The NTCC Class of 2015

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

A Hymn to God the Father

Farewell to Love

The Good Morrow

Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God

Holy Sonnet VI This is my plays last scene

ROBERT FROST
The Road Not Taken

10

Home Burial

11

Mending Wall

14

The Tuft of Flowers

16

The Silken Tent

18

Good-By and Keep Cold

19

MARGARET ATWOOD
Bored

20

The City Planners

21

Morning in the Burned House

22

Eurydice

23

Orpheus (1)

25

Orpheus (2)

26

ADD: Biographies of Donne, Frost and Atwood;

27-30

Bullfinchs Mythology

31

Poetry Analysis techniques

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

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne

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

It shall not, for it cannot; for the loss

Of this cross were to me another cross.
Better were worse, for no affliction,
No cross is so extreme, as to have none.
Who can blot out the cross, with th' instrument
Of God dew'd on me in the Sacrament?
Who can deny me power, and liberty
To stretch mine arms, and mine own cross to be?
Swim, and at every stroke thou art thy cross;
The mast and yard make one, where seas do toss;
Look down, thou spiest out crosses in small things;
Look up, thou seest birds raised on crossed wings;
All the globe's frame, and spheres, is nothing else
But the meridians crossing parallels.
Material crosses then, good physic be,
But yet spiritual have chief dignity.
These for extracted chemic medicine serve,
And cure much better, and as well preserve.
Then are you your own physic, or need none,
When still'd or purged by tribulation;
For when that cross ungrudged unto you sticks,
Then are you to yourself a crucifix.
As perchance carvers do not faces make,
But that away, which hid them there, do take;
Let crosses, so, take what hid Christ in thee,
And be His image, or not His, but He.
But, as oft alchemists do coiners prove,
So may a self-despising get self-love;
And then, as worst surfeits of best meats be,
So is pride, issued from humility,
For 'tis no child, but monster; therefore cross
Your joy in crosses, else, 'tis double loss.
And cross thy senses, else both they and thou
Must perish soon, and to destruction bow.
For if the eye seek good objects, and will take
No cross from bad, we cannot 'scape a snake.
So with harsh, hard, sour, stinking ; cross the rest;
4

Make them indifferent ; call, nothing best.

But most the eye needs crossing, that can roam,
And move; to th' others th' objects must come home.
And cross thy heart; for that in man alone
Pants downwards, and hath palpitation.
Cross those dejections, when it downward tends,
And when it to forbidden heights pretends.
And as the brain through bony walls doth vent
By sutures, which a cross's form present,
So when thy brain works, ere thou utter it,
Cross and correct concupiscence of wit.
Be covetous of crosses; let none fall;
Cross no man else, but cross thyself in all.
Then doth the cross of Christ work faithfully
Within our hearts, when we love harmlessly
That cross's pictures much, and with more care
That cross's children, which our crosses are.
John Donne

A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER

I.
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.
II.
5

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.
III.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more.
John Donne

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,
6

Is not less cared for after three days

By children, than the thing which lovers so
Blindly admire, and with such worship woo;
Being had, enjoying it decays:
And thence,
What before pleased them all, takes but one sense,
And that so lamely, as it leaves behind
A kind of sorrowing dullness to the mind.
Ah cannot we,
As well as cocks and lions jocund be,
After such pleasures, unless wise
Nature decreed - since each such act, they say
Diminish the length of life a day This; as she would man should despise
The sport,
Because that other curse of being short,
And only for a minute made to be
Eager, desires to raise posterity.
Since so my mind,
Shall not desire what no man else can find;
Ill no more dote and run
To pursue things which had endamaged me;
And when I come where moving beauties be,
As men do when summers sun
Grows great,
Though I admire their greatness, shun their heat.
Each place can afford shadows; if all fail;
Tis but applying worm-seed to the tail.
John Donne

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

And now good morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;
7

For love, all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room, an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
John Donne

Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
but is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.
John Donne

Holy Sonnet VI: This Is My Plays Last Scene

This is my plays last scene, here heavens appoint
My pilgrimages last mile; and my race
Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace,
My spans last inch, my minutes latest point,
And gluttonous death, will instantly unjoint
My body and soul, and I shall sleep a space;
But my ever-waking part shall see that face,
Whose fear already shakes my every joint:
Then, as my soul, t heaven her first seat, takes flight,
And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,
So fall my sins that all may have their right
(To where theyre bred, and would press me) to hell.
Impute me righteous, thus purged of evil,
For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.
John Donne

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
9

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost

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?'
10

Mounting until she cowered under him.

