter of this century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative force, did not know enough. This makes Byron so empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in completeness and variety. . . I admire Wordsworth, as he is, so much that I cannot wish him different. . . But surely the one thing wanting to make Wordsworth an even greater poet than he is,—his thought richer, and his influence of wider application,—was that he should have read more books. . . . (N 452)
Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
It is of the last importance that English criticism should clearly discern what rule for its course, in order to avail itself of the field now opening to it, and to produce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The rule may be summed up in one word,—disinterestedness. And how is criticism to show disinterestedness? By keeping aloof from what is called “the practical view of things”; by resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all subjects which it touches. By steadily refusing to lend itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas, which plenty of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought often to be attached to them, which in this country at any rate are certain to be attached to them quite sufficiently, but which criticism has really nothing to do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas.
(N 458)
Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel — every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more or less. He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; Not as she is, but as she fills his dream. (N 539)
Christina Rossetti, In an Artist’s Studio
Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry: “Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheeked peaches, Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries, Apricots, strawberries;—
All ripe together
In summer weather,—
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market
Come buy, come buy:
Our grapes fresh from the vine, Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages, Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries, Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye; Come buy, come buy.” (1-31, N 542)
Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market
Lizzie cover’d up her eyes,
Cover’d close lest they should look; Laura rear’d her glossy head,
And whisper’d like the restless brook: “Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
Down the glen tramp little men.
One hauls a basket,
One bears a plate,
One lugs a golden dish
Of many pounds weight.
How fair the vine must grow
Whose grapes are so luscious;
How warm the wind must blow Through those fruit bushes.”
“No,” said Lizzie, “No, no, no;
Their offers should not charm us, Their evil gifts would harm us.”
She thrust a dimpled finger
In each ear, shut eyes and ran:
Curious Laura chose to linger Wondering at each merchant man. One had a cat’s face,
One whisk’d a tail,
One tramp’d at a rat’s pace,
One crawl’d like a snail,
One like a wombat prowl’d obtuse and furry, One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.
She heard a voice like voice of doves Cooing all together:
They sounded kind and full of loves
In the pleasant weather.
Laura stretch’d her gleaming neck Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch, Like a vessel at the launch
When its last restraint is gone. (N 543, 50-86)
Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market
White and golden Lizzie stood, Like a lily in a flood,—
Like a rock of blue-vein’d stone Lash’d by tides obstreperously,— Like a beacon left alone
In a hoary roaring sea,
Sending up a golden fire,—
Like a fruit-crown’d orange-tree White with blossoms honey-sweet Sore beset by wasp and bee,— Like a royal virgin town
Topp’d with gilded dome and spire Close beleaguer’d by a fleet
Mad to tug her standard down.
(N 551, 408-421)
Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market
True genius, but true woman! dost deny Thy woman’s nature with a manly scorn And break away the gauds and armlets worn By weaker women in captivity?
Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry
Is sobbed in by a woman’s voice forlorn,—
Thy woman’s hair, my sister, all unshorn
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony
Disproving thy man’s name: and while before
The world thou burnest in a poet-fire,
We see thy woman-heart beat evermore
Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher, Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore,
Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, To George Sand: A Recognition
I learnt much music,—such as would have been As quite impossible in Johnson’s day
As still it might be wished—fine sleights of hand And unimagined fingering, shuffling off
The hearer’s soul through hurricanes of notes
To a noisy Tophet; and I drew … costumes
From French engravings, nereids neatly draped,
(With smirks of simmering godship):—I washed in From nature, landscapes, (rather say, washed out).
I danced the polka and Cellarius,
Spun glass, stuffed birds, and modelled flowers in wax, Because she liked accomplishments in girls.
(N 128)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
What you love, Is not a woman, Romney, but a cause:
You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir,
A wife to help your ends,—in her no end! Your cause is noble, your ends excellent,
But I, being most unworthy of these and that, Do otherwise conceive of love. Farewell.’
‘Farewell, Aurora? you reject me thus?’ He said.
