Poems Flashcards
Aspens context
Aspens are lifeblood of the community , associated with power and God - hoare solitaire - ‘ I cannot walk under the trees without a vague powerful feeling of reverence ‘ , south country - ‘
South country - ‘the spacious and fragrant shadow of an oak or pine is a temple ‘
Mourns the removal of trees to make way for new suburbs - ‘ The elms had come unconsciously to be part of the real religion of men on that neighbourhood ‘
Thomas sees trees as human ‘ their slow heaved sighs their nocturnal murmers’
Strong root system survive anything
Structure aspens
Six quatrains Abab continuous rhyme scheme , consistency of the grove of Aspens despite the movement of the world , 2nd stanza increases in activity moving from aspens to community, juxtaposes tranquility of the still aspens
Quotes aspens
‘Above the inn, the smithy and the shop’
‘The Aspens at the cross- roads talk together / Of rain ‘
‘Out of the blacksmith’s cavern comes the ringing / Of hammer, shoe and anvil;’
‘The clink , the hum, the roar’
‘The whisper of the Aspens is not drowned ‘
‘Call their ghosts from their abode ‘
‘Turn the crossroads into a ghostly room ‘
‘Over all sorts of weather, men and times ‘
‘ men may hear / but need not listen, more than to my rhymes ‘
‘ we cannot other than an aspen be/ that ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves ‘
Coombe context
Hampshire cooombes in essay The South Country 1909 ‘The Coombe breeds whole families, long geanological trees of echoes’
The Last sheaf 1928 Chalk Pits he writes about a coombe - ‘The old chalk pits … soon grew into places as wild as ancient Britain’
Structure Combe
Inconsistent rhyme scheme ABABCBEBF, chaotic more disordered towards the end . Single Stanza , coombe is shut out and isolated from modern society
Long line followed by short , transgression and descent into primitive society due to war
Quotes Combe
‘Ever dark, ancient and dark’
‘Its mouth stopped by bramble, thorn and briar’
‘by beech and yew and perishing juniper’
‘ The sun of Winter , / The moon of Summer ‘
‘They Killed the badger there ‘
‘The most ancient Briton of English beasts ‘
Context adlestrop
Station on the Great West railway line from London to Oxford , village in Gloucestershire , draws on train journey in 1914 , field notebooks - ‘We stopped at Adlestrop, through the willows could be heard a blackbird’s songs’ ‘ a greater than rustic silence ‘ . 23rd June 1915 visits forests at ledbury and the memory resurfaces , translation of memory into poetic epiphany. Model ‘train window ‘ poem , inspiring others such as Larkins mockery of train window poems - ‘ I remember, I remember’
Structure adlestrop
4 quatrains abcb rhyme scheme , b rhyme structure and need of man to mechanise , disruption by c rhyme - fluidity and unexpected pleasantries found in nature
Quotes adlestrop
‘Yes, I remember Adlestrop’
‘One afternoon/ of heat the express train drew up there ‘
‘The stream hissed.’
‘No one left and no one came’
‘willows, willow herb, and grass’
‘high cloudlets in the sky ‘
‘for that minute a blackbird sang’
‘all the birds / Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire ‘
Context lights out
1916 during the war , contrasts to traditional tropes of slew such as Astrophil and Stella 39 by Sir Philip Sydney - ‘the certain knot of peace’ - anticipated for a positive arrival and sanctuary . Viewed sleep as a psychoanalytic process to understand himself - ‘sleep is owed a portion of the deliberation owed to death ‘ insomnia essay
Structure
5 six line stanzas AABCCB rhyme scheme
Language
‘ I have come to the borders of sleep’
‘ however straight/ or winding ‘
‘Suddenly now blurs, / And In they sink ‘
‘All pleasure and all trouble ‘
‘ I must enter, and leave, alone ‘
‘The tall forest towers: / Its cloudy foliage lowers’
‘I hear and obey’
‘ I may lose my way / And myself ‘
Manor farm context
Rebuttal to fears in solitude by Samuel Taylor Coleridge written 1798 in response to an invasion alarm. Manor farm written 1914 start at the war. The last Shefa England extract - ‘ it was the Merry England of the English people ‘full of mirth and game ‘ ‘ . Alludes John of Gaunts speech Richard II ‘the earth of majesty ‘
Structure manor farm
One single stanza isolation , title has pastoral tranquil connotations and is quintessentially British
Language Manor farm
‘ the rock like mud unfroze a little and rills/ Ran and sparkled’
‘Church and yew-tree opposite’
‘And Farmhouse slept in Sunday siletness’
‘tiles duskily glowing, entertained / The midday sun;’
‘Against a fly, a solitary fly ‘
‘Winters cheek flush as if he had drained / Spring, Summer, Autumn’
‘Awakened from farm and church where it had lain’
‘This England, Old already, was called merry’
Context Old Man
Setting of thomas’a garden at Yew Tree Cottage , based on prose named Old Man’s beard . Old man or Lad’s Love are folk names or the long cultivated plant ‘southern wood’ . Old man derives from its silvery ‘feathery foliage ‘ , lads love traditionally used in lovers bouquets, the plant also is used in herbal medicines. Thomas could acutely use his senses remarked by JW Haines - ‘ for the whole evening he spent the other me , he at intervals pulled some mysterious objects out of his pocket to smell’ . Reading through a physcoanalytic Lense this could be viewed as representation of a liminal space between the loss of childhood and movement to adulthood
Title structure key ideas
Title - lamentation or loss of innocence as an adult and healing power of nature ,
Ideas - post structuralism - ‘ Old man, or Lad’s Love, - in the name there’s nothing / To one that know not Lad’s Love ,or Old Man’
Structure - 4 stanzas of unequal length . 2nd stanza is the longest 16 lines , clear perspective watching child interact with the plant , shorter 3rd and 4th stanzas .