'I will find out now - you must tell me, dear.'
She, in her place, refused him any help
With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see,
Blind creature; and awhile he didn't see.
But at last he murmured, 'Oh' and again, 'Oh.'
'What is it - what?' she said.
'Just that I see.'
'You don't,' she challenged. 'Tell me what it is.'
'The wonder is I didn't see at once.
I never noticed it from here before.
I must be wonted to it - that's the reason.'
The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it.
Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?
Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight
On the sidehill. We haven't to mind those.
But I understand: it is not the stones,
But the child's mound - '
'Don't, don't, don't, don't,' she cried.
She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm
That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;
And turned on him with such a daunting look,
He said twice over before he knew himself:
'Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?'
'Not you! Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it!
I must get out of here. I must get air.
I don't know rightly whether any man can.'
'Amy! Don't go to someone else this time.
Listen to me. I won't come down the stairs.'
He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.
'There's something I should like to ask you, dear.'
'You don't know how to ask it.'
11

'Help me, then.'

Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.
'My words are nearly always an offense.
I don't know how to speak of anything
So as to please you. But I might be taught
I should suppose. I can't say I see how,
A man must partly give up being a man
With women-folk. We could have some arrangement
By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off
Anything special you're a-mind to name.
Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love.
Two that don't love can't live together without them.
But two that do can't live together with them.'
She moved the latch a little. 'Don't - don't go.
Don't carry it to someone else this time.
Tell me about it if it's something human.
Let me into your grief. I'm not so much
Unlike other folks as your standing there
Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
I do think, though, you overdo it a little.
What was it brought you up to think it the thing
To take your mother-loss of a first child
So inconsolably- in the face of love.
You'd think his memory might be satisfied -'
'There you go sneering now!'
'I'm not, I'm not!
You make me angry. I'll come down to you.
God, what a woman! And it's come to this,
A man can't speak of his own child that's dead.'
'You can't because you don't know how.
If you had any feelings, you that dug
With your own hand - how could you? - his little grave;
I saw you from that very window there,
Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
And roll back down the mound beside the hole.
I thought, Who is that man? I didn't know you.
12

And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs

To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.
Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice
Out in the kitchen, and I don't know why,
But I went near to see with my own eyes.
You could sit there with the stains on your shoes
Of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave
And talk about your everyday concerns.
You had stood the spade up against the wall
Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.'
'I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.
I'm cursed. God, if I don't believe I'm cursed.'
I can repeat the very words you were saying:
"Three foggy mornings and one rainy day
Will rot the best birch fence a man can build."
Think of it, talk like that at such a time!
What had how long it takes a birch to rot
To do with what was in the darkened parlor?
You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretense of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.
But the world's evil. I won't have grief so
If I can change it. Oh, I won't, I won't'
'There, you have said it all and you feel better.
You won't go now. You're crying. Close the door.
The heart's gone out of it: why keep it up?
Amyl There's someone coming down the road!'
'You - oh, you think the talk is all. I must goSomewhere out of this house. How can I make you -'
'If - you - do!' She was opening the door wider.
'Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.
I'll follow and bring you back by force. I will! -'
13

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.
14

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 neighbours."
Robert Frost

The Tuft Of Flowers

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.
The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.
I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.
But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,--alone,
15

As all must be, I said within my heart,

Whether they work together or apart.
But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a 'wildered butterfly,
Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night
Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.
And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.
And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.
I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;
But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,
A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.
I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly weed when I came.
The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,
Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.
The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,
16

That made me hear the wakening birds around,

And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,
And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;
But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;
And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.
Men work together, I told him from the heart,
Whether they work together or apart.
Robert Frost

The Silken Tent

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
17

And only by one's going slightly taut

In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightlest bondage made aware.
Robert Frost

Good-By And Keep Cold

This saying good-by on the edge of the dark
And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,
I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse
By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.
(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call
I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall
And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)
18

I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun.