‘Why, sir, you are married long ago. You have a wife already whom you love, Your social theory. Bless you both, I say. For my part, I am scarcely meek enough To be the handmaid of a lawful spouse. (N 134)
With quiet indignation I broke in.
“You misconceive the question like a man,
Who sees a woman as the complement
Of his sex merely. You forget too much
That every creature, female as the male,
Stands single in responsible act and thought
As also in birth and death. Whoever says
To a loyal woman, ‘Love and work with me,’
Will get fair answers, if the work and love
Being good themselves, are good for her—the best She was born for. Women of a softer mood, Surprised by men when scarcely awake to life,
Will sometimes only hear the first word, love,
And catch up with it any kind of work,
Indifferent, so that dear love go with it.
. . . But me your work
Is not the best for,—nor your love the best,
Nor able to commend the kind of work
For love’s sake merely. Ah, you force me, sir,
To be over-bold in speaking of myself:
I, too, have my vocation,—work to do…” (N 135)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
“We are foolish … in speaking of the ‘superiority’ of one sex to the other…. Each has what the other has not: each completes the other, and is completed by the other; they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving from the other what the other only can give” (101).
John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens
“We hear of the ‘mission’ and of the ‘rights’ of Woman, as
if these could ever be separate from the mission and the rights
of Man—as if she and her lord were creatures of independent
kind and irreconcilable claim. This, at least, is wrong. And not
less wrong—perhaps even more foolishly wrong … is the idea that Woman is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported
altogether in her weakness by the preeminence of his fortitude.
This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave!” (85-86)
John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens
But the woman’s power is for rule, not for battle,—and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. Her great function is Praise: she enters into no contest, but infallibly judges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. (101-2)
John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens
In all Christian ages which have been remarkable for their purity or progress, there has been absolute yielding of obedient devotion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say obedient;—not merely enthusiastic and worshipping in imagination, but entirely subject, receiving from the beloved woman, however young, not only the encouragement, the praise, and the reward of all toil, but, so far as any choice is open, or any question difficult of decision, the direction of all toil. That chivalry, to the abuse and dishonour of which are attributable primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust in peace, or corrupt and ignoble in domestic relations; and to the original purity and power of which we owe the defence alike of faith, of law, and of love; that chivalry, I say, in its very first conception of honourable life, assumes the subjection of the young knight to the command—should it even be the command in caprice—of his lady. It assumes this, because its masters knew that the first and necessary impulse of every truly taught and knightly heart is this of blind service to its lady: that where that true faith and captivity are not, all wayward and wicked passion must be; and that in this rapturous obedience to the single love of his youth, is the sanctification of all man’s strength, and the continuance of all his purposes. (98-99)
John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens (note use of ‘chivalry’)
Now their separate characters are briefly these. The man’s power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman’s power is for rule, not for battle,—and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. Her great function is Praise: she enters into no contest, but infallibly judges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open world [sic], must encounter all peril and trial;—to him, therefore, must be the failure, the offence, the inevitable error: often he must be wounded or subdued; often misled; and always hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offence. This is the true nature of home—it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division…. And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her…. This, then, I believe to be,—will you not admit it to be?—the woman’s true place and power. (101-2)
John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens (note use of ‘true’)
What the man is at his own gate, defending it, if need be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in a more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his country, leaving his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, to do his more incumbent work there.
And, in like manner, what the woman is to be within her gates, as the centre of order, the balm of distress,
and the mirror of beauty: that she is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, loveliness more rare. . . .
Will you not covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens? (123-124)
John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens
“[T]he woman, we say, is not to guide, nor even to think for herself. The man is always to be the wiser; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the superior in knowledge and discretion, as in power.
Is it not somewhat important to make up our minds on this matter?” (97).
John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens
“We hear of the ‘mission’ and of the ‘rights’ of Woman, as
if these could ever be separate from the mission and the rights
of Man—as if she and her lord were creatures of independent
kind and irreconcilable claim. This, at least, is wrong. And not
less wrong—perhaps even more foolishly wrong … is the idea that Woman is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported
altogether in her weakness by the preeminence of his fortitude.
