Robert Frost's The Pasture revisted

One of the most unlikely poems of the Modernist period is that by Robert Frost: “The Pasture.” It is unlikely for many reasons. First, it seems more like a Romantic lyric, i.e., one hundred years too late, because of its rural depiction and its simple, formal diction. Second, its tone is gentle and polite, a rarity among the Modernists. And third, it does not ostentatiously break with tradition.

Structurally the poem is two quatrains, the rhyme scheme is abbc deec, and for such a small poem, it’s surprising how much repetition there is. The opening lines of the two quatrains begin the same, and the ending lines are exactly the same.

It is interesting to compare it to another relatively famous 8-lined poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” by William Carlos Williams.  There is a visual difference between the two poems.

The Pasture

By Robert Frost

I’m going to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too,

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by its mother. It’s so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

The Red Wheelbarrow

By William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

Frost uses iambic pentameter lines and a refrain that moves from iambs to spondees. Williams’ short lines in four paired stanzas follow a syllabic pattern of 4-2-3-2-3-2-4-2. Though there is assonance in Williams’ poem, lines 5(ā) and 7(ī), there is a more subtle use of it in Frost’s poem: lines 1 (ēn/ing), 2(ā and ē), 3(ā and ah) and 4(ah and ū). Is Frost more interested in the sound of his poem than Williams is?

Where Frost uses the farm setting as part of his meaning, Williams is more abstract, “so much depends/ upon.” Frost is interested in imbuing his work with nuanced feeling; Williams is spare with feeling and language. Though Williams seems almost taciturn, so too is Frost; but whereas Williams cuts off anything other than the list of things in and of themselves, Frost suggests feelings, and invites the reader to “come along.”

Realists and Modernists tended to abhor metaphor (compare Hawthorne and Melville to S. Crane and Hemingway), whereas the Dark Romantics reveled in it. But though Frost is no Romantic, he doesn’t quite want to toss metaphor out; Williams does. Williams filters out any Romantic attitudes about the wheelbarrow or the chickens; but in the process also filters out, what he considered, too much sentiment. The Imagists, intent on taking pictures of the World, like many in photography and film, reveled in the surface of reality because they did not believe in many of the non-physical ideas, like gentility, beauty, patience, kindness, etc. And it shows.

Risotto by the Bard of Bat Yam, Poet Laureate of Zion

The most obstreperous part about making something, also the best,
Is existing in the reality of middle,
Sustaining an act of rigorous radical imagination,
I simmered a broth: onion, lemon, a big handful of mint.

The phone did ring. With my left
Hand I answered it,
Sautéing the rice, then adding the mixed shrimp sea food broth
Slowly, one ladle at a time, with my right. What’s up?

The miracle of risotto, it’s easy to miss, is the moment when the husks dissolve,
Each grain of rice releasing its tiny explosion of starch.

God help you take it off the heat just then, let it sit
While you shave the parmesan into paper-thin curls,
It must be perfectly creamy,
But still have a bite.

There will be dishes to do,The moon will rise,

A cacophony of hoots, cackles, and wails.
Residuals of Tastes and Smells
Light intoxication  half bottleiced Chardonnay





Ingredients:

5 cups chicken or seafood broth, plus more as needed
1 (8-ounce) bottle clam juice
1/2 teaspoon saffron threads, crushed
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup minced shallots (about 2)
2 cups arborio or carnaroli rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 pound bay scallops
1/2 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 pound squid (calamari) tubes, sliced into rings
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley


Method:
Heat broth, clam juice and saffron to a boil in a medium saucepot. Reduce heat and keep simmering.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a large saucepot over medium-high heat. Add shallot and cook until translucent, about 2 minutes. Stir in rice and toast cook until translucent, about 2 minutes. Stir in wine and cook, stirring constantly, until liquid is absorbed.

