Professional Documents
Culture Documents
POETRY ANTHOLOGY
John Donne
Robert Frost
Mar
garet
Atwood
Compiled by Mrs.McAllister.
Table of Contents
Title
Page
JOHN DONNE
No Man is an Island
Holy Sonnet X Death, be not proud
3
3
The Cross
Farewell to Love
ROBERT FROST
The Road Not Taken
10
Home Burial
11
Mending Wall
14
16
18
19
MARGARET ATWOOD
Bored
20
21
22
Eurydice
23
Orpheus (1)
25
Orpheus (2)
26
27-30
Bullfinchs Mythology
31
34-35
No Man Is An Island
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
2
Holy Sonnet X
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
John Donne
The Cross
SINCE Christ embraced the cross itself, dare I
His image, th' image of His cross, deny?
Would I have profit by the sacrifice,
And dare the chosen altar to despise?
It bore all other sins, but is it fit
That it should bear the sin of scorning it?
Who from the picture would avert his eye,
How would he fly his pains, who there did die?
From me no pulpit, nor misgrounded law,
Nor scandal taken, shall this cross withdraw,
3
Farewell to Love
Whilst yet to prove,
I thought there was some deity in love
So did I reverence, and gave
Worship, as atheists at their dying hour
Call, what they cannot name, an unknown power,
As ignorantly did I crave:
Thus when
Things not yet known are coveted by men,
Our desires give them fashion, and so
As they wax lesser, fall, as they size, grow.
But, from late fair
His highness sitting in a golden chair,
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The Good-Morrow
wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we lov'd? Were we not wean'd till then,
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
I
Home Burial
He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: 'What is it you see
From up there always - for I want to know.'
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,
And her face changed from terrified to dull.
He said to gain time: 'What is it you see?'
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Robert Frost
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make 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.
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Bored
All those times I was bored
out of my mind. Holding the log
while he sawed it. Holding
the string while he measured, boards,
distances between things, or pounded
stakes into the ground for rows and rows
of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)
weeded. Or sat in the back
of the car, or sat still in boats,
sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel
he drove, steered, paddled. It
wasn't even boredom, it was looking,
looking hard and up close at the small
details. Myopia. The worn gunwales,
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Margaret Atwood
EURYDICE
He is here, come down to look for you.
It is the song that calls you back,
a song of joy and suffering
equally: a promise:
that things will be different up there
than they were last time.
You would rather have gone on feeling nothing,
emptiness and silence; the stagnant peace
of the deepest sea, which is easier
than the noise and flesh of the surface.
You are used to these blanched dim corridors,
you are used to the king
who passes you without speaking.
The other one is different
and you almost remember him.
He says he is singing to you
because he loves you,
not as you are now,
so chilled and minimal: moving and still
both, like a white curtain blowing
in the draft from a half-opened window
beside a chair on which nobody sits.
He wants you to be what he calls real.
He wants you to stop light.
He wants to feel himself thickening
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Orpheus (1)
You walked in front of me,
pulling me back out
to the green light that had once
grown fangs and killed me.
I was obedient, but
numb, like an arm
gone to sleep; the return
to time was not my choice.
By then I was used to silence.
Though something stretched between us
like a whisper, like a rope:
my former name,
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drawn tight.
You had your old leash
with you, love you might call it,
and your flesh voice.
Before your eyes you held steady
the image of what you wanted
me to become: living again.
It was this hope of yours that kept me following.
I was your hallucination, listening
and floral, and you were singing me:
already new skin was forming on me
within the luminous misty shroud
of my other body; already
there was dirt on my hands and I was thirsty.
I could see only the outline
of your head and shoulders,
black against the cave mouth,
and so could not see your face
at all, when you turned
and called to me because you had
already lost me. The last
I saw of you was a dark oval.
Though I knew how this failure
would hurt you, I had to
fold like a gray moth and let go.
You could not believe I was more than your echo.
Margaret Atwood
Orpheus (2)
Whether he will go on singing
or not, knowing what he knows
of the horror of this world:
He was not wandering among meadows
all this time. He was down there
among the mouthless ones, among
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Biographies
26
27
father-in-law, and Sir George More was finally induced to pay his daughter's dowry.
