PoemoftheWeek

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

Well I'm glad I'm not alone. I always thought it was autumn, but my professor insists that it's spring for some reason. I tried to tell him that berries probably wouldn't be out in the spring, but he seems pretty certain in his reading. I still think he's wrong though.

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I could be wrong (is that really likely?) but I wonder if your professor could be seeing what others appear to have missed. The significance of the berries being ‘harsh and crude’ is that they are not yet ripened. Milton has to celebrate Lycidas prematurely - before he has matured as a poet. The idea of things not being ready is obviously consistent with the premature death of Edward King.

Petrarch, I would have thought the following lines appealed to you most, given that you are a hard-grafting academic:

Alas! what boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.

Cold berries

http://www.jimpix.co.uk/photos/default.asp?id=282

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

Yes, my apologies, I realize I didn't really state the primary meaning of the lines in my comments. Just as you say, the meaning of the lines is that Milton imagines some future poet praising him in a poem just as he is now praising Lycidas, and that's what I was referring to when I said they describe a continuance of life and of poetry--one poet (the future muse) continuing where another has left off by eulogizing that previous poet (Milton) . I was taking the meaning for granted and examining the way in which he's getting that meaning across because I've always found his diction here very rich. The "turn" make it clear that he's talking about poetic composition that will immortalize him one day, and I love the way his choice of the word "passes" not only describes a poet in the future, but describes him doing something in the present tense with an implication of this future poet one day himself becoming past. It's a really wonderfully compact way of putting across a whole cycle of events repeating themselves throughout time as each succeeding poet pays homage to the last and hopes to be immortalized himself.

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And so, by analogy, he Milton comes to "pluck" the berries, so Lycidas has been plucked. What a strong verb. It just sticks out for me in all the words of the first dozen or so lines. And "forced" as an adjective here is a little startling. I don't think he means it as fingers forced their way into something, but as fingers that applied force to pluck and crush. Not your standard way of using the adjective, which is probably one of the things that drove T.S. Eliot to put down Milton. But I think it's innovative. I almost envision God's hand plucking poor Lycidas. And add the other strong verb, "shatter" and I think you can feel the violence of the openning.

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I could be wrong (is that really likely?) but I wonder if your professor could be seeing what others appear to have missed. The significance of the berries being ‘harsh and crude’ is that they are not yet ripened. Milton has to celebrate Lycidas prematurely - before he has matured as a poet. The idea of things not being ready is obviously consistent with the premature death of Edward King.

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Yes, my prof. said the same thing. I still wasn't too sure about that argument though. It's spring right now and I don't see berries of any description about. It seems as though you don't see berries until late summer/early fall (though I'm no botanical expert here--Does anyone know for certain when the myrtle berries would first appear?). We disagreed about "mellowing" too, which I think of as a distinctly autumnal word describing the ripening of the fall, while my prof. sees it as describing a softening of the harsh winter weather. I wouldn't say full fall, but that time around late summer maybe, when everything is on the verge of ripening but not quite there yet.

In any case, I agree with Virgil that regardless of the exact season, there's the feeling of things being cut off or "plucked" before they reach their peak, and a certain violence in the diction of the opening lines.

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Petrarch, I would have thought the following lines appealed to you most, given that you are a hard-grafting academic:

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:lol: Yes, there's been talk of typing up the passage you quote and posting it in the grad student lounge, though there's another group in favor of the more pithy "Laciate ogne speranza voi ch'intrate" (abandon hope all ye who enter here).

Success!! Found it:

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Suitable for gardens yes Nursery Unknown Compost no Size at acquisition Unknown Garden location Unknown Garden notes Myrtus communis has a colorful display of berries in the fall and early winter. The flowers and leaves of Myrtle berry (also known as sweet myrtle and Greek myrtle) have a faint sweet fragrance. This plant can survive cold winter nights that go as low as 10° Fahrenheit. This species needs summer days with high heat. Full sun to light shade is ideal for this plant. It prefers well drained soils.

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http://www.crescentbloom.com/plants/...20communis.htm

Fall and early winter. I was wrong.

