ENGLISH MIDTERM Flashcards
Main Idea: The poet urges a young man to procreate to preserve his beauty for future generations. Beauty should not die with the individual but be passed on.
Imagery: Natural growth and reproduction (e.g., “rose,” “tender churl,” “sweet self”), reflecting the cycles of life and the importance of perpetuation.
Full Text:
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
1
Main Idea: The poet compares the beloved to a summer’s day, concluding that the beloved’s beauty is eternal because it is immortalized in poetry.
Imagery: Summer and natural beauty (“rough winds,” “darling buds of May”), light and immortality (“eternal summer shall not fade”).
Full Text:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
18
Main Idea: A celebration of the beauty and charm of a young man, blending both masculine and feminine qualities. The poet admires this beauty but acknowledges it was intended for women.
Imagery: Gendered beauty and nature’s artistry (“master-mistress of my passion,” “painted by Nature’s hand”).
Full Text:
A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.
20
Main Idea: Despite feeling despair and envy, the poet finds joy and redemption in thoughts of the beloved, which make him feel richer than kings.
Imagery: Lamentation and transformation (“outcast state,” “sings hymns at heaven’s gate”), and contrasting wealth and poverty.
Full Text:
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
29
Main Idea: The poet reflects on aging and mortality, comparing it to the changing seasons, twilight, and a dying fire, and urges the beloved to cherish love that grows stronger with time’s fleeting nature.
Imagery: Decline and decay (“yellow leaves,” “twilight,” “ashes of youth”), evoking the passage of time.
Full Text:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
73
Main Idea: True love is steadfast and unchanging, enduring through time and hardship. It is the ultimate guiding force.
Imagery: Navigation and constancy (“ever-fixed mark,” “star to every wandering bark”), and time (“Love’s not Time’s fool”).
Full Text:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
116
Main Idea: The poet challenges traditional ideals of beauty, celebrating the beauty of the Dark Lady despite her unconventional appearance.
Imagery: Darkness and unconventional beauty (“black wires,” “raven black”), contrasting natural and artificial beauty.
Full Text:
In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on nature’s power,
Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Slandering creation with a false esteem:
Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.
127
Main Idea: The poet mocks traditional poetic comparisons, stating his mistress is not conventionally beautiful but is unique and real, and he loves her as she is.
Imagery: Anti-romantic comparisons (“eyes are nothing like the sun,” “coral is far more red”), emphasizing the rejection of hyperbole.
Full Text:
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
130
Main Idea: The poet uses wordplay on “will” to express both desire and identity, pleading with the mistress to accept his love despite her capricious nature and many suitors.
Imagery: Playful yet intimate, with puns on “will” (desire, name, and sexual innuendo), reflecting the poet’s longing and persistence.
Full Text:
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;
More than enough am I that vex’d thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will
One will of mine, to make thy large Will more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.
135
Main Idea: The poet reflects on the mutual deceit in his relationship with the mistress, acknowledging that both lie to maintain their connection. Love endures despite these imperfections.
Imagery: Truth and falsehood in love (“lies,” “false speaking tongue”), and aging contrasted with youthful pretense.
Full Text:
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
138
Main Idea: The poet describes his inner conflict between two loves: a virtuous young man and a corrupting Dark Lady, presenting a moral and emotional struggle.
Imagery: Angels and devils (“fair and good,” “worser spirit”), and the battle between good and evil.
Full Text:
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turned fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another’s hell:
Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
144
Main Idea: The poet’s love is compared to a fever that grows worse with indulgence, leading to madness and despair. He laments his destructive obsession with the mistress.
Imagery: Sickness and disease (“fever,” “disease of love”), and the descent into madness (“reason is past care”).
Full Text:
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
147