Set timer for 14 minutes and begin to add saffron broth, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring each time until most liquid is absorbed. After 14 minutes, stir in scallops, shrimp, squid and salt. Continue to cook and stir, adding broth 1/2 cup at a time until rice is al dente and seafood is just cooked through, about 6 minutes (you may not use all broth). Stir in parsley and serve.

Paw Pints in Heaven by The Bard of Bat Yam , Poet Laureate of Zion

Tabby is now in a place that is made of gold,
Heaven, a  place where  never we do  grow old,
but one answer I have not heard at all,
will there too be paw prints from my me?

She  promised us joy right from the start.
I just wonder if she'll be a part.
So as I sit here and dream of the day,
In heaven she will the Ginger Saint  willstay?

When you're walking down with the Saints of old,
 glimpse expectantly of that new road,
and if there Tabby shall see,
maybe too a paw print just for me.

A Valediction: of Weeping by John Donne ,... a favourite poem of the Bard of Bat Yam, Poet Laureate of Zion

Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth,
For thus they be
Pregnant of thee;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,
When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore.


On a round ball
A workman that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, all;
So doth each tear
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow
This world; by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.


O more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,
Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea what it may do too soon;
Let not the wind
Example find,
To do me more harm than it purposeth;
Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,
Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.

John Donne probably wrote “A Valediction: of Weeping” after he met his future wife, Ann More, and before he took holy orders and turned most of his authorial energies to sermons and spiritual meditations. We can’t be sure about the timing, though; while we have Donne’s biography and his poems, aligning the two is tricky. We know that Donne wrote poems only for himself and a close circle of friends and patrons, never for fame and seldom for publication. It would seem reasonable to guess that “A Valediction: of Weeping”—which, like a number of Donne’s love poems, dramatizes a scene of lovers parting—might have been written during the early years of his marriage, when Donne was often obliged to be away from home, leaving his young wife and children alone. But we can’t be sure that the poem isn’t wholly an act of imagination with no connection to Donne’s personal experience.


This uncertainty has permitted some of Donne’s readers to regard his poems not as acts of self-expression, but as the abstracted, cerebral constructions of a fierce wit. Yes, the poems may be autobiographical, but Donne’s predilection for intricate rhetorical figures, paradoxes, surprising swerves in tone, associative leaps, and ingenious conceits can make them feel artificial, or made of artifice. Donne’s reputation as merely a wit made his work deeply unpopular for many years after his death. Probably the most famous condemnation came from Samuel Johnson, who labeled Donne’s style “metaphysical”—he didn’t intend the term as a compliment.


In the early 20th century, incipient Modernists, most notably T.S. Eliot, found new layers of value in Donne. His perceived cool intellectualism seemed fresh and vigorous to poets grown weary of Romanticism’s emotionalism and emphasis on the self. Donne soon became a favorite of the New Critics as well. That school’s emphasis on reading poems as autonomous systems—discounting extra-textual considerations such as the author’s intentions and historical situation—was well suited to Donne’s poetry; his intentions are difficult or impossible to determine, and each poem he wrote seemed designed to function as, to use a phrase from one of Donne’s Holy Sonnets, “a little world made cunningly.”


Donne’s poems in general, and “A Valediction: of Weeping” in particular, are certainly cunning. But it would be a mistake to think of them as nothing more than exercises in cleverness. We’ll find in this poem, as in many others by Donne, that his wit often serves as a means to a larger end rather than as an end in itself. The poem may be a highly organized “little world,” but it consistently gestures toward a larger world: the actual, chaotic, emotional one in which we live.


“A Valediction: of Weeping” begins with a scene of two lovers parting:

Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth

The poet is asking for his lover’s indulgence. If he cries now, while he’s still with her, her “face” will be reflected in his tears, transforming them from ordinary waste into objects of value—“coins.” The poet isn’t asking for a physical connection here; he doesn’t say “embrace me before I go.” Instead he seeks to reflect and be reflected by the beloved, at once emphasizing their connection and the fact that they are already—even now before his departure—undeniably separate. This dynamic might be similar to the one we enter into while reading Donne’s poem. On the one hand, the clever figures and rhyme scheme remind us that the poem is an artificial construct of symbols and sounds. But at the same time, the poem’s dramatic situation encourages us to identify with the speaker’s authentic human grief. Let’s look at the entire first stanza:

Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth,
For thus they be
Pregnant of thee;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,
When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.