Donne had refused to take Anglican orders in 1607, but King James persisted, finally announcing that
Donne would receive no post or preferment from the King, unless in the church. In 1615, Donne
reluctantly entered the ministry and was appointed a Royal Chaplain later that year. In 1616, he was
appointed Reader in Divinity at Lincoln's Inn (Cambridge had conferred the degree of Doctor of
Divinity on him two years earlier). Donne's style, full of elaborate metaphors and religious symbolism,
his flair for drama, his wide learning and his quick wit soon established him as one of the greatest
preachers of the era.
Just as Donne's fortunes seemed to be improving, Anne Donne died, on 15 August, 1617, aged
thirty-three, after giving birth to their twelfth child, a stillborn. Seven of their children survived their
mother's death. Struck by grief, Donne wrote the seventeenth Holy Sonnet, "Since she whom I lov'd
hath paid her last debt." According to Donne's friend and biographer, Izaak Walton, Donne was
thereafter 'crucified to the world'. Donne continued to write poetry, notably his Holy Sonnets (1618),
but the time for love songs was over. In 1618, Donne went as chaplain with Viscount Doncaster in his
embassy to the German princes. His Hymn to Christ at the Author's Last Going into Germany,
written before the journey, is laden with apprehension of death. Donne returned to London in 1620,
and was appointed Dean of Saint Paul's in 1621, a post he held until his death. Donne excelled at his
post, and was at last financially secure. In 1623, Donne's eldest daughter, Constance, married the
actor Edward Alleyn, then 58.
Donne's private meditations, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, written while he was convalescing
from a serious illness, were published in 1624. The most famous of these is undoubtedly Meditation
17, which includes the immortal lines "No man is an island" and "never send to know for whom the
bell tolls; It tolls for thee." In 1624, Donne was made vicar of St Dunstan's-in-the-West. On March 27,
1625, James I died, and Donne preached his first sermon for Charles I. But for his ailing health, (he
had mouth sores and had experienced significant weight loss) Donne almost certainly would have
become a bishop in 1630. Obsessed with the idea of death, Donne posed in a shroud - the painting was
completed a few weeks before his death, and later used to create an effigy. He also preached what was
called his own funeral sermon, Death's Duel, just a few weeks before he died in London on March 31,
1631. The last thing Donne wrote just before his death was Hymne to God, my God, In my
Sicknesse. Donne's monument, in his shroud, survived the Great Fire of London and can still be seen
today at St. Paul's.
Source:
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/donnebio.htm
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Biography
Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1939.
She is the daughter of a forest entomologist, and spent part
of her early years in the bush of North Quebec. She moved,
at the age of seven, to Toronto. She studied at the
University of Toronto, then took her masters degree at
Radcliffe College, Massachusetts, in 1962.
She is Canada's most eminent novelist and poet, and also writes short stories, critical studies,
screenplays, radio scripts and books for children, her works having been translated into over
30 languages. Her reviews and critical articles have appeared in various eminent magazines
and she has also edited many books, including The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in
English (1983) and, with Robert Weaver, The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in
English (1986). She has been a full-time writer since 1972, first teaching English, then
holding a variety of academic posts and writer residencies. She was President of the Writers
Union of Canada from 1981-1982 and President of PEN, Canada from 1984-1986.
Her first publication was a book of poetry, The Circle Game (1964), which received the
Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry (Canada). Several more poetry collections
have followed since, including Interlunar (1988), Morning in the Burned House (1995) and
the latest, Eating Fire: Selected Poetry, 1965-1995 (1998). Also a short story writer, her
books of short fiction include Dancing Girls and Other Stories (1982), Wilderness Tips
(1991), and Good Bones (1992).
