What Then? - By W B Yeats

What Then?

HIS chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man; [run on line; enjambment – together with commas and semicolons]
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?' [use of italicized sections to indicate stream of consciousness]

Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. ' What then?'[ Repetition and rhetorical question]

All his happier dreams came true --
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
poets and Wits about him drew; [visual image – prosperity]
'What then.?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'

‘The work is done,' grown old he thought,
'According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought'; [use of direct quotations – gives a sense of immediacy]
But louder sang that ghost, 'What then?'    

Analysis:

 “What then?” is a narrative poem composed by the Modernist Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The poem has four stanzas; each stanza has five lines. The rhyming pattern of the poem is abaac deddc fgffc hihhc jkjjc. The main theme of “What then?” is the insatiable human desire for perfection. In the poem the reader is given biography of a man. The reader gets to read the aims/dreams this man had during four stages of his life.

In the first stanza we meet a student who aims to get good results and become famous – both he and his friends believe this was possible for him and he makes this dream come true by toiling hard and cramming. In the second stanza we meet the young man as a successful writer: “Everything he wrote was read”. Not only that, he becomes financially successful: “After certain years he won/ Sufficient money for his need”. He also has acquired “Friends that have been friends indeed.” In the third stanza we meet the man as a mature person who had achieved all his dreams:

All his happier dreams came true --
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
poets and Wits about him drew

In the last stanza, we meet an old man who is very satisfied with his life and sees no reason to change the course of his life:

‘The work is done,' grown old he thought,
'According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought'

However, in the end of each stanza we hear a voice – the inner voice of the man – asking the man what else he could achieve. Together with the series of challenges the man overcomes, the repeated last line of each stanza successfully illustrates our inability to be satisfied by the fulfillment of any of our dreams.

The poet makes use of several techniques to illustrate his message. Visual images are the most commonly used technique in this poem. In the first stanza we see an image of a student cramming for his exams – as students this is an image we can relate to very easily. Another memorable visual image comes in the third stanza where the poet gives a list of the man’s possessions: “A small old house, wife, son/ Grounds where plums and cabbage grew”. There are many run-on lines in the poem signalling the life of the man as a continuum: the entire poem is about a series of incidents in a single man’s life. However, the man in this poem is a representative figure. He represents the entire human race. Still, the most successful technique used by the poet is the use of repeated rhetorical questions that appear as the last line of each stanza, 'What then?' Though the question is for the man in the poem, each time we read the question we also ask ourselves the same question and come to realize that we too have insatiable desires.    

A Bird came down the Walk (328) - by Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

 

    A bird came down the walk:

    He did not know I saw;

    He bit an angle-worm in halves

    And ate the fellow, raw.

 

    And then, he drank a dew

    From a convenient grass,

    And then hopped sidewise to the wall

    To let a beetle pass.

 

    He glanced with rapid eyes

    That hurried all abroad,—

    They looked like frightened beads, I thought;

    He stirred his velvet head

 

    Like one in danger; cautious,

    I offered him a crumb,

    And he unrolled his feathers

    And rowed him softer home

 

    Than oars divide the ocean,

    Too silver for a seam,

    Or butterflies, off banks of noon,

    Leap, plashless, as they swim.

 

“A Bird came down the Walk” was first published in 1891 in the second posthumous collection of Dickinson's poems. The poem has 5 quatrains composed in iambic trimeter with occasional four-syllable lines. The rhyme scheme is a loose abcb. In this poem, too, Dickinson uses what is popularly known as slant rhyme [saw-raw; grass-pass vs. abroad-head; crumb – home; seam - swim].The meter is broken up at intervals with long dashes and commas indicating short pauses which indicate lack of motion or moments of contemplation: He glanced with rapid eyes/ That hurried all abroad,—.

This poem is a classic example of Dickinson’s exceptional powers of observation and description. The poetic voice of the poem describes seeing a bird coming down a walk – a walk is a path leading to a house. With that description, the poetess elevates the bird to the status of a guest. This is further accentuated when the poetess chooses to refer to the bird with the pronoun “he” instead of the much common “it” and thereby anthropomorphizing the bird. However, in the 3^rd and 4^th lines she sees the bird doing something people usually do not do. He eats a worm raw – and her surprise and even revulsion is indicated by the use of a comma before the term “raw.”