The financial metaphor of lines 3 and 4 suggests that there’s a transaction involved here, and we see already an example of the kind of hall-of-mirrors paradox Donne so relished, and will soon use again, in this very poem. Perhaps the speaker is departing to earn actual coins to support the beloved. If so, that would be a gesture of unification and shared purpose, but at the same time one ironically requiring separation. In order to be with you, Donne seems to imply, I must leave you.

In line 7 Donne suggests that his tears are both “fruits” of his present grief at parting and “emblems” of his future grief, when he will be away. (Of course, this “grief” might also be understood not as the grief of parting from the beloved, but as the grief of having to undertake the journey in the first place.) So the tears are literal and metaphorical, physical and symbolic, at the same time. Similarly, the poem as a whole can be seen both as a sincere expression of grief and as an “emblem”—a representation, that is—of grief.

The next two lines feature a tricky metaphor for the speaker’s future sorrow:

When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
As his own tear falls, his beloved’s reflection falls with it. He and she both become “nothing”; her reflection falls and thus vanishes, and he, like his tear, departs. If he is departing on a sea voyage—as “divers shore” might suggest—then we may add another dimension to this already crowded conceit. Both tears and the sea are salty water, and here tears figuratively signify the impending separation, just as the sea will literally enforce it. Keeping in mind that a “fall” in a relationship can refer to unfaithfulness, this line could even be read as a premonition of adultery: the tears provoked by my sorrow at leaving you fall, just as you will fall into unfaithfulness when I’m gone. Following this line of thinking, “So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore” turns to pure bitterness: when we’re apart, we’re nothing to each other.

So while we could read this first stanza as the heartfelt cry of a lover in anguish, devastated to be separated from his beloved, it’s also possible to take these lines as the cynical complaint of a husband who feels persecuted in his role as breadwinner and, even worse, unsure of his wife’s fidelity. Which of these is the correct reading? It’s a natural question to ask, but also a misleading one, because the great pleasure in reading Donne lies in just this kind of ambiguity. His poems are incredibly detailed, specific, and intricate, but at the same time mysterious, vague, and elusive. Here again, we’re led to consider the ways in which the poem both invites us to identify with the speaker’s emotions, and reminds us that what we’re looking at here is not a person but a poem. We’ll see this dynamic continue throughout the rest of the poem, as Donne oscillates between the tangible and the conceptual, the literal and the metaphorical. By the time we get to the final lines, it may even seem that the poem is more concerned with the gap between reality and imagination than it is with its ostensible subject of two lovers parting.

The next stanza introduces a new metaphor that is related—appropriately, given the occasion of the poem—to the idea of travel.

On a round ball
A workman that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, all,
So doth each tear,
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.


This stanza’s transformation of a “nothing” into an “all” is similar to an idea expressed near the end of another Donne poem, “The Canonization.” Both poems use the figure of a world contained in a reflection, and in each case great stress is put on the metaphysical nature of that containment: the physical object is captured in a reflection, but so is the object’s essence. In “The Canonization” it isn’t just the “world” that is contained in the “glasses of your eyes,” but the “whole world’s soul.” The distinction is important. Donne is alluding to the Christian theory of transubstantiation, where the base physical representations of bread and wine are transformed, by the intercession of the Holy Ghost, into holy reality: the body and blood of Christ. Analogous processes occur in “A Valediction: of Weeping.” Much as the tears in line 7 were shown to be both physical “fruits” and metaphysical “emblems,” here Donne conflates reality (the “world” in which we actually live) and representation (the “globe” we use as an icon of that world). A blank ball is nothing until it’s overlaid with maps to become an “all.” A tear is nothing until it reflects the face of the beloved and becomes an “all.” And perhaps the poem itself is both a nothing—a mere collection of sounds and symbols—and yet also an “all,” a container for the poet’s genuine emotions.