(We made it secure against being, I hope,
By setting it out on a northerly slope.)
No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;
But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.
'How often already you've had to be told,
Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold.
Dread fifty above more than fifty below.'
I have to be gone for a season or so.
My business awhile is with different trees,
less carefully nurtured, less fruitful than these,
And such as is done to their wood with an ax Maples and birches and tamaracks.
I wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard's arboreal plight
When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.
But something has to be left to God.
Robert Frost

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,
19

the intricate twill of the seat

cover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granular
pink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fans
of dry moss, the blackish and then the graying
bristles on the back of his neck.
Sometimes he would whistle, sometimes
I would. The boring rhythm of doing
things over and over, carrying
the wood, drying
the dishes. Such minutiae. It's what
the animals spend most of their time at,
ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels,
shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointed
such things out, and I would look
at the whorled texture of his square finger, earth under
the nail. Why do I remember it as sunnier
all the time then, although it more often
rained, and more birdsong?
I could hardly wait to get
the hell out of there to
anywhere else. Perhaps though
boredom is happier. It is for dogs or
groundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored.
Now I would know too much.
Now I would know.

Margaret Atwood

The City Planners

Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.
20

But though the driveways neatly

sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster
when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.
That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;
guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air
tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows.
Margaret Atwood

Morning in the Burned House

In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.
21

The spoon which was melted scrapes against

the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.
Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,
their dishes piled beside the sink,
which is beside the woodstove
with its grate and sooty kettle,
every detail clear,
tin cup and rippled mirror.
The day is bright and songless,
the lake is blue, the forest watchful.
In the east a bank of cloud
rises up silently like dark bread.
I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,
I can see the flaws in the glass,
those flares where the sun hits them.
I can't see my own arms and legs
or know if this is a trap or blessing,
finding myself back here, where everything
in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,
including my own body,
including the body I had then,
including the body I have now
as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,
22

bare child's feet on the scorched floorboards

(I can almost see)
in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts
and grubby yellow T-shirt
holding my cindery, non-existent,
radiant flesh. Incandescent.
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
23

like a treetrunk or a haunch

and see blood on his eyelids
when he closes them, and the sun beating.
This love of his is not something
he can do if you arent there,
but what you knew suddenly as you left your body
cooling and whitening on the lawn
was that you love him anywhere,
even in this land of no memory,
even in this domain of hunger.
You hold love in your hand, a red seed
you had forgotten you were holding.
He has come almost too far.
He cannot believe without seeing,
and its dark here.
Go back, you whisper,
but he wants to be fed again
by you. O handful of gauze, little
bandage, handful of cold
air, it is not through him
you will get your freedom.
Margaret Atwood

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,
24

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
25

those with no fingers, those

whose names are forbidden,
those washed up eaten into
among the gray stones
of the shore where nobody goes
through fear. Those with silence.
He has been trying to sing
love into existence again
and he has failed.
Yet he will continue
to sing, in the stadium
crowded with the already dead
who raise their eyeless faces
to listen to him; while the red flowers
grow up and splatter open
against the walls.
They have cut off both his hands
and soon they will tear
his head from his body in one burst
of furious refusal.
He foresees this. Yet he will go on
singing, and in praise.
To sing is either praise
or defiance. Praise is defiance.
Margaret Atwood