Does anyone think that Milton gave a damn about Edward King? The poem is hardly a warm and moving tribute (I’m not saying that it should be) – I certainly don’t think it encourages much sympathy for the deceased.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Does anyone think that Milton gave a damn about Edward King? The poem is hardly a warm and moving tribute (I’m not saying that it should be) – I certainly don’t think it encourages much sympathy for the deceased.

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:lol: I agree. I can't help but half feel that a rival was knocked off, and he got the opportunity to write up a poem to show off his learning and skill. That is pretty cynical on my part.

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Does anyone think that Milton gave a damn about Edward King? The poem is hardly a warm and moving tribute (I’m not saying that it should be) – I certainly don’t think it encourages much sympathy for the deceased.

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Oh, he almost undoubtably didn't care deeply about poor King. They weren't close friends or anything. I don't think he was necessarily rooting for the event (though I found Virgil's suggestion amusing :lol: ). I think he thought it was a sad thing, but there isn't a very deep personal loss here. It was originally published in a memorial volume, Justa Edouardo King naufrago, compiled by King's fellow students in his honor. Milton's contribution was one of several, it just happened to be better written and thus better remembered than the others. Clearly he was using this as an opportunity to explore his own poetic career and show off his talents. To give Milton some credit, it may be that when faced with the request to write a eulogy for a guy he didn't know terribly well, he was trying his best to write based on what he did know about him--that he was a fellow poet. Often eulogies written by people who didn't know the person well tend to start generalizing about some role that person filled. All the same, it certainly comes out as more about Milton than anyone else.

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Success!! Found it:
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Suitable for gardens yes Nursery Unknown Compost no Size at acquisition Unknown Garden location Unknown Garden notes Myrtus communis has a colorful display of berries in the fall and early winter. The flowers and leaves of Myrtle berry (also known as sweet myrtle and Greek myrtle) have a faint sweet fragrance. This plant can survive cold winter nights that go as low as 10° Fahrenheit. This species needs summer days with high heat. Full sun to light shade is ideal for this plant. It prefers well drained soils.


http://www.crescentbloom.com/plants...%20communis.htm

Fall and early winter. I was wrong.

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Thanks Virg. Now I've got good botanical evidence on my side for the great academic debate raging here. :lol: Next week perhaps we'll move on to counting angels dancing on the head of a pin. ;)

Has anyone any examples of King's poetry? Apparently it's not terribly good.

I can´t find any sorrow or, actually, any feeling at all. To me it seems more like an exercise in style, than any kind of mourning. I almost find the continued references to dying young and drowning a bit tasteless - like a tabloid. Young Poet dead by Drowning, read all on page 3.

But it might be becuase I just can´t understand things like this:
"With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, "
I might be missing something.

I also never really liked the poetry that uses that many symbols, and Gods. Sometimes I can find them interesting, like puzzles. But I seldom like them as poetry.

I can remember having to analyse the metre of this poem back when I was a lad of 13 or so. Underline trochees and circle spondees and do something or other to pyrrhi (or pyrrhuses, whichever the plural of the wretched thing is). I only recognised it about half way through. I do not believe that we actually spent time analysing the meaning and references of this poem or if we did I have completely forgotten anything I might have learnt 55 years ago.
It is much better read for pleasure than as a tedious exercise. The rhythm in Milton's writing is always a delight to both tongue and ear.

It occured to me last night that there's an online edition of this poem with convenient glosses (you just click on the highlighted words and the link takes you to the footnote), which might be helpful given the obscure allusions and sometimes general trickiness of Milton's writing.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/rea...as/index.shtml

This site's done similar things with Milton's other works, including PL, so it might be handy for anyone interested in Milton .

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

Has anyone any examples of King's poetry? Apparently it's not terribly good.

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It's funny, I've never come across any of King's poetry, though I too have heard it wasn't that good. Poor King, ah well at least he's more remembered than most amateur poets. I'd be interested to read it if anyone dug anything up.

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Originally Posted by Isagel

I can´t find any sorrow or, actually, any feeling at all. To me it seems more like an exercise in style, than any kind of mourning. I almost find the continued references to dying young and drowning a bit tasteless - like a tabloid. Young Poet dead by Drowning, read all on page 3.

But it might be becuase I just can´t understand things like this:
"With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, "
I might be missing something.

I also never really liked the poetry that uses that many symbols, and Gods. Sometimes I can find them interesting, like puzzles. But I seldom like them as poetry.