This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave!” (85-86)
John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens
She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise—wise, not for self-development, but for self- renunciation; wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but that she may never fail from his side…
I have been trying, thus far, to show you what should be the place and what the power of woman. Now, secondly we ask, What kind of education is to fit her for these? (104)
John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens
All such knowledge should be given her as may enable her to understand, and even to aid, the work of men: and yet it should be given, not as knowledge,—not as if it were, or could be, for her an object to know; but only to feel and to judge. (107)
John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens (education)
I believe, then, with this exception, that a girl’s education should be nearly, in its course and material of study, the same as a boy’s; but quite differently directed. A woman, in any rank of life, ought to know whatever her husband is likely to know, but to know it in a different way… [A] man ought to know any language or science he learns, thoroughly—while a woman ought to know the same language, or science, only so far as may enable her to sympathize in her husband’s pleasures, and in those of his best friends. (111)
John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens (education)
There is not a war in the world, no, not an injustice, but you women are answerable for it; not in that you have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. . . .
There is no suffering, so injustice, no misery, in the earth, but the guilt of it lies with you.
(127-128)
John Ruskin, Of Queens’ Gardens
You who come of a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her–you may not know what I mean by the Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it—in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all— I need not say it—she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty—her blushes, her great grace. In those days—the last of Queen Victoria—every house had its Angel. And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in my hand to review that novel by a famous man, she slipped behind me and whispered: “My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure.”
Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women
And she made as if to guide my pen. I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself, though the credit rightly belongs to some excellent ancestors of mine who left me a certain sum of money–shall we say
five hundred pounds a year?—so that it was not necessary for me to depend solely on charm for my living. I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defence. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.
Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women
Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is verily
this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more than any other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcry against wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them either by the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These do much, and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of society were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make their bread…. (N 393)
John Ruskin, Stones of Venice
Now, in the make and nature of every man … whom we employ in manual labor, there are some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid capacity of emotion …. and in most cases it is all our own fault that they are tardy or torpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take them in their feebleness, and unless we prize and honor them in their imperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And this is what we have to do with all our laborers; to look for the thoughtful part of them, and get that out of them, whatever we lose for it, whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with it. (N 391-392)
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
For the best that is in them cannot manifest itself, but in company with much error. Understand this clearly: You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool. (N 392)
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either made a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. . . .
On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also…. (N 392)
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din.”
He holds him with his skinny hand, “There was a ship,” quoth he.
“Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!” Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye— The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child: The Mariner hath his will.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The Argument
Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burdend air, Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
Once meek, and in a perilous path, The just man kept his course along The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow, And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.
Then the perilous path was planted, And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth;
Till the villain left the paths of ease, To walk in perilous paths, and drive The just man into barren climes.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry “ ’weep! ’weep! ’weep! ’weep!” So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved, so I said, “Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head’s bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.”
And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;
William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins & set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run, And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
Then naked & white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind. And the Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy, He’d have God for his father & never want joy.
And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm; So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper
My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child: But I am black as if bereav’d of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree, And sitting down before the heat of day, She took me on her lap and kissèd me, And pointing to the east began to say:
Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away;
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love, And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice. Saying: come out from the grove my love & care, And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.
Thus did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:
Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear, To lean in joy upon our father’s knee.
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him and he will then love me.
William Blake, The Little Black Boy
’Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green;
Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames’ waters flow
O what a multitude they seemd these flowers of London town! Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands,
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song, Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among.
Beneath them sit the agèd men wise guardians of the poor; Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
William Blake, Songs of Innocence: Holy Thursday
Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty!
And their sun does never shine,
And their fields are bleak & bare, And their ways are fill’d with thorns. It is eternal winter there.
For where-e’er the sun does shine, And where-e’er the rain does fall: Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.
William Blake, Songs of Experience: Holy Thursday
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet?