Biographies

26

John Donne was born in Bread Street, London in 1572 to a

prosperous Roman Catholic family - a precarious thing at a time when anti-Catholic sentiment was
rife in England. His father, John Donne, was a well-to-do ironmonger and citizen of London. Donne's
father died suddenly in 1576, and left the three children to be raised by their mother, Elizabeth, who
was the daughter of epigrammatist and playwright John Heywood and a relative of Sir Thomas More.
[Family tree.]
Donne's first teachers were Jesuits. At the age of 11, Donne and his younger brother Henry were
entered at Hart Hall, University of Oxford, where Donne studied for three years. He spent the next
three years at the University of Cambridge, but took no degree at either university because he would
not take the Oath of Supremacy required at graduation. He was admitted to study law as a member of
Thavies Inn (1591) and Lincoln's Inn (1592), and it seemed natural that Donne should embark upon a
legal or diplomatic career.
In 1593, Donne's brother Henry died of a fever in prison after being arrested for giving sanctuary to a
proscribed Catholic priest. This made Donne begin to question his faith. His first book of poems,
Satires, written during this period of residence in London, is considered one of Donne's most
important literary efforts. Although not immediately published, the volume had a fairly wide
readership through private circulation of the manuscript. Same was the case with his love poems,
Songs and Sonnets, assumed to be written at about the same time as the Satires.
Having inherited a considerable fortune, young "Jack Donne" spent his money on womanizing, on
books, at the theatre, and on travels. He had also befriended Christopher Brooke, a poet and his
roommate at Lincoln's Inn, and Ben Jonson who was part of Brooke's circle. In 1596, Donne joined
the naval expedition that Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, led against Cdiz, Spain. In 1597,
Donne joined an expedition to the Azores, where he wrote "The Calm". Upon his return to England in
1598, Donne was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal,
afterward Lord Ellesmere.
Donne was beginning a promising career. In 1601, Donne became MP for Brackley, and sat in Queen
Elizabeth's last Parliament. But in the same year, he secretly married Lady Egerton's niece, seventeenyear-old Anne More, daughter of Sir George More, Lieutenant of the Tower, and effectively committed
career suicide. Donne wrote to the livid father, saying:
"Sir, I acknowledge my fault to be so great as I dare scarce offer any other prayer to you in mine own
behalf than this, to believe that I neither had dishonest end nor means. But for her whom I tender
much more than my fortunes or life (else I would, I might neither joy in this life nor enjoy the next) I
humbly beg of you that she may not, to her danger, feel the terror of your sudden anger."1
Sir George had Donne thrown in Fleet Prison for some weeks, along with his cohorts Samuel and
Christopher Brooke who had aided the couple's clandestine affair. Donne was dismissed from his
post, and for the next decade had to struggle near poverty to support his growing family. Donne later
summed up the experience: "John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone." Anne's cousin offered the couple
refuge in Pyrford, Surrey, and the couple was helped by friends like Lady Magdalen Herbert, George
Herbert's mother, and Lucy, Countess of Bedford, women who also played a prominent role in
Donne's literary life. Though Donne still had friends left, these were bitter years for a man who knew
himself to be the intellectual superior of most, knew he could have risen to the highest posts, and yet
found no preferment. It was not until 1609 that a reconciliation was effected between Donne and his

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

Robert Frost: The Man and His Work - 1923

"Sometimes I have my doubts of words altogether, and I ask myself what is the
place of them. They are worse than nothing unless they do something; unless
they amount to deeds, as in ultimatums or battle-cries. They must be flat and
final like the show-down in poker, from which there is no appeal. My definition
of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that become deeds."
"All poetry is a reproduction of the tones of actual speech."
"There are two types of realists: the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his
potato to show that it is a real one, and the one who is satisfied with the potato
brushed clean. I'm inclined to be the second kind. To me, the thing that art does
for life is to clean it, to strip it to form"

28

"A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a

reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfilment. A complete poem is one where
an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words."
1874 - Born on March 26 in San Francisco, first child of Isabelle Moodie and William
Prescott Frost Jr. Named after Confederate General Robert E. Lee. 1875 - Father becomes
city editor of the San Francisco Daily Evening Post. 1882 - Drops out of school and is
educated at home. 1885 - Father dies of tuberculosis on May 5, leaving family with only $8
after expenses are paid. Family moves to Lawrence, Mass. to live with grandparents. Robert
and Jeanie dislike grandparents' sternness and rigorous discipline. Enters third grade after
testing, while younger sister enters fourth grade. 1889 - Finishes school year at head of his
class. 1892 - Becomes engaged to Elinor. Dependent upon grandparents for financial support,
enters Dartmouth College instead of Harvard because it is cheaper, and because grandparents
blame Harvard for his father's bad habits. Bored by college life and restless, leaves
Dartmouth at the end of December. 1895 - Works as reporter in Lawrence for Daily
American and Sentinel. Frost teaches at Salem district school Marries Elinor White in
Lawrence on December 19 in ceremony conducted by Swedenborgian pastor.1896 - Son
Elliott is born on September 25. 1897 - Passes Harvard College entrance examinations,
borrows money from grandfather and enters Harvard as a freshman. 1899 - Withdraws from
Harvard on march 31. 1901 - Reads Thoreau's Walden for the first time. Grandfather William
Prescott Frost dies on July 10; his will gives Frost a $500 annuity and use of the Derry farm
for ten years, after which the annuity is to be increased to $800 and Frost is to be given
ownership of the farm. 1902 - Son Carol is born May 27. 1907 - Daughter Elinor Bettina is
born on June 18, and dies on June 21. 1937 - Wins Pulitzer Prize for A Further Range.
elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society. Elinor undergoes surgery for
breast cancer in early October.1938 - Elinor dies of heart failure in Gainesville, Florida
March 20. Frost collapses and is unable to attend cremation. Resigns position at Amherst
College and returns to South Shaftsbury. Asks Kathleen Morrison to marry him; she refuses.
His continuing emotional instability draws attention.1963 - Awarded the Bollingen Prize for
Poetry. Suffers another embolism on January 7. Dies shortly after midnight on January 29.
Private memorial service for friends and family is held in Appleton Chapel in Harvard yard,
and public service is held at Johnson Chapel, Amherst College. Ashes are interred in the
Frost family plot in Old Bennington, Vermont.
Source: http://www.ketzle.com/frost/