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I think it comes across as a colder sounding poem if you're expecting it to be a personal eulogy to a friend. It's a formal elegy rather than an In Memorium type of poem. The heart of the poem is less in the specific death it contemplates than in a general contemplation of death and poets and the power of poetry to live past death. I personally don't find it as distant as a tabloid piece, which has no sympathetic feeling with the victim at all. I think Milton is touched in some way by King's death, but as an acquaintance and fellow student rather than a close friend. When people, especially young people, experience this kind of loss, the loss of an aquaintance and peer, I think it makes them reflect, not only on the general sadness of someone who was young and who they knew being gone, but on their own mortality, which is exactly where it takes Milton in this poem. I think he's doing his best to remember King with this poem, recognizing that King's chance to live on in some way is in being memorialized in words, and hoping that he, Milton, will in turn be remembered in some way, honored in someone else's poem. So I think the poem lies somewhere in between the detachment of the tabloid and the mourning of a personal friend.

As for the allusions and the crazy syntax, part of this is just what was popular in the period Milton wrote in and a matter of taste. Part of it is Milton's style which you are not alone in criticising (T.S. Eliot among others might be in your camp). Milton does have bad lines, and incidently I've never much cared for the one you quote. I find it cumbersome and overwrought. For what it's worth, the literal meaning is that he's bathing his oozy (wet from the sea) hair in some sort of heavenly nector, with connotations of him being annointed as he enters heaven. In terms of the allusions in general, I think part of the reason for using all those allusions to gods and to past poetry and mythology is to emphasize the connection that both Milton and King have with the past. It emphasizes the way both the life and death of a young poet is part of a repeated cycle of life and death and poetry throughout the ages, a story that has been told before and will be told again. It's a matter of searching a past story to make sense of the present one.

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Originally Posted by Grumbleguts

I can remember having to analyse the metre of this poem back when I was a lad of 13 or so. Underline trochees and circle spondees and do something or other to pyrrhi (or pyrrhuses, whichever the plural of the wretched thing is). I only recognised it about half way through. I do not believe that we actually spent time analysing the meaning and references of this poem or if we did I have completely forgotten anything I might have learnt 55 years ago.
It is much better read for pleasure than as a tedious exercise. The rhythm in Milton's writing is always a delight to both tongue and ear.

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:lol: Glad you're getting the chance to re-read the poem for pleasure's sake. I personally find scansion interesting but only so far as it augments an appreciation of how the poet is working to convey his/her meaning. It's an abysmal approach to teaching the poem to young minds. It's like showing them Michelangelo's David and spending the whole time with a microscope analysing the mineral composition of the marble--missing the forest for the trees a bit.

Thank you for a very nice answer. I have read Milton before, and although he sometimes can make language flow like magic, I also tend to find him bombastic, and when he makes bad lines they are sometimes remarkably bad. (It happens to the best, there are some really bad by Shakespeare too, I think there is a collection of them in a thread somewhere on the forum. TS Eliot is of course without flaw :-), though ) I know that it is partly the style of the time, and I prefer modern poetry. But when you write like that I almost feel bad for being mean to him.

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Originally Posted by Isagel

I have read Milton before, and although he sometimes can make language flow like magic, I also tend to find him bombastic, and when he makes bad lines they are sometimes remarkably bad.

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True on all counts. I actually think among famous poets Milton writes some of the worst bad lines (but also some of the best good ones).

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Originally Posted by Isagel

It happens to the best, there are some really bad by Shakespeare too, I think there is a collection of them in a thread somewhere on the forum.

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Oh wow, I'd love to find that thread. A list of bad lines written by Shakespeare would make a great icebreaker for class discussion when I'm teaching him next year. :lol:

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TS Eliot is of course without flaw :-),

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Of course. ;)

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I know that it is partly the style of the time, and I prefer modern poetry.

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Yes, it's really just a matter of what speaks to you personally. I'm an oddball who just loves the stuff written around this period.

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But when you write like that I almost feel bad for being mean to him.

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How kind of you to say. Don't feel too bad though. He's been dead for a while so I'm sure he doesn't much mind what's said about him. :D

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Originally Posted by Isagel

I can´t find any sorrow or, actually, any feeling at all. To me it seems more like an exercise in style, than any kind of mourning.

