Alfred, Lord Tennyson – The Karken

Tennyson wrote a poem about a large mythical sea monster, what could be more Victorian? This is one of the poems where I just had to put my book down, and laugh, thinking to myself “How do people come up with this stuff?” I then had to look up exactly what a Kraken was. I loaded some images for your enjoyment…

These are delightful. After reading this poem the rest of Tennyson couldn’t be anything else but creepy and weird to me. He writes, “Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green./ There hath he lain for agaes and will lie/ Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep” These are not the lush, romantic images I was used to in our reading. It wasn’t even gory, but it is still graphic. In these lines he is describing a huge sea monster flailing it’s enormous arms, which I imagine are scaly and slimly. The image also includes this beast devouring worms. Oddly enough this creature is peaceful. He is thought to be in actuality an oversized squid, which peacefully sleeps at the bottom of the ocean. This poem proves to me that poetry and literature can entail anything and everything.

Thomas Hardy – Channel Firing

Thomas Hardy was a mixture of the Victorian and Modern era. Most of his books were very controversial. He wrote on and challenged religious beliefs which during his time period was completely taboo. Many of the reader during that time were alarmed that such a man would even write about the topic. He covered a variety of topic other then religion, such as industrialism and the differences in social class. He wrote mostly Victorian novels, but when it came to his poetry he was a modernist. Hardy lived during the time of Word War I and the events of the war influenced many of his poems. His poem “Channel Firing” was written before World War I which shows that was had a huge impact on the thoughts of Thomas Hardy. I was never involved in war until I read an essay a little boy in a middle school class I was helping teach this summer wrote an essay about his brother who recently died in Iraq. For some reason I felt closer to war, and it has been weighing on my mind. Thomas Hardy had the weight of war on his mind when he wrote “Channel Firing.”

Hardy wrote “All nations striving strong to make/ Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters/ they do no more for Christes sake/ Than you who are helpless in such matters” (1077). I enjoyed these verses of the poem because it shows the madness and helplessness of war. Later Hardy attempts to justify why war is necessary, but here he shows the hatefulness of war. “All nations striving strong to make/ Red war yet redder” (1077), this give me an image of complete chaos. I imagine a sea of people from all over the world, or in this case near the English Channel, just slaughtering one another. I know that “slaughter” is not a very appealing word, but it conveys the intended meaning of a “Red war yet redder.” Since this particular poem is refereeing to military exercises this verse is of particular interest. He doesn’t take sides, he mentions “All nations” (1077), and this is a way of sharing the blame. Saying that all are partaking, all are striving to cause the chaos that is war. I love how concise his words are in this poem. It is beautifully written, I really enjoyed reading Thomas Hardy.

John Stuart Mill - A Biography

From a very early age Mill was taught different languages such as Greek and Latin, he was also taught mathematics and economics. He was educated by his father, James Mill, mostly and also by his assistant. He was considered one of the greatest thinkers of the Victorian age. John was intentionally sheltered from boys his own age, instead of hunting and enjoying life he was being influenced by his father’s friends. His fathers along with associate Bentham founded utilitarianism.

Like his father James, John intended to follow a strict utilitarianism life style, but later his wife Harriet Taylor influenced him. He later became and advocate for women’s right and involved in politics. He defended individual liberties against the intervention of society and state law. In 1869 Mill argued for the right of women to vote. Plato influenced him in thinking that “higher minds” should be at the head of society. This meant that women would be included, he saw a woman as intellectual equals, which was a thought was too advanced for his time period.

After he branched out from utilitarianism, he later returned to the principles and realized that his father had been grooming him to be a prophet. Mill formed a small society where he taught his fathers political philosophical views. It wasn’t long after this that he experienced a nervous break down, this occurred just as he was becoming a respected member of the intellectual society. It was recorded that his break down was a result of sever mental and physical. I believe it was because he never had a chance to relieve any stress. His father groomed from to be a political and economical mastermind starting at the age of free, he was kept from children his own age in order to develop and mature faster. At the age of three, instead of learning colors and ABC’s he was learning to speak Latin and Greek. He never had a chance to be a child, he didn’t get to experience that part of life so of course at some point enough will be enough and he will break down.

Mill was a natural intellectual, he followed his principles while developing his own. He was a philosopher, an economist, and an author. He wrote theories and developed a religion, but he was never got to experience childhood

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Browning was born in Mach of 1806. She lived a quiet life in the country with her parents and eleven siblings. She was a daughter of privilege, her father acquiring most of his money from Jamaican sugar trade. As a child she was a bit unusual. She did enjoy riding her pony, and attending social gatherings with her brother and sisters. What she mostly enjoyed however, is reading. She had tutors; she loved to study languages, including Greek and Hebrew. At the age of fifteen she fell ill and upon her fathers request she was prescribed opium, when she was thirty she suffered a serious lung illness. For the rest of her unmarried life she lived in seclusion, surround by books and paintings. (Doesn’t it seem that most of these authors suffer from some type of illness?). Her health did not keep her from writing she continued to publish poetry and essays.

The one particular poem that I was attracted to was the “Sonnets form the Portuguese” number 43. The poem begins “How do I love thee, let me count the ways?” I keep wanting to say “their ain’t no number high enough to end this phrase” which are the lyrics to a country song by Garth Brooks. Her poem is delightful it is witty and sweet. My favorite lines from this poem are “I love thee with the passion put to use/ In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.” It makes so much sense to me. I know how much effort into worrying, about money, family, and relationships. If I could put that same passion into loving someone, as I do about worrying about past events and what might happen, then it would be amazing. If I could have faith in someone like a child, to be in love and to be fearless is truly ideal. This idea of loving with a child’s faith is very religious. Jesus calls us to have like a child, to believe like a child, without hesitation. A type of faith that is pure. This may have been what Browning intended. For her love, or the love that is described in the poem, to be pure, holy even. Something that is so wholesome that only a child would be able to see it for what it is truly worth. She maybe even inspired Garth Brooks a little, he used that line in his song “Wrapped up in You.”

