The Good Morrow
By- John Donne
1. Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
Answer: There
famous Biblical seven sleepers, who slept for 187 years. Donne uses the legend
of the Seven Sleepers to reinforce the poem's central conceit. The speaker and
his lover have spent their whole lives as if in a deep slumber, but they have
woken up at long last and realized that they belong to each other. This is not
just an expression of their intense physical passion; it also represents a true
spiritual awakening of the lovers' respective souls.
2. But
sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Answer: As
the poem opens the speaker, after being woken up together from the night spent
together, tells his beloved before they met each other what they had done was
all childish play. They were merely babies nursing from the mother’s breast and
indulging in country pleasures. He reflects that those parts of their lives to
be as worthless as the ones spent in slumber by the seven sleepers of Ephesus.
Twicknam Garden
By John Donne
- Make me a mandrake, so I may grow here,
Or a stone fountain weeping out my year.
Answer: Mandragora root
was supposed to promote fertility, as well as resembling a human form. The
imperative ‘make’ emphasizes Donne’s desire to escape into nature and maybe to
grow there, perhaps to convey his misery and anger.
A valediction: Forbidding
mourning
- If they be
two, they are two so
As
stiff twin compasses are two;
Answer: Donne employs a mathematical
metaphor with the instrument of a compass that was used on maps to measure
distance. In this metaphor, like the gold that is refined into a thinner, more
beautiful piece, the one leg of the compass anchors the other that stretches
for [travels] across the map, leaning some to accommodate the reach of the
other leg, and strengthening the extension of this leg. Through the two
metaphors of gold and the compass, both of which are "refined" or
made better by the poet's distance from his wife, a distance that strengthens
their spiritual love.
2. Our
two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an
expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
Answer: As
seen above, their souls can not be separated but only expanded with the space
that divides him. He moves on to argue that, if they do indeed have two
separate souls, those souls are so interconnected that the same is true - they
can never really be "apart." No matter where one of them goes,
the other will be a foot that grounds the other soul in place so that it may
return, as in a circle:
The Definition of love
“ Where feeble Hope could ne’r
have flower
But vainly flapt its Tinsel
Wing”.
Answer: In a sense, our inability to know
the future frees us to act in the present, without being distracted by the '
Tinsel Wing' of 'feeble Hope'(' The Definition of love', lines 7-8).
As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
Answer: Only oblique lines can meet each
other in all geometrical angles. In the same way, only two illicit or guilty
lovers are able to meet each other.
To his Coy mistress
- My Vegetable love should grow vaster then Empires
and more slow
Answer; "vegetable
love" is "organic love" – love without the pressure of anything
but nature, a natural process resulting in something nourishing – vegetables. Marvell’s
‘vegetable love’ imagery has been interpreted in numerous ways, but nowhere
have I found the truly plausible. What is more obvious than anything else is
that ‘vegetable’ grows ‘up’ excising the layers of ground, towards the sky.
2. Times winged Charroit
Answer: the speaker
shifts to images of swiftly passing time to impress upon his love that they in
fact do not have the leisure to love at this slow rate.He says. Now time is
destructive, and the meter moves rapidly. The speaker resorts to images of
decay that are at once whimsical and frightening as he attempts to convince the
beloved of the need to consummate their love in the present.
3. And now, like am'rous birds of
prey
Rather at once our Time devour
Answer: they should pretend to be birds of
prey, mating! Also, the word "prey" introduces violence, and
therefore uneasiness, into the scene. But, before the games begin, we should
have a little pre-mating dinner.the poet tells, honey, try this seared
fillet-o-time, on a bed of vegetable love.
Easter Wings
--George Herbert
i) For, if I imp my wing on thine,
affliction shall advance the flight in me.
Answer: The speaker explains his meaning
more clearly turning again to his feathered friends. This time, however, he
uses hawks instead of larks and, instead of just rising with God, he asks for
an extra boost: he wants to "imp" his wing to God's. What the heck is
"to imp"? It's a technical term meaning to repair a damaged feather
by attaching part of a new feather. This implies (eh? eh?) that the speaker is
too damaged by sin, too thin and sick, to fly properly on his own. He needs some
of God's feathers to strengthen him.