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Welcome back.

On the whole, I’d agree with you. Milton was showing us how clever he is, which is fine by me, given that he was. I think you are missing something if you feel the same about Paradise Lost, though, especially Books I, II, IV and IX.

I can’t wait until someone posts PL for ‘Poem of the Month’. Perhaps each of the twelve books could feature as the next twelve consecutive ‘Poem of the Month’ posts. Or perhaps we should have all twelve books as one big ‘Poem of the Year!’ (and yes, I did put the exclamation mark in the right place). If our sorry little lives mean that we are still around for longer than we could possibly have any excuse to be, then we should switch to prose and I, The Unnamable, hereby nominate, on this, the fourth day of May twenty hundred and six, Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu for ‘Novel of the Decade’. We could discuss a long piece like that every ten years. No one should be allowed to post more than two ‘decade texts’ in any one century, however. Would anyone be interested in a thread on the top ten words used in (a) Early Milton, (b) Middle Milton or (c) Late Milton? How about Milton’s ten best uses of the comma or the letter ‘g’?

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

I can’t wait until someone posts PL for ‘Poem of the Month’. Perhaps each of the twelve books could feature as the next twelve consecutive ‘Poem of the Month’ posts. Or perhaps we should have all twelve books as one big ‘Poem of the Year!’ (and yes, I did put the exclamation mark in the right place). If our sorry little lives mean that we are still around for longer than we could possibly have any excuse to be, then we should switch to prose and I, The Unnamable, hereby nominate, on this, the fourth day of May twenty hundred and six, Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu for ‘Novel of the Decade’. We could discuss a long piece like that every ten years. No one should be allowed to post more than two ‘decade texts’ in any one century, however. Would anyone be interested in a thread on the top ten words used in (a) Early Milton, (b) Middle Milton or (c) Late Milton? How about Milton’s ten best uses of the comma or the letter ‘g’?

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:lol: Be careful what you wish for. You may find yourself commited to a year of Paradise Lost yet. I personally love nothing better than discussing long poetic works, but I don't know if everyone else is of a similar mind. And don't you know it's dangerous to challenge an academic to do something like find out the ten most common words in early Milton? They may just settle in for a life's work of counting words in Comus and Lycidas. Luckily I'm sure someone's already done that so I'll just have to find some even less fruitful way to come up with a dissertation topic. :D

As for the novel of the decade, I say we start with the first sentence right now. No time like the present:

"Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure."

Now we can all contemplate whether Proust is making an allusion to Ben Franklin's saying "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Also, why is it that he says he went to bed early in the past tense (obviously because for anyone embarking on a seven volume novel sleep is of necessity a thing of the past). Since it is a thing of the past, maybe he's just setting us up for an advert for a perscription sleep aid. What will happen next I wonder? Will he wake up? The answer to these questions and more next week when we contemplate the second sentence: "Parfois, à peine ma bougie éteinte, mes yeux se fermaient si vite que je n'avais pas le temps de me dire: "Je m'endors."

Actually I've never made it through all of the Temps Perdu. I'd love to do so someday, but I think reading one sentence at a time really is all I'm up for at the moment. :lol: O.K. enough silliness. We can go back to discussing Milton now .

I'd like to try to understand the various transitions and structure of the poem. Here's sort of how I summarize the various sections, and I'll refer to Petrarch's sub-divisions.

Sub-Division 1: The need to sing of his death.
Sub-Division 2:

(a) The change now that he's gone.

(b) What could we have done to prevent it.

(c) He died attempting to acquire fame.

(d) How he died.

Sub-Division 3: Shepherd's work.
Sub-Division 4:

(a) Look homeward, to Paradise

(b) Weep no more.

There may be more that I've glossed over. First there is a sort of classical logic to it. Does anyone know if this is a classical/medevil/renaissance rhetorical form? It's interesting Milton delays how King died well into the poem. Perhaps it was a well known fact.

The section I found the most interesting was the sub-division 3, the shepherd's work. The other sections, despite Milton's great voice, seem kind of sterile, almost like a fossil. There's just way too much classical allusions and given that he's working with a fixed established form (I guessing), it gives the feel of a petrified piece of wood. Sub-division 3 doesn't feel that way to me. It seems like he lets his imagination run there, and, even though the whole shepherd's thing is kind of corny, it's not bogged down with learned name droppings.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Welcome back.