The final lines of the second stanza may contain the most knotty ideas in a very knotty poem:

Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.


How are we to understand the phrase “This world” here? There are several possible readings, and as elsewhere in the poem, they range from the simple and concrete to the complex and abstract. “This world” could be the real world the lovers see around them: If we both cry, our eyes will fill with tears, and we literally won’t be able to see each other anymore. But of course the figure also works as a metaphor for the characters’ emotional states: Our mutual sorrow at parting destroys the heaven-on-earth we make when we’re together. Finally, keep in mind the maps Donne showed us earlier in the stanza. The speaker’s tears might also be obscuring his vision of that globe, a “little world made cunningly” that in turn represents the literal earth. Again Donne succeeds in “mixing” the real and the figurative.


“Mixed” might not refer to a literal mixing of the two lovers’ tears, but instead to the process of reproduction—the oscillation of reality and representation—that is gradually manifesting itself as the poem’s central concern. The two lines might suggest that watery reflections of the lovers are being created and destroyed endlessly: in reflecting, or mixing with, each other’s tears, the lovers “overflow” and destroy those reflections, the faces-within-tears from the first stanza. We see the lovers’ (real) tears as images within images, endlessly generative and endlessly in decay.


Immediately following his sequence of globe and water imagery, Donne compares his beloved to the moon, the sphere that controls the flow of tides.


O more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,
Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea, what it may do too soon;
Let not the wind
Example find,
To do me more harm, than it purposeth;
Since thou and I sigh one another’s breath,
Whoe’er sighs most, is cruelest, and hastes the other’s death.


The beloved is “more than” the moon: not only can she can draw tears from herself, but she can pull those tears all the way up into her own “sphere,” or presence, where the poet is as well. Donne exhorts her not to use her power to “draw … up seas,” that is, to weep, because it could “drown” him in at least three ways. His reflection would be drowned when caught in her tears; seeing her cry would figuratively drown him in sorrow; and if her tears inadvertently “teach the sea” and give an “example” to the wind, he might literally be drowned when he sets sail on his voyage.


The poem’s closing “breath” metaphor, which appropriately follows the “wind” image, once again asserts the union of the lovers: Because we breathe as one when we’re together, our sighs of sorrow use up each other’s breath, and so hasten each other’s death. As we might have expected, Donne ends the poem with a paradox. We tend to associate breath with life, but here an excess of breath leads to death. This metaphor, like the earlier tear/reflection conceit, warns the beloved that her physical expressions of grief—crying, sighing—cause emotional harm. When she cries she drowns his reflection in her tears; when she sighs she steals his life-breath. Once again, the metaphorical and the real appear to be so closely aligned as to become indistinguishable.


This breath figure also has an echo in “The Canonization,” where we find similar images of the lovers as a single being:


Call her one, me another fly,
We are tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the eagle and the dove…


In these lines, as in “A Valediction: of Weeping,” the poet and his beloved form one being. That’s not an original idea, but it becomes original when we note that in each case this union is destructive as well as creative. In “The Canonization” the lovers are both flies and the candles that burn the flies, so they “at [their] own cost die”: the fact of their union is also the cause of their destruction. “The eagle and the dove” is a similarly murderous figure, since eagles kill doves. So too in “A Valediction: of Weeping” the lovers are united—in teary reflections and in breath—but those very unions threaten the lovers with ruin. As in the lines about mixed tears overflowing “this world,” the poem’s closing lines suggest the idea of love as a self-perpetuating cycle of creation and destruction. The great achievement of “A Valediction: of Weeping” is its powerful evocation of this very paradox—not only in terms of the lovers, who appear to be simultaneously united and divided, but in terms of the poem itself, which persistently demands that we read it as both artificial and earnest, self-contained and suggestive, a “nothing” and an “all.”

