"The Lady's Complaint"

In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, I recently read "The Lady's Complaint," a poem anonymously published in 1736, and I noticed two instances where the structure emphasizes the meaning.

The first stanza ends with the lines "A pain for us it is to love, / But is to men a pleasure," and the last stanza ends with the lines "More freedom give to womankind, / Or give to mankind less."  Both of these couplets feature a chiasm:

A pain

for us it is to love,

But is to men

a pleasure

and

More freedom

give to womankind,

Or give to mankind

less

The inverted order of these structures highlights the contrasts between "pain" & "pleasure" and "us" & "men" in the first couplet and between "more" & "less" and "womankind" & "mankind" in the second.

The line "Or give to mankind less" also contains a somewhat significant ellipsis.  "Freedom" from the previous line is implied but not explicitly stated ("Give to mankind less [freedom]"), and in a way, this omission matches the meaning of "less."

Ann Eliza Bleecker's "Written in the Retreat from Burgoyne"

Recently, I read Ann Eliza Bleecker's "Written in the Retreat from Burgoyne" in The Heath Anthology of American Literature (Volume One, Second Edition) and noticed some significance in the structure.  The majority of the poem is rhymed couplets (sometimes merely with slant rhymes), but these are interrupted at the point where Bleecker's daughter dies:

At length her languid eyes clos'd from the day,

The idol of my soul was torn away;

Her spirit fled and left me ghastly clay!

Obviously, instead of a pair of rhymed lines, there's a trio here.  This break from the established structure hints at the disruption that Bleecker's daughter's death has on her.  Later in the poem, she describes her profound grief.

Alternatively, this section could be seen as a pair (with the rhymes "day" and "away") followed by a single, unaccompanied line ("Her spirit fled and left me ghastly clay!").  In this reading, the lack of a poetic complement mirrors Bleecker's loss.

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

I recently finished reading Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in The Norton Introduction to Literature (fifth edition).  I noticed a detail in Act II, Scene 2 that may be significant.  After Puck applies love-in-idleness to Lysander's eyes, Helena notices him and says, "Lysander, if you live, good sir, awake," and Lysander replies, "And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake" (II.ii.102-103).  This section of the play is written in verse, so it's not unusual that Lysander's line rhymes with Helena's, but I think it may be significant that the resulting couplet is formed by two characters.  Helena is the first living thing that Lysander sees when he wakes up, and because of the love-in-idleness, he becomes enamored with her.  That his first line after waking rhymes with hers indicates his desire to be with her.  He complements her poetically in the same way that he wants to complement her romantically.

I feel I must admit, though, that earlier in this scene, a line of Demetrius's dialogue rhymes with a line of Helena's.  She says, "O wilt thou darkling leave me?  Do not so," and he replies, "Stay, on thy peril!  I alone will go" (II.ii.86-87).  Because Demetrius is not at all interested in Helena, however, this instance of rhyming dialogue between two characters doesn't carry this extra meaning.

Edward Johnson's "Poem for Thomas Hooker"

Near the end of last year, I started reading the Heath Anthology of American Literature again, after having set it aside for four years.  Recently, I've been reading a section titled "A Selection of Seventeenth-Century Poetry."  One of the poems is "Poem for Thomas Hooker" by Edward Johnson.  I noticed a slew of Biblical allusions (appropriate since Hooker was a "Puritan preacher and theologian"), and since the anthology doesn't cite any of them, I thought I'd note them here.

Here's the poem:

Come, Hooker, come forth of thy native soile:

    Christ, I will run, sayes Hooker, thou hast set

My feet at large, here spend thy last dayes toile;

    Thy Rhetorick shall peoples affections whet.

Thy Golden Tongue, and Pen Christ caus'd to be

    The blazing of his golden truths profound,

Thou sorry worme its Christ wrought this in thee;

    What Christ hath wrought must needs be very sound.

Then looke on Hookers workes, they follow him

    To Grave, this worthy resteth there a while:

Die shall he not that hath Christs warrier bin;

    Much lesse Christ Truth, cleer'd by his peoples toile.

Thou Angell bright, by Christ for light now made,

    Throughout the World as seasoning salt to be,

Although in dust thy body mouldering fade;

    Thy Head's in Heaven, and hath a crown for thee.

"Christ, I will run, sayes Hooker, thou hast set / My feet at large" seems to be a reference to Isaiah 52:7:  "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, 'Your God reigns.'"  The same idea also appears in Romans 10:15:  "And how are they to preach unless they are sent?  As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!"  The poem may also incorporate Hebrews 12:1 ("let us run with endurance the race that is set before us").