On the whole, I’d agree with you. Milton was showing us how clever he is, which is fine by me, given that he was. I think you are missing something if you feel the same about Paradise Lost, though, especially Books I, II, IV and IX.

I can’t wait until someone posts PL for ‘Poem of the Month’. Perhaps each of the twelve books could feature as the next twelve consecutive ‘Poem of the Month’ posts. Or perhaps we should have all twelve books as one big ‘Poem of the Year!’ (and yes, I did put the exclamation mark in the right place). If our sorry little lives mean that we are still around for longer than we could possibly have any excuse to be, then we should switch to prose and I, The Unnamable, hereby nominate, on this, the fourth day of May twenty hundred and six, Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu for ‘Novel of the Decade’. We could discuss a long piece like that every ten years. No one should be allowed to post more than two ‘decade texts’ in any one century, however. Would anyone be interested in a thread on the top ten words used in (a) Early Milton, (b) Middle Milton or (c) Late Milton? How about Milton’s ten best uses of the comma or the letter ‘g’?

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Thank you for the welcome.
I have read parts of PL and liked them. That is why I am so disappointed in this one. Of course he may brag, but he can´t make me like it. I defy you Milton! Ha! Your clever alliterations will not make me fall this time. I see your games!

You go ahead looking for g´s and commas, we will be right there. Promise.

But reading PL as a project could be fun. Then I´ll have proper help when I get stuck.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I'd like to try to understand the various transitions and structure of the poem. Here's sort of how I summarize the various sections, and I'll refer to Petrarch's sub-divisions.

Sub-Division 1: The need to sing of his death.
Sub-Division 2:

(a) The change now that he's gone.

(b) What could we have done to prevent it.

(c) He died attempting to acquire fame.

(d) How he died.

Sub-Division 3: Shepherd's work.
Sub-Division 4:

(a) Look homeward, to Paradise

(b) Weep no more.

There may be more that I've glossed over. First there is a sort of classical logic to it. Does anyone know if this is a classical/medevil/renaissance rhetorical form? It's interesting Milton delays how King died well into the poem. Perhaps it was a well known fact.

The section I found the most interesting was the sub-division 3, the shepherd's work. The other sections, despite Milton's great voice, seem kind of sterile, almost like a fossil. There's just way too much classical allusions and given that he's working with a fixed established form (I guessing), it gives the feel of a petrified piece of wood. Sub-division 3 doesn't feel that way to me. It seems like he lets his imagination run there, and, even though the whole shepherd's thing is kind of corny, it's not bogged down with learned name droppings.

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Thanks Virg. You're so good at doing these outline things. Let me first make a disclaimer that the way I've divided the poem was almost entirely arbitrary for the sake of having some smaller segments to digest, just so no one tries to read any particular significance into these parts (not suggesting you were doing so, just want everything clear up front). There's actually been some debate over how the this poem should be divided. It seems as though most scholars would divide it into three parts with the first part being roughly a combination of my parts one and two and the other parts as I've divided them (I was going to split it in three, but that would make the first part cumbersomely long).

The form of the poem as stated in the intro is a "monody" meaning an ode (often an elegiac ode) sung by a single voice, though many scholars (myself included) have been quick to point out that one feature of the poem is the sense of it having multiple speakers. The form it's really modelled after of course, is the pastoral elegy (basically an elegy in which the mourner and the mourned are figured as shepheards), which originates with Theocritus (but is also in Virgil etc.). Usually the classical pastoral elegy had a refrain, which is missing from Milton's version, but other than that it shares much of the same features including the invocation of the muses, the lament of nature for the fallen shepheard, the procession of mouners (which I've just realized I inelegantly cut in half in my divisions--ah well) and the consolation at the end (though obviously the classical versions of the form lack the Christian bias ;) ). So Milton is generally following a tradition, but there isn't really what you'd call a set structure he's following, and the exact genre and intended form of the poem has long been the subject of speculation. The verse itself is most akin to the form of the Italian Canzone in its occasional rhymes and varied line length.