Trivia..... Social Media.... Privacy .... by the Bard of Bat Yam , Poet Laureate of Zion

Emails , whatsapp , sms ....social media ....Facebook ...Linkedin .....Literotica ......Cricinfo .......Google ......Outlook Express .......Mozilla Firefox ......Chrome ..?......KIndle ......Amazon .......eBay ........Flipkart ......OLX .....Snapdeal .....
.......Internet Explorer ........Wikipedia ...........ebooks ......ebanking .......mobile banking ......iPhone ......iPad ......iPod ........Apple .....Samsung .......Microsoft .........Nokia .......LG ......Blackberry .......Visa .......Mastercard .......PIN ......personal index number .......OTP ......one time pin ...........................
Purchase Order , Sales Invoice , Sales Tax .......Excise Duty .........Income Tax .........Credit Note ......Delivery Note .......Goods Receipt Report .......Protocols .......SOP ......DEBIT .......NOTE .........BANK STATEMENT ..............REJECTION ADVICE ......REMITTANCE PROOF .......TRANSACTION EVIDENCE ........AUDIT TRAIL .....CORPORATE VEIL .....
SUB POENA .......AFFIDAVIT ....... INDEMNITY BOND ............
...................................BANK RECONCILIATION ........AIRWAY BILL .....LETTER OF CREDIT ...........BLAH ......BLAH ......
BLAH .................
OVERLOAD ......OVERLOAD ......BURNOUT ..........

Pigeons in Flight by the Bard of Bat Yam, Poet Laureate of Zion

clear blue sky
exuberance....
exhilaration.....
no me......
no you......
only a flight of pigeons
flying high......
at great speed......
wheeling around .....
changing directions .....
exhilaration......
exuberance......
clear blue sky

Elegy to a Bubble Bee by the Bard of Bat Yam, Poet Laureate of Zion

When I think of you now
I think of one of those magnified pictures of insects
Not a fly
It would have to be more beautiful than that
A glorious butterfly, with rainbow, stained glass wings
That catch the light 
In every color under the sun
And then blow it up
Bigger, bigger, a million times
Until I can see the scaly surface of your skin
Crusted with scalloped knives
And your eyes
Your beautiful blue eyes
In the cruel gaze of the lens
Have turned ugly and gray
I see myself reflected in them 
In a honeycomb of mirrors
A kaleidoscope of selves
I'm so enchanted, 
So fascinated
With the multiplication of my image,
I don't even notice that you've drawn your long, thin snout
From behind your wings
And unsheathed it
I don't feel a thing when you plunge it into my skin
And strike a vein
I don't hear the slurping sound
I'm watching myself up until the very last moment
When you withdraw
You pull the needle out slowly, 
Gorged on my blood
And now, it hurts
I would like to say that at least I was able to swat you away 
Like the tiny insect you are
But you're too clever for that
By the time I even realize what's happened
You've already moved on to the next flower

“The Tiger by William Blake (1757-1827)

Tiger Tiger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tiger Tiger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Meaning of the Poem

This poem contemplates a question arising from the idea of creation by an intelligent creator. The question is this: If there is a loving, compassionate God or gods who created human beings and whose great powers exceed the comprehension of human beings, as many major religions hold, then why would such a powerful being allow evil into the world. Evil here is represented by a tiger that might, should you be strolling in the Indian or African wild in the 1700s, have leapt out and killed you. What would have created such a dangerous and evil creature? How could it possibly be the same divine blacksmith who created a cute harmless fluffy lamb or who created Jesus, also known as the “Lamb of God” (which the devoutly Christian Blake was probably also referring to here). To put it another way, why would such a divine blacksmith create beautiful innocent children and then also allow such children to be slaughtered. The battery of questions brings this mystery to life with lavish intensity.