William Blake, The Tyger (Songs of Experience)
What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears And water’d heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake, The Tyger (Songs of Experience)
And often, while the moaning wind Stole o’er the summer ocean,
The moonlight scene was all serene, The waters scarce in motion;
Then, while the smoothly slanting sand The tall cliff wrapp’d in shade,
The fisherman beheld a band
Of spectres gliding hand in hand– Where the green billows play’d.
And pale their faces were as snow, And sullenly they wander’d;
And to the skies with hollow eyes They look’d as though they ponder’d.
And sometimes, from their hammock shroud, They dismal howlings made,
And while the blast blew strong and loud, The clear moon mark’d the ghastly crowd,
And then above the haunted hut The curlews screaming hover’d;
And the low door, with furious roar, The frothy breakers cover’d.
For in the fisherman’s lone shed A murder’d man was laid,
With ten wide gashes in his head, And deep was made his sandy bed
Where the green billows play’d.
A shipwreck’d mariner was he, Doom’d from his home to sever
Who swore to be through wind and sea Firm and undaunted ever!
And when the wave resistless roll’d, About his arm he made
A packet rich of Spanish gold, And, like a British sailor bold,
Where the green billows play’d.
Plung’d where the billows play’d.
Mary Robinson, The Haunted Beach
Rapt in the visionary theme!
Spirit divine! with thee I’ll wander,
Where the blue, wavy, lucid stream,
’Mid forest glooms, shall slow meander!
With thee I’ll trace the circling bounds Of thy new Paradise extended;
And listen to the varying sounds
Of winds, and foamy torrents blended.
Now by the source which lab’ring heaves The mystic fountain, bubbling, panting,
While gossamer its net-work weaves, Adown the blue lawn slanting!
Spirit divine! with thee I’ll trace Imagination’s boundless space! With thee, beneath thy sunny dome,
I’ll listen to the minstrel’s lay,
Hymning the gradual close of day;
In caves of ice enchanted roam,
Where on the glitt’ring entrance plays The moon-beam with its silv’ry rays [. . .]
I’ll mark thy sunny dome, and view
Thy caves of ice, thy fields of dew!
Mary Robinson, To The Poet Coleridge
Beneath an old wall, that went round an old castle, For many a year, with brown ivy o’erspread;
A neat little hovel, its lowly roof raising,
Defied the wild winds that howl’d over its shed:
The turrets, that frown’d on the poor simple dwelling, Were rock’d to and fro, when the tempest would roar,
And the river, that down the rich valley was swelling, Flow’d swiftly beside the green step of its door.
The summer sun gilded the rushy roof slanting, The bright dews bespangled its ivy-bound hedge,
And above, on the ramparts, the sweet birds were chanting, And wild buds thick dappled the clear river’s edge,
When the castle’s rich chambers were haunted and dreary, The poor little hovel was still and secure;
And no robber e’er enter’d, nor goblin nor fairy,
For the splendours of pride had no charms to allure.
Mary Robinson, The Poor Singing Dame
It has been said that each of these poems has a purpose. Another circumstance must be mentioned which distinguishes these poems from the popular poetry of the day; it is this, that the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling. (N 307)
William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves ’Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.
William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey
’Tis now the hour When Contemplation, from her sunless haunts,
The cool damp grotto, or the lonely depth
Of unpierced woods, where wrapt in solid shade She mused away the gaudy hours of noon,
And fed on thoughts unripened by the sun,
Moves forward; and with radiant finger points
To yon blue concave swelled by breath divine, Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven Awake, quick kindling o’er the face of ether
One boundless blaze; ten thousand trembling fires, And dancing lustres, where the unsteady eye, Restless and dazzled, wanders unconfined
O’er all this field of glories, spacious field. . .
Anna Letitia Barbauld, A Summer Evening’s Meditation
She was an elfin pinnace; lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan— When from behind that craggy steep, till then
The bound of the horizon, a huge cliff,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head. I struck, and struck again, And, growing still in stature, the huge cliff
Rose up between me and the stars, and still
With measured motion, like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling hands I turned, And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the cavern of the willow-tree.