According to Christian teaching God provides for creatures of nature; therefore, a drop of dew is conveniently placed for the bird to drink after its meal. That description also emphasizes how uncomplicated the bird’s life is in comparison to human life.  

The bird, once full, “hopped sidewise to the wall/ To let a beetle pass.” Unlike human beings, creatures of nature do not usually kill for fun. They more often than not respect the rights of their fellow creatures.  

In the 3^rd stanza the poetess thinks that the bird “glanced with rapid eyes/ That hurried all abroad” – the bird is observant of the world around it; it is in tune with it and it lives in the present. The poetess interprets the bird’s observant carefulness as fear. This is an example of the human tendency to reflect human feelings on a creature one has no connection with. This, the poetess acknowledges by using the qualification “I thought” at the end of the 3^rd line of the stanza.  

There is a sense of voyeurism in the voice’s description of the bird’s activities. The voice is observing the bird and had the bird known that it was being observed it would not have allowed the voice to catch it unawares at such a vulnerable moment.  The poetess is sensitive to the bird’s need for secrecy. “He did not know I saw,” she says in the 1^st stanza - By hiding the word “him” that should have come at the end of that line, the poetess hides bird’s presence from others. The poetess may even be trying to hide that she has been observing the bird from the bird, too.

In the 4^th stanza, the voice seems to have felt privileged to have seen what she has seen. Consequently, she makes the bird an offering. This is because human beings base their relationships on mutual give-and-take. In addition, this particular offering may have been made with the intention of taming this representative of nature. But what the voice offers is a crumb. The placement of the two terms (juxtaposition) “offer” and “crumbs” side by side brings out a paradoxical effect which is almost bathetic. We were told in the third line of the first stanza that the bird had bitten “an angle-worm in halves/ And ate the fellow[1], raw.” Firstly, there is such power and independence in this bird that finds its own food and consumes it with such gusto.  Such a creature would surely not accept a mere crumb – literal or figurative – as an offering from anyone! Secondly, even after seeing the bird in action, the voice seems to not have drawn the conclusion that it was most probably a carnivore. Moreover, the cautious way the bird moves about should have warned the voice that the bird, even if it were an omnivore, would not have accepted an offering from an unknown entity.

It takes a long time to build a relationship that is close enough for a wild animal to accept food from a human hand. We have hunted, poisoned, and tortured animals to such an extent, animals have learnt to be wary of us. This single act of the voice and the bird’s reaction to it show how alienated we have become physically, emotionally, and spiritually from the natural world and how much we crave for a closer connection with it. In that desire lays Dickinson’s link with the Romantic School of Poetry.

There is a sense of affronted majesty in the way the bird rejects the human offering and flies away: “And he unrolled his feathers/ And rowed him softer home.” In comparison to the bird's terrestrial movements and the movements of the cautious voice, there is such grace and harmony in the flight of the bird. In the 3^rd and 4^th lines of the 4^th stanza the poetess introduces a sustained metaphor which she continues in the 5^th stanza. The bird is seen as a sailing ship. When it stretches out its wings to take off, the action is compared to the unfurling of a sail. The guest, visiting done, returns home. Its wings are cutting through the air with such efficiency and economy of movement. The wings unlike the oars of a sailing ship that are manmade and therefore imperfect imitations of creations of nature which stirred up foam and “divided the ocean” cut through the air cleanly. In fact the flight of the bird is more perfect than butterflies leaping “off Banks of Noon” because the insects make “plashes”. By using these two comparisons the poet illustrates the seamlessness and fluidity of the bird's flight through the air.

According to Helen Vendler this poem attest to Dickinson's "cool eye, her unsparing factuality, her startling similes and metaphors, her psychological observations of herself and others, her capacity for showing herself mistaken, and her exquisite relish of natural beauty." Harold Bloom says that the bird displays a "complex mix of qualities: ferocity, fastidiousness, courtesy, fear, and grace." He further notes that the description of the bird's flight is that seen by the poet’s soul rather than her "finite eyes". Chuck Taylor states that the naturalistic description of a bird is also symbolic. According to him, the description of the bird’s flight suggests the ease with which a person’s soul reaches heaven.

 

Further reading:

 

"Success is Counted Sweetest" (1864)

"Because I could not stop for Death" (1890)

 "I taste a liquor never brewed" (1890)

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?" (1891)

"I like to see it lap the Miles" (1891)

"I heard a Fly buzz—when I died" (1896)

"There is a pain — so utter —" (1929)

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[1]  Dickinson uses the term fellow to refer to the worm

To the Nile - by John Keats

 

Son of the old Moon-mountains African!

Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!

We call thee fruitful, and that very while

A desert fills our seeing's inward span:

Nurse of swart nations since the world began,

Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile

Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,

Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?

O may dark fancies err! They surely do;

'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste

Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew

Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste

The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,

And to the sea as happily dost haste.

 

“To the Nile” is a Petrarchan sonnet composed by the Late-Romantic poet John Keats. Keats said to have composed this sonnet in a friendly competition with his fellow Romantics Leigh Hunt and P B Shelly. A Petrarchan sonnet has an octave rhyming abbaabba and a sestet rhyming cdcdcd. The Volta or the turn of the line of thought occurs from the octave to the sestet.  In this sonnet also line number 9 marks a change of thought: Initially the poetic persona thinks of the Nile as a holy/mysterious river that beguiled the travellers, but from line 9 onwards he begins to think of it as an ordinary river similar to the ones he sees in his own country.

In Greek mythology Nilus is considered the god of the Nile River. The poem traces the course of the Nile from the legendary sub-Saharan Moon Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea, and how it turns some parts of Egypt into fertile oases within a desert. The poem is written in the second person. The poetic persona addresses a personified Nile directly as a sentient being.

In the octave the poet acknowledges the ancient fame of and the reverence paid to the river and calls it “Son of the Old Moon-Mountains African!”  The poetic techniques used here are inversion and personification.  In addition, this is also an invocation to a supernatural power in the form of the Nile. Then in the second line, the Nile is invoked as the “Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile.” The blocks of limestone and marble that were used to build the great pyramids in Egypt said to have been transported from their quarries to the present site using the Nile. And the Pyramids and the civilization that built them are located close to the river. Hence, it is the Chief of the Pyramid.

On the banks of the Nile one finds huge crocodiles. In addition, ancient Egyptians worshipped a crocodile-headed god who was related to the mummification process and death in general. The pyramids are thought to be the tombs of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Hence, the Nile is “Chief of … Crocodile!” At a surface level, the poet creates bathos through the phrase “Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile” by juxtaposing the pyramids with crocodiles.

The Son, the Chief, and the Nurse are references to the different roles of the Nile. The Nile is both a man and a woman – therefore, androgynous.

The octave contains a series of contradictions: An old mountain dedicated to a virgin goddess had given birth to a son; the Nile is the chief of both the Pyramids and Crocodiles and it is also a river in the middle of a desert.

In the third and fourth lines the poet refers to the first contradiction - “We call thee fruitful and that very while/ A desert fills our seeing's inward span.” Fruitfulness and barrenness, two extremes, exist side by side as the Nile flows through a vast desert. Once a year the Nile floods depositing rich loamy mud on the banks of the river, making them ideal for agriculture. Today this has changed with the construction of many dams along the river like the Aswan. The Egyptian god Hapi is associated with flooding of the river, thus bringing fertility and fruitfulness.

According to Egyptian mythology, the Nile itself is considered as a symbol of fertility. When the Egyptian god Osiris was killed and his body parts were scattered by his brother Seth, his genitals were supposed to have been thrown into the river to be eaten by a crocodile so that his wife would not be able to resurrect him.

In the next line the River Nile is invoked as the nurse for the Africans – another image of fertility. Yet the poet immediately questions the truth value of his own invocation with the question “[a]rt thou so fruitful?”

The first question is followed by another rhetorical question: “or dost thou beguile/Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,/Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?” Here the poet is questioning the famed fruitfulness/nurturing qualities of the river. He is wondering whether people have called the river fruitful only in comparison to what lay on either side of it and because it offered "rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan." He is asking whether the river had fooled the various nations of people who travelled between Cairo and Decan (Deccan?) – probably the travellers of the ancient Silk Rout – into worshiping it by assuming a mysterious supernatural appearance. At this point, it is possible that Keats may be referring to the numerous ancient temples dedicated to Osiris along the River which were worshipped by travellers, too.