Does Blake offer an answer to this question of evil from a good God? It would seem not on the surface. But, this wouldn’t be a great poem if it were really that open ended. The answer comes in the way that Blake explains the question. Blake’s language peels away the mundane world and offers a look at the super-reality to which poets are privy. We fly about in “forests of the night” through “distant deeps or skies” looking for where the fire in the tiger’s eye was taken from by the Creator. This is the reality of expanded time, space, and perception that Blake so clearly elucidates elsewhere with the lines “To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower, / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, / And eternity in an hour” (“Auguries of Innocence”). This indirectly tells us that the reality that we ordinarily know and perceive is really insufficient, shallow, and deceptive. Where we perceive the injustice of the wild tiger something else entirely may be transpiring. What we ordinarily take for truth may really be far from it: a thought that is scary, yet also sublime or beautiful—like the beautiful and fearsome tiger. Thus, this poem is great because it concisely and compellingly presents a question that still plagues humanity today, as well as a key clue to the answer.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (1795-1821)

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Meaning of the Poem

As if in response to Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” offers a sort of antidote to the inescapable and destructive force of time. Indeed, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” was published in 1819 just a year or so after “Ozymandias.” The antidote is simple: art. The art on the Grecian urn—which is basically a decorative pot from ancient Greece—has survived for thousands of years. While empires rose and fell, the Grecian urn survived. Musicians, trees, lovers, heifers, and priests all continue dying decade after decade and century after century, but their artistic depictions on the Grecian urn live on for what seems eternity.

This realization about the timeless nature of art is not new now nor was it in the 1800s, but Keats has chosen a perfect example since ancient Greek civilization so famously disappeared into the ages, being subsumed by the Romans, and mostly lost until the Renaissance a thousand years later. Now, the ancient Greeks are all certainly dead (like the king Ozymandias in Shelley’s poem) but the Greek art and culture live on through Renaissance painters, the Olympic Games, endemic Neoclassical architecture, and, of course, the Grecian urn.

Further, what is depicted on the Grecian urn is a variety of life that makes the otherwise cold urn feel alive and vibrant. This aliveness is accentuated by Keats’s barrage of questions and blaring exclamations: “More happy love! more happy, happy love!” Art, he seems to suggest, is more alive and real than we might imagine. Indeed, the last two lines can be read as the urn itself talking: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” In these profound lines, Keats places us within ignorance, suggesting that what we know on earth is limited, but that artistic beauty, which he has now established is alive, is connected with truth. Thus, we can escape ignorance, humanness, and certain death and approach another form of life and truth through the beauty of art. This effectively completes the thought that began in Ozymandias and makes this a great poem one notch up from its predecessor.

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)..... a favourite poem of the Bard of Bat Yam, Poet Laureate of Zion,

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Meaning of the Poem

In this winding story within a story within a poem, Shelley paints for us the image of the ruins of a statue of ancient Egyptian king Ozymandias, who is today commonly known as Ramesses II. This king is still regarded as the greatest and most powerful Egyptian pharaoh. Yet, all that’s left of the statue are his legs, which tell us it was huge and impressive; the shattered head and snarling face, which tell us how tyrannical he was; and his inscribed quote hailing the magnificent structures that he built and that have been reduced to dust, which tells us they might not have been quite as magnificent as Ozymandias imagined. The image of a dictator-like king whose kingdom is no more creates a palpable irony. But, beyond that there is a perennial lesson about the inescapable and destructive forces of time, history, and nature. Success, fame, power, money, health, and prosperity can only last so long before fading into “lone and level sands.”

There are yet more layers of meaning here that elevate this into one of the greatest poems. In terms of lost civilizations that show the ephemeralness of human pursuits, there is no better example than the Egyptians—who we associate with such dazzling monuments as the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid at Giza (that stands far taller than the Statue of Liberty)—yet who completely lost their spectacular language, culture, and civilization. If the forces of time, history, and nature can take down the Egyptian civilization, it begs the question, “Who’s next?” Additionally, Ozymandias is believed to have been the villainous pharaoh who enslaved the ancient Hebrews and who Moses led the exodus from. If all ordinary pursuits, such as power and fame, are but dust, what remains, the poem suggests, are spirituality and morality—embodied by the ancient Hebrew faith. If you don’t have those then in the long run you are a “colossal wreck.” Thus, the perfectly composed scene itself, the Egyptian imagery, and the Biblical backstory convey a perennial message and make this a great poem.