William Wordsworth, The Prelude Book 1
The IMAGINATION, then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, coexisting with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate: or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (ch.13)
FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (ch.13)
The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination. This power, first put in action by the will and understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, control . . . reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgement ever awake and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (ch.14)
During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
My own differences from certain supposed parts of Mr. Wordsworth’s theory ground themselves on the assumption, that his words had been rightly interpreted, as purporting that the proper diction for poetry in general consists altogether in a language taken, with due exceptions, from the mouths of men in real life, a language which actually constitutes the natural conversation of men under the influence of natural feelings. My objection is, first, that in any sense this rule is applicable only to certain classes of poetry; secondly, that even to these classes it is not applicable, except in such a sense as hath never by anyone (as far as I know or have read) been denied or doubted; and lastly, that as far as, and in that degree in which it is practicable, yet as a rule it is useless, if not injurious, and therefore either need not, or ought not to be practised.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind’s attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (ch.14)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din.”
He holds him with his skinny hand, “There was a ship,’ quoth he.
‘Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!” Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye— The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child: The Mariner hath his will.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
In the hardest-working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets upon streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man’s purpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one another to death; in the last close nook of this great exhausted receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught, were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might be expected to be born in it; among the multitude of Coketown, generically called “the Hands,”—a race who would have found more favour with some people, if Providence had seen fit to make them only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs—lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, forty years of age.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
The Fairy Palaces burst into illumination before pale morning showed the monstrous serpents of smoke trailing themselves over Coketown. A clattering of clogs upon the pavement, a rapid ringing of bells, and all the melancholy mad elephants, polished and oiled up for the day’s monotony, were at their heavy exercise again.
Stephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful, and steady. A special contrast, as every man was in the forest of looms where Stephen worked, to the crashing, smashing, tearing piece of mechanism at which he laboured.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,—all helped the emphasis.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly. As he now leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn, perhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in her, when she was impelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give him the pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle essences of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap. With his unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and the moment shot away into the plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost opportunities that are drowned there.
Removing her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently towards the town, that he said, at length: ‘Are you consulting the chimneys of the Coketown works, Louisa?’
‘There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!’ she answered, turning quickly.
‘Of course I know that, Louisa. I do not see the application of the remark.’ To do him justice he did not, at all.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
“Louisa,” returned her father, . . .“Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the question of Fact you state to yourself is: Does Mr. Bounderby ask me to marry him? Yes, he does. The sole remaining question then is: Shall I marry him? I think nothing can be plainer than that?”
“Shall I marry him?” repeated Louisa, with great deliberation.
“Precisely. And it is satisfactory to me, as your father, my dear Louisa, to know that you do not come to the consideration of that question with the previous habits of mind, and habits of life, that belong to many young women.”
“No, father,” she returned, “I do not.” ….
“[Life]is short, no doubt, my dear. Still, the average duration of human life is proved to have increased of late years. The calculations of various life assurance and annuity offices, among other figures which cannot go wrong, have established the fact.”
“I speak of my own life, father.”
“Oh, indeed? Still,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “I need not point out to you, Louisa, that it is governed by the laws which govern lives in the aggregate.”
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
“And you were his comfort through everything?”
She nodded, with the tears rolling down her face. “I hope so, and father said I was. It was because he grew so scared and trembling, and because he felt himself to be a poor, weak, ignorant, helpless man (those used to be his words), that he wanted me so much to know a great deal, and be different from him. I used to read to him to cheer his courage, and he was very fond of that. They were wrong books—I am never to speak of them here—but we didn’t know there was any harm in them.”
“And he liked them?” said Louisa, with a searching gaze on Sissy all this time. “O very much! They kept him, many times, from what did him real harm. And often and often of a night, he used to forget all his troubles in wondering whether the Sultan would let the lady go on with the story, or would have her head cut off before it was finished.”
“And your father was always kind? To the last?” asked Louisa contravening the great principle, and wondering very much.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