She is perhaps best known, however, for her novels, in which she creates strong, often
enigmatic, women characters and excels in telling open-ended stories, while dissecting
contemporary urban life and sexual politics. Her first novel was The Edible Woman (1969),
about a woman who cannot eat and feels that she is being eaten. This was followed by:
Surfacing (1973), which deals with a woman's investigation into her father's disappearance;
Lady Oracle (1977); Life Before Man (1980); Bodily Harm (1982), the story of Rennie
Wilford, a young journalist recuperating on a Caribbean island; and The Handmaid's Tale
(1986), a futuristic novel describing a woman's struggle to break free from her role. Her latest
novels have been: Cat's Eye (1989), dealing with the subject of bullying among young girls;
The Robber Bride (1993); Alias Grace (1996), the tale of a woman who is convicted for her
involvement in two murders about which she claims to have no memory; The Blind Assassin
(2000), a multi-layered family memoir; and Oryx and Crake (2003), a vision of a scientific
dystopia, which was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and for the 2004
Orange Prize for Fiction.
For more information on Margaret Atwood, access her Todaly Home Site:
http://www.io.org/~toadaly/copy.htm
Source: http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth93
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Eurydice was called. She came from among the newly-arrived ghosts, limping with her
wounded foot. Orpheus was permitted to take her away with him on one condition, that he
should not turn around to look at her 'til they should have reached the upper air. Under this
condition they proceeded on their way, he leading, she following, through passages dark and
steep, in total silence, 'til they had nearly reached the outlet into the cheerful upper world,
when Orpheus, in a moment of forgetfulness, to assure himself that she was still following,
cast a glance behind him, when instantly she was borne away.
Stretching out their arms to embrace each other, they grasped only the air! Dying now a
second time, she yet cannot reproach her husband, for how can she blame his impatience to
behold her? "Farewell," she said, "a last farewell," -- and was hurried away, so fast that the
sound hardly reached his ears.
Orpheus endeavored to follow her, and besought permission to return and try once more for
her release, but the stern ferryman Charon repulsed him and refused passage. Seven days he
lingered about the brink, without food or sleep; then bitterly accusing of cruelty the powers
of Erebus, he sang his complaints to the rocks and mountains, melting the hearts of tigers and
moving the oaks from their stations.
He held himself aloof from womankind, dwelling constantly on the recollection of his sad
mischance. The Thracian maidens tried their best to captivate him, but he repulsed their
advances. They bore with him as long as they could; but finding him insensible one day,
excited by the rites of the Bacchus, one of them exclaimed, "See yonder our despiser!" and
threw at him her javelin. The weapon, as soon as it came within the sound of his lyre, fell
harmless at his feet. So did the stones that they threw at him. But the women raised a scream
and downed the voice of the music, and then the missiles reached him and soon were stained
with his blood. The maniacs tore him limb from limb and threw his head and his lyre into the
river Hebrus, down which they floated, murmuring sad music, to which the shores responded
a plaintive symphony. The Muses gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them at
Libethra, where the nightingale is said to sing over his grave more sweetly than in any other
part of Greece. His lyre was placed by Jupiter among the stars.
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His shade passed a second time into Tartarus, where he sought out his Eurydice and
embraced her with eager arms. They roam the happy fields together now, sometimes he
leading, sometimes she; and Orpheus gazes as much as he will upon her, no longer incurring
a penalty for a thoughtless glance.
S Sense:
What is the poem / work about? Basic paraphrasing.
I - Intention:
Why was this poem written? What is the poet trying to tell us? What is
the purpose of this poem?
F- Feeling:
How does this poem make you feel about the content / personally and
what makes you feel this way?
How does the poet manage to evoke these emotions in the reader?
T Tone:
What tone or voice has the poet used to convey his message?
(Narrative)
S - Style / Symbol:
What style does the poet employ and how does this affect the work as
a whole? What symbols or symbolic concepts are evident in the work
and how do they influence the work?
E Emotion:
What mood or emotions are evoked by the poets usage of language /
imagery and Poetic devices?
I Imagery:
What imagery is employed by the poet?
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TPCASTT Analysis:
T-title: The meaning of the title without reference to the
poem.
P-paraphrase: Put the poem, (line by line if you need
to), in your own words.
C-connotation: looking for deeper meaning.
Hyperbole
Alliteration
Personification
Imagery
Allusion
Paradox
Rhythm
Rhyme
Rhyme Scheme
Analogy
Metaphor
Simile
Symbol
Irony
Onomatopoeia
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