The poetic persona begins the sestet with a prayer or a deeply felt wish to the Nile and/or the gods of Egypt to make his dark thought and doubts about the fruitfulness of the Nile false – He says: “O may dark fancies err!” Then he affirms with certainty that his fancies were indeed wrong with the short phrase “They surely do.” Here, Keats is critical of his imagination or ‘negative capability’ as he calls it. Negative capability, according to Keats is ‘when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’

Next, Keats says that “'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste/ Of all beyond itself.”  Here, Keats might be talking about our ignorance about the Nile or things and people in general. Ignorant people assume everything beyond what is familiar to be a barren waste. In the same way, the Europeans of Keats’ age had either romanticized or demonized the rest of the world. Keats strives to see a similarity between the rivers of England and the Nile – In sociology this kind of thinking is called “cultural relativism.” But this attempt to positively evaluate the Nile in comparison to English rivers, too, smacks of the European superiority complex as the Nile as the longest river of the world is far superior to a river like the Avon, one of the longest rivers in England. In the same way, if one is to compare the European and African civilizations from a cultural relativist point of view, then, one might be doing injustice to something that is much older.

In the last four lines, the poet looks at the river from aesthetic point of view and describes its journey to the sea using typically sensuous Keatsean language.

In conclusion, Keats seems to suggest that whatever or wherever we are, in the end everything has the same end. 

Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star (1633) – John Donne

Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star (1633) – John Donne 

Go[1], and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake[2] root,

Tell me, where all past years are,

Or who cleft the devil’s foot,

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy’s stinging

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

 

If[3] thou be’st born to strange sights,

Things invisible to see,

Ride ten thousand days and nights,

Till age snow white hair on thee,

Thou, when thou retutn’st, wilt tell me

All strange wonders that befell thee,

And swear

Nowhere

Lives a woman true, and fair.

 

If thou find’st one, let me know,

Such a pilgrimage were sweet;

Yet do not, I would not go,

Though at next door we might meet,

Though she were true, when you met her,

And last, till you write your letter,

Yet she

Will be

False, ere I come, to two, or three.

Themes

1. Status of the Elizabethan woman
2. infidelity
3. Male Chauvinism
4. Misogyny
5. inconsistency of human nature

Analysis:

The three stanzas of the poem rhymes ababccddd. There is uniformity in the number of lines and even in the shape of the poem. One might see this quality as a male poet privileging order and reason over chaos which usually is associated with women. Women were idealized, or even idolized, in Courtly Love Poems as pure faithful Madonnas. This, of course, is unrealistic, especially for someone with first-hand experience in the court intrigues in which women played no small part. Unlike many Renaissance poems idealizing women, “Song” satirizes women using hyperbole – extreme exaggeration. The poem may sound antifeminist (misogynistic), but it must be viewed in the context of metaphysical poems. Therefore, it should be read not so much as a condemnation of women but as a criticism of CLP. In fact, Donne, far from being a misogynist, had been described by one of his friends as “a great visitor of ladies.” Therefore, it is more prudent to read the “Song” is a perfect example of Donne’s playfulness with metaphysical conceits and female sexuality.

Stanza I

Go[4], and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake[5] root,

Tell me, where all past years are,

Or who cleft the devil’s foot,

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy’s stinging

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

Imagine a man who has acquired better view of women and female sexuality as a result of his numerous romantic dalliances in the court of Elizabethan England. The poem opens with the poetic persona issuing a list of impossible tasks for someone like a knight of the courtly love poems who wants to prove himself: catching a falling star[6], becoming pregnant with the aid of a mandrake root[7], and finding out:

1)      where the time we spent harboured itself,

2)      who cleft the Devil’s foot,

3)      how to hear Mermaids[8] singing without losing one’s head,

4)      how to keep those who are envious from harming others,

5)      and what brought good fortune to honest people

The impossibility of performing these tasks illustrates the impossibility of finding a beautiful woman who also happens to be honest. The entire stanza is a series of imperatives issued in rapid-fire succession. The use of imperatives suggests strong emotions.

Looking at the metaphors used in this stanza:

A falling star is a bright beautiful thing that is reduced to ashes in the end. People make whishes when they see one. Donne, influenced by the increasing focus on the sciences, is trying to show that trying to catch an honest beautiful woman is like trying to catch a meteorite – both attempts would be disillusioning as well as disastrous.

Mandrake is a plant whose forked root said to resemble a human torso and legs used in witchcraft. It is also used as an aphrodisiac, a cathartic, a poison, and a narcotic. Making a baby with the aid of a mandrake root is an unnatural act – a beautiful woman who is faithful is also unnatural; beautiful women are by nature fickle – according to the voice. However, in this context, making a baby is impossible as the poet is asking a man to become pregnant by a male plant.  