The one thing you failed to mention about the third section is that it is an ecclesiastical satire. The inclusion of church criticism in the pastoral elegy (and the pastoral in general) had become common in the Medieval/Renaissance periods (Petrarch, and of course Spenser being among those who used Pastoral in this way). In Lycidas the "Pilot of the Galilean lake" with his "Two massy keys" is a reference to St. Peter, the keeper of the keys of heaven and critic of false teachers who has come to denounce those pastors who "for their bellies' sake/ Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold." His "mitred locks" refer to a bishop's mitre etc. I think my favorite line in this passage is "Blind mouths!" There's something about the conflation between sight and taste that conveys this sort of ghastly, irrational gluttony. Perhaps Virgil likes this section best because it's where the "wolf" shows up? ;)

Anyway, I think I'll stop for now and let others have a say.

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Originally Posted by Isagel

I have read parts of PL and liked them. That is why I am so disappointed in this one. Of course he may brag, but he can´t make me like it. I defy you Milton! Ha! Your clever alliterations will not make me fall this time. I see your games!

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I thought you might like the following quote from Dr. Johnson. His feelings about this poem were similar to your own, in fact even more vehement. :D

"In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting: whatever images it can supply are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind."
Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

Perhaps Virgil likes this section best because it's where the "wolf" shows up? ;)

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Goodness. I didn't even think of that. You're right!! :lol:

Is anyone posting a new poem?

I have heard a lot about this poem but read it only once. Would like to hear what you think of it.

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

Thanks Sher, I don't think we've discussed Frost on this thread before, or at least not since I've been around, and I love his poetry. I first read this poem as a child, and I've always liked it. It's one of those I've read every now and again many times over the years since I first came across it in school. What I like about it, and about Frost's poetry in general is the rich simplicity of it. The first line (later repeated) "something there is, that doesn't love a wall" is built around the indeterminacy of what that "something" is, and yet throughout the poem the reader has the feeling that he/she knows exactly what is being referred to in that "something." In those first few lines I always have a vivid image of the earth actively swelling beneath the wall, of the earth breathing deeply to crack the strange constraints placed upon it. Anyway, I'll make some more comments when I have the time. This should be an interesting poem to discuss.

I think there is a dynamic being set up between the land and man-made things(the wall), the land and man, man and man, man and land, all being constrained, yet all(man,land,man) held together literally and symbolically by this Wall. I don't think it is as easy as the man-made wall is whats keeping the land from being in a fluid state with man. But that is(and this seems weird) the land's POV.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.

And yet there is this totally different relationship being addressed:
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

And the relationship between man and nature:
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.

I am back and forthe with this because of sentences like the following:

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Just as I feel I have it in my grasp, he goes and does it again...

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

and again!

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.

Me thinks he is playing wid me brain. He definitely has a 'voice', just not sure what kind of voice it is. Its fascinating what he did; took the concept of a wall and wrote all around it, under it, above it, and inside it. I cannot commit a notion to it yet, except to give it the safe 10, and for making me look at so many times. :nod:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

The first line (later repeated) "something there is, that doesn't love a wall" is built around the indeterminacy of what that "something" is, and yet throughout the poem the reader has the feeling that he/she knows exactly what is being referred to in that "something." In those first few lines I always have a vivid image of the earth actively swelling beneath the wall, of the earth breathing deeply to crack the strange constraints placed upon it. Anyway, I'll make some more comments when I have the time. This should be an interesting poem to discuss.

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The first line is indeed interesting. First of all the sentence is incredibly strained, if not grammatically incorrect. What he means to say is "There is something that doesn't love a wall." By twisting the syntax around he's giving us a crooked sentence, if you will, which mirrors the broken, crooked wall. It is indeterminant at that line, which is important because I think it will foreshadow a different meaning, but in the following line he tells us exactly what causes the crookedness, the frozen ground. So what is the significance of Frost repeating that same line later on in a different context? I have not fully absorbed it all to articulate it, but I think ktd is on the right track with the "dynamic being set up between the land and man-made things".


edit: BTW, I love when someone uses the word "dynamic". It brings out the engineer in me.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:

What do ya'll think when Frost writes The work of hunters is another thing? This 'thing' is different from the 'something', right?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Virgil

edit: BTW, I love when someone uses the word "dynamic". It brings out the engineer in me.