Just as Adam's fall increased the distance
of his flight in stanza 1, now his own affliction (his sin and God's
punishment) lengthens his flight. "Advance" here means
"increase." You've got beautiful I's, Herbert: "if,"
"I," "imp," "wing," "thine." We've also
got two groupings of assonant I's: the long I's of "I," "my," and
"thine" and the short I's of "if," "imp," and
"wing." And for more on how all these A's put the "a" in
"alliteration" and "assonance," head down to
"Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay."
The Pulley
By George Herbert
- “Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with
repining restlessness;
Answer: “Rest” in the
Christian tradition is one of God’s gifts. Jesus said “Come to me all that are
weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11.28)
“Rest” is also used as a picture of the destiny God promises to those who walk
in His way, a picture of heaven. It is a precious “jewell”.
2. When God at first made
man,
Having a
glass of blessings standing by,
Answer: God's (apostrophe
is implied) breath in man returning to his birth refers to God breathing life
into the first man, Adam. These ideas of the covenant and breathing indicate a
dialogue and an ebb and flow between God and humanity. From heaven down to
Earth, God breathed life into man. In response, in 'prayer,' man speaks back to
God by praying. The prayer itself is the "soul in paraphrase," the
"heart in pilgrimage." The one praying is essentially speaking to God
via his/her soul.
The
Collar
--George Herbert
“I struck the board, and cry’d. No
more.”
Answer: Here the board stands both for the
dining table and for alter. Being a priest, Herbert has the duty of giving the
sacrament of Holy Communion.
The
Retreat
BY
HENRY VAUGHAN
Before I
understood this place
Appointed for my second race"
Answer:
here means life, in reference to belief of
some Christians that the soul had a heavenly existence before life in this
world
This could not only mean a childhood state of
innocence and ignorance, but his pre-conceived soul--a kind of Garden of Eden
pre-fall state of grace.
It would seem, in Christian theology, that
the best way for a grown man to attain heavenly perfection is to die and ascend
to heaven, moving forward in age. But, Vaughan wants to go backward, to
negate all his past sin and be washed clean from the start:
Some men a forward motion love, But I by
backward steps would move And when this dust falls to the urn, In that
state I came, return.
Christians usually pride themselves on
choosing the most difficult path, and Vaughan here is no different.
2. When yet I had not walked
above
A mile or two from my first
love,
Answer: In the next section of the
poem the speaker goes on to describe what his life was like before he strayed
far from home. It was during this period that he “had not walked” more than a
“mile or two from” his “first love.” He had not seen very much of the world at
this point and knew nothing about its dangers.
3. Oh how I
long to travel back,
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain,
Where first I left my glorious train...
Answer: Here he expresses his desire and fervent hope
that he might venture back to where he originally came from, likening his life
to a journey and hoping that the end destination will be from whence he
emerged. Thus the central metaphysical quality of this poem is its use of a
conceit to liken life to a long journey.
Regeneration
1. Yet was it frost
within/And surly winds/Blasted my infant Buds, and sin/Like clouds eclips'd my
mind
Answer: The inner winter of sin continues
into the second stanza, but the child now becomes a pilgrim who, wondering what
he has gotten out of life, realizes that he has not kept his values. In
the Biblical allusion to "Jacob's Bed," --Jacob turned from his
brother Esau and saw a ladder to Heaven-- the speaker has a "vision,"
too: his spiritual enlightenment.
2. “Lord,” then said I, “on
me one breath,
And let me die before my
death!”
Answer:
Vaughan offers the contradictions inherent to Christianity, one
such contradiction that man must die in order to live. In this case the death
is that of man's sinful nature. Thus the speaker asks that his sin die before
he physically dies, so that he may die in a state of redemptive grace and
achieve spiritual life.
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