Written in the early summer of 1822, Shelley left “The Triumph of Life” unfinished when he died on July 8, 1822, when his boat Don Juan capsized. Indeed, Shelley had written part of the poem while sailing in this very… Read More ›
The poetry of the sixteenth century defies facile generalizations. Although the same can obviously be said for the poetry of other periods as well, this elusiveness of categorization is particularly characteristic of the sixteenth century. It is difficult to pinpoint… Read More ›
Paradise Lost is a poetic rewriting of the book of Genesis. It tells the story of the fall of Satan and his compatriots, the creation of man, and, most significantly, of man’s act of disobedience and its consequences: paradise was… Read More ›
Join ONE YEAR Online Coaching for NTA UGC NET JRF English Conducted by Literariness.org BATCH 2 Coaching for December 2020 and June 2021 English NET Exam. Features 📌 No Time Constraints 📌 Printable materials in pdf 📌 Life-time access to the… Read More ›
No poet in memory has ever had quite so spectacular a debut as the young T. S. Eliot when his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was first published in Poetry magazine in 1915, thanks in large part… Read More ›
Nothing could have prepared either the literary world in general or the curious reader who had been following Eliot’s career to date for the publication, in late 1922, of The Waste Land. Published in October of that year in Eliot’s… Read More ›
America became a subject for literature after the Revolutionary War, when writers began the exploration of themes and motifs distinctly American. Continuing the Puritan belief in America as the New Eden, writers stressed the millennial nature of settlement and progress…. Read More ›
CHAPTER 1 OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE The Old English language or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest form of English. The period is a long one and it is generally considered that Old English was spoken from about A.D. 600 to about 1100…. Read More ›
Written and published on October 4, 1821, “Adonais” memorializes the death of Shelley’s friend and fellow poet John Keats, whom he regarded as being one of the poets of “the highest genius” of the age. Keats died in Rome on… Read More ›
To a Skylark Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud… Read More ›
Ode to the West Wind I O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken… Read More ›
Ozymandias I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip,… Read More ›
Ariel Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. God’s lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow Splits and passes, sister to The brown arc Of the neck I cannot catch, Nigger-eye… Read More ›
Lady Lazarus I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it—— A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel… Read More ›
Daddy You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you…. Read More ›
Andrea del Sarto But do not let us quarrel any more, No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? I’ll work… Read More ›
Fra Lippo Lippi [Florentine painter, 1412-69] I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave! You need not clap your torches to my face. Zooks, what’s to blame? you think you see a monk! What, ’tis past midnight, and you go the… Read More ›
My Last Duchess FERRARA That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will’t please you sit… Read More ›
One of the most famous poems in the English language, The Second Coming is the definitive vision of the Yeatsian apocalypse. It incorporates and intensifies ideas of cyclic creation and destruction already articulated in poems like “The Magi,” “On Woman,”… Read More ›
The Easter Rising of 1916 catalyzed the final phase of the Irish struggle for independence and forced Yeats to recant the stinging assessment of “September 1913” that “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, / It’s with O’Leary in the grave.” In… Read More ›
Snow (1916) The three stood listening to a fresh access Of wind that caught against the house a moment, Gulped snow, and then blew free again—the Coles Dressed, but dishevelled from some hours of sleep, Meserve belittled in the great… Read More ›
The speaker moves between two positions: belief and disbelief. He addresses the “Far star” that “tickles” his “sensitive plate” and whose heat is so intense that it can fry black atoms white. He refers to his body as his armor… Read More ›
In this dramatic monologue, a woman “servant” addresses a man who camps on the land she and her husband, Len, own. Several commentators have noted the similarity of the title to “and thou shalt be a servant of servants,” Noah’s… Read More ›
A Serious Step Lightly Taken (1942) Between two burrs on the map Was a hollow-headed snake. The burrs were hills, the snake was a stream, And the hollow7 head was a lake. And the dot in front of a name… Read More ›
The Self-Seeker (1914) “Willis, I didn’t want you here to-day: The lawyer’s coming for the company. I’m going to sell my soul, or, rather, feet. Five hundred dollars for the pair, you know.” “With you the feet have nearly been… Read More ›
“A Roadside Stand” was first published in the June 1936 issue of the Atlantic Monthly before being collected in A Further Range with the subtitle “On Being Put out of Our Misery.” Frost at one time considered the title “Euthanasia”… Read More ›
‘Out, Out—’ (1916) The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain… Read More ›