“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)... a favourite poem of the Bard of Bat Yam , Poet Laureate of Zion

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Meaning of the Poem

Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, this sonnet may have the greatest placement of any English poem. It also has one of the greatest placements in history. Lazarus compares the Statue of Liberty to the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Like the Statue of Liberty, the Colossus of Rhodes was an enormous god-like statue positioned in a harbor. Although the Colossus of Rhodes no longer stands, it symbolizes the ancient Greek world and the greatness of the ancient Greek and Roman civilization, which was lost for a thousand years to the West, and only fully recovered again during the Renaissance. “The New Colossus” succinctly crystallizes the connection between the ancient world and America, a modern nation. It’s a connection that can be seen in the White House and other state and judicial buildings across America that architecturally mirror ancient Greek and Roman buildings; and in the American political system that mirrors Athenian Democracy and Roman Republicanism.

In the midst of this vast comparison of the ancient and the American, Lazarus still manages to clearly render America’s distinct character. It is the can-do spirit of taking those persecuted and poor from around the world and giving them a new opportunity and hope for the future, what she calls “the golden door.” It is a uniquely scrappy and compassionate quality that sets Americans apart from the ancients. The relevance of this poem stretches all the way back to the pilgrims fleeing religious persecution in Europe to the controversies surrounding modern immigrants from Mexico and the Middle East. While circumstances today have changed drastically, there is no denying that this open door was part of what made America great once upon a time. It’s the perfect depiction of this quintessential Americanness that makes “The New Colossus” also outstanding.

Champ or Chump? There's a boastful campaigner named Trump by the Bard of Bat Yam, Poet Laureate of Zion

There's a boastful campaigner named #OyVeyDonald Trump
who is doing quite well on the countrywide stump. 
All his lied, insults and gaffes 
only get him more gruffs laughs. 
Will he wind up a champ or a chump? 

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost (1874-1963) .... a favourite poem of the Bard of Bat Yam , Poet Laureate of Zion

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,
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.

Meaning of the Poem

This poem deals with that big noble question of “How to make a difference in the world?” On first reading, it tells us that the choice one makes really does matter, ending: “I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.”

A closer reading reveals that the lonely choice that was made earlier by our traveling narrator maybe wasn’t all that significant since both roads were pretty much the same anyway (“Had warn them really about the same”) and it is only in the remembering and retelling that it made a difference. We are left to ponder if the narrator had instead traveled down “The Road Not Taken” might it have also made a difference as well. In a sense, “The Road Not Taken” tears apart the traditional view of individualism, which hinges on the importance of choice, as in the case of democracy in general (choosing a candidate), as well as various constitutional freedoms: choice of religion, choice of words (freedom of speech), choice of group (freedom of assembly), and choice of source of information (freedom of press). For example, we might imagine a young man choosing between being a carpenter or a banker later seeing great significance in his choice to be a banker, but in fact there was not much in his original decision at all other than a passing fancy. In this, we see the universality of human beings: the roads leading to carpenter and banker being basically the same and the carpenter and bankers at the end of them—seeming like individuals who made significant choices—really being just part of the collective of the human race.

Then is this poem not about the question “How to make a difference in the world?” after all? No. It is still about this question. The ending is the most clear and striking part. If nothing else, readers are left with the impression that our narrator, who commands beautiful verse, profound imagery, and time itself (“ages and ages hence”) puts value on striving to make a difference. The striving is reconstituted and complicated here in reflection, but our hero wants to make a difference and so should we. That is why this is a great poem, from a basic or close reading perspective.