29

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

30

Orpheus and Eurydice

From Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable by Thomas
Bulfinch, 1855
Orpheus was the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope. He was presented by his
father with a lyre and taught to play upon it, which he did to such perfection that
nothing could withstand the charm of his music. Not only his fellow mortals, but
wild beasts were softened by his strains, and gathering around him laid by their
fierceness and stood entranced. Nay, the very trees and rocks were sensible to
the charm. The trees crowded around him and the rocks relaxed somewhat of
their hardness, softened by his notes.
Hymenaeus (the god of marriage, son of Dionysus and Venus) had been called to bless with
his presence the nuptials of Orpheus with Eurydice; but though he attended, he brought no
happy omens with him. His very torch smoked and brought tears into their eyes.
In accordance with such prognostics, Eurydice, shortly after her marriage, while wandering
with the nymphs, her companions (and sisters), was seen by the shepherd Aristaeus, who was
struck by her beauty and made advances to her. She fled, and in fleeing trod upon a snake in
the grass, was bitten in the foot and died.
Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air, both gods and men, and finding it all
unavailing resolved to seek his wife in the regions of the dead. He descended by a cave
situated on the side of the promontory of Taenarus and arrived at the Stygian realm. He
passed through crowds and ghosts and presented himself before the throne of Pluto and
Proserpine.
Accompanying the words with the lyre, he sung, "O deities of the underworld, to whom all
we who live must come, hear my words, for they are true. I come not to spy out the secrets of
Tartarus, nor to try my strength against Cerberus, the three-headed dog with snaky hair who
guards the entrance. I come to seek my wife, whose opening years the poisonous viper's fang
has brought to an untimely end. Love has led me here, Love, a god all powerful with us who
dwell on the earth, and, if old traditions say true, not less so here. I implore you by these
abodes full of terror, these realms of silence and uncreated things, unite again the thread of
Eurydice's life. We all are destined to you, and sooner or later must pass to your domain. She
too, when she shall have filled her term of life, will rightly be yours. But 'til then grant her to
me, I beseech you. If you deny one, I cannot return alone; you shall triumph in the death of
us both."
As he sang these tender strains, the very ghosts shed tears. Tantalus, in spite of his thirst,
stopped for a moment his efforts for water; Ixion's wheel stood still; the vulture ceased to tear
the giant's liver; the daughters of Danaus rested from their task of drawing water in a sieve;
and Sisyphus sat on his rock to listen. Then for the first time, it is said, the cheeks of the
Furies were wet with tears. Proserpine could not resist, and Pluto himself gave way.
31

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.
32

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.

Analysis of the Poetry: Using the SIFTSEI Method:

33

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?

34

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

Denotation dictionary meanings

Connotation other meanings

Simile
Symbol
Irony
Onomatopoeia

A-attitude: Looking for the authors tone. How is the writer

speaking?
S-shifts: Looking for shifts in tone, action, and rhythm.
Dont just write the number, discuss how the shift(s)
affects the poem.
T-title: re-evaluate the title as it pertains to the poem
T-theme: What does the poem mean? What is it saying?
How does it relate to life?

35