"Thou sorry worme" bears some resemblance to Psalm 22:6:  "But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people."

"Thou Angell bright, by Christ for light now made, / Throughout the World as seasoning salt to be" contains two elements from the Sermon on the Mount.  In successive verses (13 and 14) in Matthew 5, Jesus says, "You are the salt of the earth" and "You are the light of the world."

The lines "Although in dust thy body mouldering fade; / Thy Head's in Heaven, and hath a crown for thee" include multiple allusions.  "Although in dust thy body mouldering fade" could refer either to "for you are dust, and to dust you shall return" in Genesis 3:19 or the similar "All are from the dust, and to dust all return" in Ecclesiastes 3:20.  As in the poem ("Thy Head's in Heaven"), Christ is called "the head" in 1 Corinthians 11:3 and Ephesians 5:23.  The "crown for thee" could refer either to Revelation 2:10 ("Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life") or James 1:12 ("Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him").

Anne Bradstreet's "Upon the Burning of Our House July 10th, 1666"

In The Heath Anthology of American Literature I'm still reading selections from Anne Bradstreet's work.  Last week, I read "Upon the Burning of Our House July 10th, 1666," and I was surprised that the anthology didn't provide footnotes for the Biblical references Bradstreet put in the poem.  While I don't really have anything very literary to write about the poem itself, I thought I could at least catalogue her Biblical references.

Bradstreet's "I blest His name that gave and took" (line 14) echoes Job's "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (Job 1:21).  Despite their losses, both Job and Bradstreet bless God.

"Adieu, Adieu, all's vanity" (line 36) is a quote from Ecclesiastes.  "Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities!  All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2).  The next verse in Ecclesiastes reflects on the transience of life:  "What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?"  From this, Bradstreet shifts her focus to Heaven, which she calls "an house on high erect, / Framed by that mighty Architect" (lines 43-44).  She asks herself, "And did thy wealth on earth abide? / Didst fix thy hope on mold'ring dust?" (lines 37-38)  Her self-examination seems to be spurred by Matthew 6:19-21:  "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  Along with the similarity in these views, there's some resemblance between Bradstreet's "mold'ring dust" and the Biblical "moth and rust destroy" (initial M and D, and the -ust of dust and rust).  At the end of the poem, she expresses the same view presented in Matthew: "The world no longer let me love, / My hope and treasure lies above" (lines 53-54).

Anne Bradstreet's "In Reference to Her Children, 23 June 1659"

As part of my Anthology Odyssey project, I've been reading some Anne Bradstreet poems in The Heath Anthology of American Literature.  I recently read and noticed something about "In Reference to Her Children, 23 June 1659."

In the poem, Bradstreet portrays herself as a mother bird worried about her young.  She writes:

If birds could weep, then would my tears
Let others know what are my fears
Lest this my brood some harm should catch,
And be surpris'd for want of watch,
Whilst pecking corn, and void of care
They fall un'wares in fowler's snare (lines 41-46)

This anthology includes a footnote for "fowler," explaining only that "fowler is a term for bird-catcher."  When I saw the superscript number that indicated a footnote, a mere definition of the term was not what I expected to find because I think this specific image in Bradstreet's metaphor is a Biblical allusion.

I've been reading the Bible since July 2014 (and plan to continue to cycle through it, just re-starting when I've finished), and earlier this year, I found this same image of the fowler's snare twice in the Psalms:  "For he [God] will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.  He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler" (Psalm 91:3-4) and "Blessed be the LORD, who has not given us as prey to their teeth!  We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped!" (Psalm 124: 6-7).  The bird imagery in Psalm 91's "he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge" is also echoed in Bradstreet's "Long did I keep you soft and warm, / And with my wings kept off all harm" (lines 57-58).

Some of the other Bradstreet poems in this anthology, like "Contemplations" and "The Flesh and the Spirit" have very obvious Biblical references that evidence Bradstreet's familiarity with the Bible so it seems very likely that she would also have been familiar with the fowler image in the Psalms and used it in "In Reference to Her Children."

Paulette Giles' "Paper Matches"

About two weeks ago, I read Paulette Giles' "Paper Matches" in The Norton Introduction to Literature, 5th edition (which I'm still reading as part of my Anthology Odyssey project).  I don't know if I'd read it before, but it seemed sort of familiar.  Anyway, I noticed something about the metaphor Giles uses.

The narrator makes a distinction between the aunts washing dishes inside and the uncles who are goofing around outside.  Then she says that "Written on me was a message, / 'At Your Service' like a book of / paper matches" (lines 9-11).  Later lines are sort of ambiguous in that they could have a meaning within that metaphor or apart from it.