Language old man
‘Names half decorate, half perplex ‘ - movement backwards , juxtaposition shows division between names and there meanings
‘And yet I like the names ‘ - simplicity of childhood , contrasting to complexities of existence evoked by post structuralism
‘ door side bush ‘
‘Sniffing the tips / and shrivelling the shreds’
‘Bent path to a door ‘
‘As for myself , / Where I first met the bitter scent is lost ‘
‘Sniff them and think and sniff again’
‘ I would rather give up others more sweet/ with no meaning, than this bitter one ‘
‘ I have mislaid the key ‘
‘ listening, lying in wait’
‘ No garden appears, no path , no hoar green bush’
‘ Only an avenue, dark, nameless without end ‘
Owl context
Poem focuses on primal human needs , food, shelter, humans have been dehumanised through war , owl is a predator poem written 1915.
Focuses on juxtaposition between comfort of the internal and discomfort of the external ‘no merry note , nor cause of merriment’ allusion to Loves Labour’s Lost act 5 scene 2 winter
Structure the owl
Regular structure 4 quatrains uniform abc best rhyme scheme peace and tranquility found in countryside
Language owl
‘hungry, and not yestarved’
‘Then at the In I had food, fire and rest, / Knowing how hungry, cold and tired was I’
‘All of the night was quite barred out except/ An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry’
‘Upon the hill’
‘No merry note, nor cause of merriment
‘what I escaped / And others could not ‘
‘ and salted was my food ‘
‘ speaking for all who lay under the stars , / Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice’
Context digging
Autumn heavily emphasised by Thomas , like Frost - ‘October ‘ Thomas’s good friend , heavy emphasis on olfactory image JW Haines - ‘ Thomas seems to me able to use all his senses at once more acutely than most people use a single one ‘
Structure and title digging
War and death imagery , active descent futility and searching - 4 regular quatrains. Abcb rhyme scheme , disruption of rhyme scheme shows wildness of nature , first line shorter than others - juxtaposition between order and disorder
Language digging
‘Scents , - scents dead leaves yield ‘
‘wild carrot’s seed, / And the square mustard field ‘
‘ the space wounds the roots of tree’
‘Rose , currant , raspberry, or gout weed ‘
‘ f
Flowing from where a bonfire burns/ The dead, the waste , the dangerous ‘
‘ All to sweetness turns ‘
‘It is enough / To smell, to crumble ‘
‘the robin sings over agin’
‘Sad songs of Autumn mirth’
Home context
19th century literary concept of a superfluous man - alienated and distanced from society , Thomas identifies with this . Looks for identity beyond physical action , a poem of thought and existentialism as evoked in hamlets speech ‘to be or not to be ‘ , life has no more to offer evoked in To Life by Thomas Hardy . Looking back and longing leads to disatisfaction with present existence and paralysis
Title and structure home
6 4 like stanzas abcb rhyme scheme , security and comfort expected at home , speakers attempt to control and isolate himself , c rhyme disrupts continuity , unsettling.
Language home
‘Not the end : but there’s nothing more ‘
‘ Sweet Summer and Winter rude/ I have loved ‘
‘I would go back again home/ now. Yet how should I go?’
‘ That land / my home, I have never seen;’
‘No: I cannot go back/ And would not if I could’
‘Until blindness come, I must wait / and blink at what is not good’
‘impurer pang’
The glory context
Written in match 1915. Meditation on ‘happiness in the heart of England ‘ Thomas writes , ‘the flaw in my happiness which wastes it to a pleasure is the manner of my looking back at it when it is a past’ ‘on beauty in diary April 1901 ‘ i am not sure that I consider anything in nature beautiful. Beauty it seems to me is inferior to the sublime which is irregular , worn’
Title and structure the glory
Religious purity , singular moment of happiness . Irregular rhyme scheme and one long stanza - one significant singular experience of sublime , irregular beyond humans control
The glory key quotes
‘The glory of the beauty of the morning,-/ The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew’- appreciation of everyday beauty
Nature , ‘And the dove / That tempts me onto something sweeter than love ‘
‘the sublime vacancy/ Of sky and meadow and forest and my own heart:-/ The glory invites me ‘ - enhancement unbounded joy delivered by nature , dash hesitancy power of nature difficult to define
Constant search for sublime of nature and dissatisfaction with everyday life . ‘tread the pale dust pitted with small dark drops ,/ In hope to find whatever it is I seek’ monosyllabic onomatopoeia embodies speakers constantly quest
‘Must I be content with the discontent ‘ questions human existence and wether to surrender his autonomy . Juxtaposition between being and doing, passively accept existence
Existential step by step quest to discover true nature of beauty , ‘what beauty is , and what can I have meant / By happiness?’
‘The glory invites me / Yet it leaves me scorned ‘seek as far as heaven , as hell’
‘ I was happy oft and oft before ‘