Singing of the mermaids, or more correctly the sirens, lure unsuspecting sailors to their doom according to Homer in The Odyssey. Similarly, women, according to the voice, lure men to their destruction. 

Stanza II

If[9] thou be’st born to strange sights,

Things invisible to see,

Ride ten thousand days and nights,

Till age snow white hair on thee,

Thou, when thou retutn’st, wilt tell me

All strange wonders that befell thee,

And swear

Nowhere

Lives a woman true, and fair.

 

The second stanza focuses on feminine virtues. The poet continues his monologue with the imaginary listener and assures him with complete conviction that even if the listener were to go on a quest around the world experiencing “strange sights” and “[t]hings invisible to see” looking for a woman both beautiful and faithful for “ten thousand days and nights” until “age” turns his hair “snow white”, he would upon his return “swear” the poet that he had not come across a woman who was both “true, and fair”. The stanza is a single sentence in the form of a conditional clause signaling the poetic persona’s belief in the impossibility accomplishing of the task at hand.

Stanza III

If thou find’st one, let me know,

Such a pilgrimage were sweet;

Yet do not, I would not go,

Though at next door we might meet,   

Though she were true, when you met her,

And last, till you write your letter,

Yet she

Will be

False, ere I come, to two, or three.

The third stanza is made of two clauses. The first is an “if clause”. He likens the journey of the listener to a pilgrimage and asks the listener to let him know should he to find a woman who is both beautiful and faithful in the course of his pilgrimage. He says such a discovery would make all the hardships associated with a pilgrimage sweet. Immediately, takes back his word and tells his listener not to bother. Donne says that if the listener were to find a woman who was both faithful and beautiful just next-door, she would remain in that condition only as long as it would take the listener to compose a letter and send it to him. However, she would become unfaithful within the short time it would take the poetic persona to walk next-door, not just to one person but “to two or three.”     

Techniques:

1)      Donne uses a startling series of unconventional images such as meteors and magical plants  

2)      In addition, Donne also uses unusual comparisons, or conceits

3)      In this poem, the poet brings in a series of arguments like a consummate lawyer to prove his point. The argumentative style gives the different parts of the poem a sense of interconnectedness while forcing the reader to pay close attention to what is being said.         

Thinking critically:

1.      To whom is this speaker talking? What do you think has occasioned the writing of this poem?

2.      In the second stanza, what does the speaker say his listener will discover about a woman both “true and fair”?

3.      In the last stanza, what does the speaker say he will not do? Why?

4.      What hyperbole or exaggeration does the speaker use to make his point?

5.      How would you describe the speaker’s tone? List at least three words that reveal his attitude. Do you think he is being serious? 

6.      In terms of their themes, “Sonnet 141” by William Shakespeare and “Song” by Donne, which poet has put the theme across best according to your view? Illustrate your answer with examples from the text.

7.      It is said that “Song” is a hyperbolic expression of the moral depravity of women. What is your view on this statement?

8.      Discuss with close reference to the “Song” the extent to which it sports the characteristics of a Metaphysical poetry.

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[1] Go, Tell, Teach – use of imperatives imply strong displeasure 

[2] A plant whose forked root said to resemble a human torso and legs

[3] Second and third stanza starts with an if clause signaling disbelief/ impossibility

[4] Go, Tell, Teach – use of imperatives imply strong displeasure 

[5] A plant whose forked root said to resemble a human torso and legs

[6] A falling star is a bright beautiful thing that is reduced to ashes in the end. People make whishes when they see one. Donne, influenced by the increasing focus on the sciences, is trying to show that trying to catch an honest beautiful woman is like trying to catch a meteorite – both attempts would be disillusioning as well as disastrous.

[7] A plant used in witchcraft. It is also used as an aphrodisiac, a cathartic, a poison, and a narcotic. Making a baby with the aid of a mandrake root is an unnatural act – a beautiful woman who is faithful is also unnatural; beautiful women are by nature fickle – according to the voice. However, in this context, making a baby is impossible as the poet is asking a man to become pregnant by a male plant.   

[8] Singing of the mermaids, or more correctly the sirens, lure unsuspecting sailors to their doom according to Homer in The Odyssey. Similarly, women, according to the voice, lure men to their destruction. 

[9] Second and third stanza starts with an if clause signaling disbelief/ impossibility