Immediately after that metaphor about matches is introduced, the narrator says, "One by one we were / taken out and struck." (lines 11-12).  Within the matches metaphor, it means that the women are used up individually, just as singular matches are "taken out" of a pack of matches and "struck" for their illumination.  However, since the inside/outside distinction between the women and men has already been established, there can also be a literal interpretation of those lines - that the women are "taken out" from the kitchen where they're washing dishes to the yard and "struck" in the sense of physically assaulted.

Next, there's "We come bearing supper. / our heads on fire." (lines 13-14).  Within the metaphor of matches, the women are again being used.  Like matches, they've been "struck," and now they're providing a service ("bearing supper") in the same way that matches bear light.  The "heads of fire" indicates that service within the match metaphor, but it also recalls "the rages that small animals have" from line 7.  "our heads on fire" indicates the anger and fury that the women have because of how they're being used.

Keats' "When I Have Fears"

Last month I read John Keats' "When I Have Fears" in one of my literary anthologies.  Apparently I'd noticed the structure of the poem before (in the anthology in which I read it during college, I drew lines to separate the sections), but reading it recently, I noticed that Keats doesn't strictly follow the common sonnet structure.

He uses the structure of a Shakespearean sonnet (with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg), and he also starts each quatrain with "when" (or "and when" for the third), which enforces that division (I've added line breaks to further emphasize it):

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact'ry
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love! - then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

[In referencing this sonnet in two different anthologies, I've discovered that the punctuation doesn't match, so your experience may vary.]

Between the rhyme scheme and that leading "when" (plus the semi-colons), Keats makes that structure fairly obvious, but then he doesn't follow through with it.  There's a break in the twelfth line:  "Of unreflecting love! - then on the shore."  In a way, that third quatrain has a premature end, and the last couplet begins early.  In college, I even made a note of this:  the "then" completes the idea that's started with the various "when"s.  When [this], [this], and [this], then [this].

But the thing that I realized when I read the poem recently is that not holding to the structure there mirrors what the speaker is saying.  There's the interruption in life that the speaker mentioned (that is, death), and that "then" coming in half a line too soon is an interruption in the sonnet structure.

Anthology Odyssey

Two and a half years into my program at university, I transferred schools.  It was the right decision to make at the time because I hated living on campus and the university I transferred to was only a few miles from where I live.  But academically, I think it was one of the worst decisions I've ever made.  I was constantly underwhelmed with the program at my new university because what I had been learning previously was more rigorous.  Yester-day I finally graduated from university, but I'm not sure that I actually deserve my English degree.  At the very least, I feel like I should know more about literature than I do.

So, in an effort to really earn it, I'm going to read all of the literature anthologies that I have.  I have almost three times as many as I actually needed for my classes because I kept finding them for relatively cheap prices at Half Price Books.  I am going to read all of them, but only one at a time and incrementally.  Even before I transferred universities, I didn't like the speed at which material was covered.  It all went by too quickly.  For this project, I'm going to read only one selection a day - a paradigm that I've used for many books of letters and books of poetry.  It seems to work well for me.

I'll be starting with the three anthologies that my advisor generously gave me when I transferred and then jumping back and forth among American, world, and English/British literature, saving until the end the anthologies that I actually used for classes.  I may also be adding some new anthologies to the listing if I get some more.

My current collection of literature anthologies

1. The Norton Introduction to Literature, 5th edition
2. The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume One, 2nd edition
3. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume C, 2nd edition
4. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume C, 8th edition
5. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume D, 6th edition
6. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume B, 2nd edition
7. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume F, 8th edition
8. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume A, 7th edition
9. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B, 7th edition
10. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, 7th edition
11. The Norton Introduction to Literature, 10th edition
12. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume 1, shorter 2nd edition
13. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume 2, shorter 2nd edition
14. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume B, second compact edition
15. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume A, 8th edition
16. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B, 8th edition

I'm sure that I'll encounter some material more than once, but spreading out the various types of literature (American, world, and English/British) will allow some time between reading them, so a second time through might be more enlightening.

I do realize that there's more to earning an English degree than just reading all of the required materials.  I'm glad to have gotten rid of paper writing, so I won't be doing that again.  However, I will write a few posts now and then, but only if I actually have sometime to say about the literature.  An-other thing I didn't like about university was trying to force myself to have an opinion about a work just so that I could write a paper about it or discuss it.

Like this project's title suggests, this might take about twenty years, but I'm fine with that, as long as it continues to be interesting and illuminating.