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Thanks, my second word choice was 'thingamajig'.

On one level this rather dull poem is about ordinary work on a farm. In this case, the job of mending a stone wall. On another level, the poem is about barriers between people, the stone wall symbolising this barrier. Frost disapproves of such barriers and feels that nature agrees with him. In lines 1-3, he describes a natural phenomenon: how the ground freezes and expands in winter, causing the stones on top to fall off – but he attributes a motive to this phenomenon: a shared dislike of barriers.

The sight of his neighbour with a stone grasped firmly in each hand reminds Frost of “an old-stone savage armed”. His neighbour resembles prehistoric man, barbaric and uncivilised. Lines 41 and 42 suggest that it is not only the darkness of shade in which his neighbour moves, but also the darkness of ignorance and prejudice.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ktd222

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:

What do ya'll think when Frost writes The work of hunters is another thing? This 'thing' is different from the 'something', right?

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You pointed it out before.. the 'something' that doesn't love a wall, is nature, because it can send the frozen ground, which swells and moves, cracks, breaks up stones and the like, does not consider a wall made up of its own nature to be anything more than a pile of stones (in this case). And the second, the 'thing', is hunters and dogs who may pull it down to get what they want (the rabbit). So, either way, nature or man may not 'love' a wall. I get the sense that the 'something' is indescribable to him, as nature is, and hunters, dogs are single entities, things, that he can describe.

The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.

I think what he is getting at is, while a wall is a physical construct, its not necessarily a 'barrier'. A barrier is a mental construct. While a wall is a wall, we decide to look at it as a separation, division, partition, barrier, or not.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

On one level this rather dull poem is about ordinary work on a farm. In this case, the job of mending a stone wall. On another level, the poem is about barriers between people, the stone wall symbolising this barrier. Frost disapproves of such barriers and feels that nature agrees with him. In lines 1-3, he describes a natural phenomenon: how the ground freezes and expands in winter, causing the stones on top to fall off – but he attributes a motive to this phenomenon: a shared dislike of barriers.

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Does Frost disprove of the Wall? The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair/Where they have left not one stone on a stone Why then, is he coming out to make repairs to the wall? I don't get the full sense of disapproval by him. The reasons why I don't quite understand yet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

but he attributes a motive to this phenomenon: a shared dislike of barriers.

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I did not pick up that there is a shared dislike of barriers, as nature would even know its a barrier. I need to find that.

I think, this wall theme has been used a few times in poetry, Wordsworth???

And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

He seems to have aligned himself with nature, while accepting 'Good fences' can be a good thing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jackyyyy

And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

He seems to have aligned himself with nature, while accepting 'Good fences' can be a good thing.

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Jackyy? I'm not sure I understand. It is the neighbor that says Good fences make good neighbors. He is referring to Frost when he says this, not anyone else. And remember the Wall is not in 'alignment' with the land, and those two people in the poem don't seem to be 'aligned' with the land if they are trying to repair the wall.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ktd222

Jackyy? I'm not sure I understand. It is the neighbor that says Good fences make good neighbors. He is referring to Frost when he says this, not anyone else. And remember the Wall is not in 'alignment' with the land, and those two people in the poem don't seem to be 'aligned' with the land if they are trying to repair the wall.

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Yes, and I am concluding this is Frost's overall message because its repeated.

1 he only says

2 he says again

I think that, overall, the message is about 'natural, unnatural walls' and 'barriers/separations/divisions of the mind', and that 'his thinking' is aligned to nature - though he accepts 'Good fences'. Sorry, I did not mean the wall was aligned as in engineering, rather his brain.

I'm not ready to move to the brain yet, but I would like to hear other people's opinions.

Here are some other questions I would like to ask you: what is the need for a wall? Can't the two still be neighbors without the wall?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ktd222

I'm not ready to move to the brain yet, but I would like to hear other people's opinions.

Here are some other questions I would like to ask you: what is the need for a wall? Can't the two still be neighbors without the wall?

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He writes, 'Good fences make good neighbours', indicating a wall may be a good thing. Therefore, a wall may be needed. I say, yes, they can still be neighbours, but, without a 'good' wall, they may not be good neighbours. I am keying on the word 'Good' here, because he is making the point.. there are good, bad, useless, pointless, whatever type of wall.