Felicia Hemans – Records of Woman

Properzia Rossi was a gifted artist. She could sculpt, write poetry and was also musically gifted. Her heart was for only one man, Roman Knight, and she would do anything for his attention. As a true romantic, eventually, after she was constantly discouraged she died of a broken heart. Hemans writes, “Have I not lov'd, and striven, and fail'd to bind one true heart unto me” There is such longing in this line. Longing for love, for attention, for comfort, for desire, and for lust. It captures that ones talents don’t ensure happiness, that aquacades won’t outweigh loneliness. Properzia seems lonely to me, she has planned out her perfect life with Roman Knight, and because of her stagnant image of what her life should be he can do no wrong. She seems desperate, someone that is lovesick with a fantasy or an alternate reality and because of her heart she has lost sight of herself. She speaks of leaving the earth unknown, and longing for one more dream, she then goes on to write about wondering what will happen when she is gone. After reading these lines, I began to consider the idea that she may have committed suicide. She was making the ultimate sacrifice to show her love. She was so delusional that she believed Roman Knight would take notice. She reached an edge and believed that death was the only way down. Also what makes me believe that suicide is an option is that she leaves a sculpture with him, as if it were to remain a shrine to her. She believed in a love solely devoted to one man. She centered her life on gaining his attention. Unfortunately she did not attain her love, and she lost her life for it. Does this mean that Roman Knight was not the one she was meant for? Or was she so delusional that she couldn’t see life in its own reality? She had a true and pure love, it was just misplaced in the wrong man.

Percy Bysshe Shelley- Ode to the West Wind

Shelley was born August 4, 1792. At the age of twelve he attended the Sion House Academy before entering University College Oxford. Organized education did not agree with Shelley’s philosophies and ideas and he was later expelled. He eloped with sixteen-year-old Harriet Westbrook to Scotland. The two had two children together before Shelley attempted to have an open marriage, which eventually cause his marriage to fail. In 1814 Shelley eloped again with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin who had her own famous work Frankenstein or Modern Day Prometheus. The most famous work of Percy Shelley is probably his poem “Ozymandias” which was published in 1818. What I emjoyed most about Shelley was not “Ozymandias” but another one of his popular poems “Ode to the West Wind”

Perhaps what drew me to this poem is the word “West.” I am from California and every time I say that, some one replies “All the way from the west,” it never fails. I cant “help where I come from I wasn’t born southern but I got here as fast as I could. There is something more vibrant about the west. I know that when Shelley wrote this poem he wasn’t thinking about the West Cost of the United States, but he was thinking of a vibrant force. Shelley was thinking of the wind. The wind is a driving force not only scattering leaves but also scattering lives. In this particular poem the “Wind” is the autumn wind. Autumn leads to winter, thus the wind is the ever-pressing force towards death and stillness. The speaker in the poem speaks about being a dead leaf carried on by the wind. This could mean having himself be carried though death. The speaker asks the wind to takes his thoughts across the universe, so that every intellectual mind will hear and understand. The speaker asks “If winter comes can spring be far behind.” This shows Shelley’s infatuation with nature and natural law. He relates the wind to the driving forces in ones life. The wind is what will support one even after death. This is a sort of moral and principle. Even after life has taken its course and ended in winter, the way one lived and conducted affairs, ones memory will live on. The wind is like the human sole, uncultivated and arrogant. The seasons are the physical something one cannot control. One’s sole remains intact even after the season has passed.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Kubla Khan

This poem was written in a 1816 and is Coleridge’s most prominent work. The poem also has the title A Vision in a Deam, A fragment. The origin of this poem is interesting it came to coleridge in a dream. He was reading about a place that Khan Kubla had commanded to be built and fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke he wrote this poem. It is believed that a visitor interrupted Coleridge and when he returned to this poem the images that had percolated his dreams had vanished, thus the alternate title A Fragment. The poem begins with an intimate description of a place. It describes the walls and the surrounding areas. It is evident that this is not a real place because the Coleridge writes “Through caverns measureless to man/Down to a sunless sea.” Coleridge creates an entie world through his poem. In the beginning Coleriged leads the reader to believe that this is a harmonious place, but the poem takes a turn when he writes “Woman wailing for her demon-lover” This implies that this magical land could be a prison, a place of punishment. It is a woman wailing for her demon lover. This can be seen as her having been in sin. She wants something that is sinful and evil, something out of the ordinary but because she is entrapped she cannot have her desire and she is forced to suffer.

Notice that the man (her demon-lover) is nowhere to be found. The focus is on the woman. Another image in the middle of the poem that is interesting is a “sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice.” Sunny and pleasurable would indicate that this place is tolerable, almost like a vacation spot, but then in that same sentence Coleridge writes “caves of ice.” These images give two different emotions. One is warm and comforting, the other is isolated and cold. Coleridge creates a world of confusion with his words, I don’t particularly care for his style, but I do like the way he switches from third person to first person. It makes the work more personable, which understanding that the writer is not always the eye, this some how makes me feel closer to the work, like I am the one gaining power through him.