When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

Summary and Form

This 1865 poem is part of a series of pieces written after Lincoln’s assassination. While it does not display all the conventions of the form, this is nevertheless considered to be a pastoral elegy: a poem of mourning that makes use of elaborate conventions drawn from the natural world and rustic human society. Virgil is the most prominent classical practitioner of the form; Milton’s “Lycidas” and Shelley’s “Adonais” are the two best-known examples in the English tradition. One of the most important features of the pastoral elegy is the depiction of the deceased and the poet who mourns him as shepherds. While the association is not specifically made in this poem, it must surely have been in Whitman’s mind as he wrote: Lincoln, in many ways, was the “shepherd” of the American people during wartime, and his loss left the North in the position of a flock without a leader. As in traditional pastoral elegies, nature mourns Lincoln’s death in this poem, although it does so in some rather unconventional ways (more on that in a moment). The poem also makes reference to the problems of modern times in its brief, shadowy depictions of Civil War battles. The natural order is contrasted with the human one, and Whitman goes so far as to suggest that those who have died violent deaths in war are actually the lucky ones, since they are now beyond suffering.

Above all this is a public poem of private mourning. In it Whitman tries to determine the best way to mourn a public figure, and the best way to mourn in a modern world. In his resignation at the end of the poem, and in his use of disconnected motifs, he suggests that the kind of ceremonial poetry a pastoral elegy represents may no longer have a place in society; instead, symbolic, intensely personal forms must take over.

Commentary

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” is composed of three separate yet simultaneous poems. One follows the progress of Lincoln’s coffin on its way to the president’s burial. The second stays with the poet and his sprig of lilac, meant to be laid on the coffin in tribute, as he ruminates on death and mourning. The third uses the symbols of a bird and a star to develop an idea of a nature sympathetic to yet separate from humanity. The progression of the coffin is followed by a sad irony. Mourners, dressed in black and holding offerings of flowers, turn out in the streets to see Lincoln’s corpse pass by. The Civil War is raging, though, and many of these people have surely lost loved ones of their own. Yet their losses are subsumed in a greater national tragedy, which in its publicness and in the fact that this poem is being written as part of the mourning process, is set up to be a far greater loss than that of their own family members. In this way the poem implicitly asks the question, “What is the worth of a man? Are some men worth more than others?” The poet’s eventual inability to mourn, and the depictions of anonymous death on the battlefields, suggest that something is wrong here.

The poet vacillates on the nature of symbolic mourning. At times he seems to see his offering of the lilac blossom as being symbolically given to all the dead; at other moments he sees it as futile, merely a broken twig. He wonders how best to do honor to the dead, asking how he would decorate the tomb. He suggests that he would fill it with portraits of everyday life and everyday men. This is a far cry from the classical statuary and elaborate floral arrangements usually associated with tombs. The language in the poem follows a similar shift. In the first stanzas the language is formal and at times even archaic, filled with exhortations and rhetorical devices. By the end much of the ceremoniousness has been stripped away; the poet offers only “lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of [his] soul.” Eventually the poet simply leaves behind the sprig of lilac, and “cease[s] from [his] song,” still unsure of just how to mourn properly.

The final image of the poem is of “the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.” All has been worked through save nature, which remains separate and beyond. The death-song of the bird expresses an understanding and a beauty that Whitman, even while he incorporates it into his poem, cannot quite master for himself. Unlike the pastoral elegies of old, which use a temporary rift with nature to comment on modernity, this one shows a profound and permanent disconnection between the human and natural worlds. “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” mourns for Lincoln in a way that is all the more profound for seeing the president’s death as only a smaller, albeit highly symbolic, tragedy in the midst of a world of confusion and sadness.

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Notes made from internet.
source ; https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/whitman/section7/

Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd :

"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd- is an elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln, though it never mentions the president by name. Like most elegies, it develops from the personal (the death of Lincoln and the poet's grief) to the impersonal (the death of "all of you" and death itself); from an intense feeling of grief to the thought of reconciliation. The poem, which is one of the finest Whitman ever wrote, is a dramatization of this feeling of loss. This elegy is grander and more touching than Whitman's other two elegies on Lincoln's death, "0 Captain! My Captain!" and "Hush'd Be the Camps To-day." The form is elegiac but also contains elements found in operatic music, such as the aria and recitative. The song of the hermit thrush, for example, is an "aria."

Abraham Lincoln was shot in Washington, D.C., by Booth on April 14, 1865, and died the following day. The body was sent by train from Washington to Springfield, Illinois. As it crossed the continent, it was saluted by the people of America. Whitman has not only men and women but even natural objects saluting the dead man.

The first cycle of the poem, comprising sections 1-4, presents the setting in clear perspective. As spring returns, the lilacs blossom, and the planet Venus "nearly dropp'd in the western sky," the poet mourns the loss "of him I love." He mourns the "powerful western fallen star" now covered by "black murk" in the "tearful night," and he is "powerless" and "helpless" because the cloud around him "will not free my soul." He observes a lilac bush, is deeply affected by its perfume, and believes that "every leaf [is] a miracle." He breaks off a small branch with "heart-shaped Leaves." A shy, solitary thrush, like a secluded hermit, sings a song which is an expression of its inmost grief. It sings "death's outlet song of life."

This first section of the poem introduces the three principal symbols of the poem — the lilac, the star, and the bird. They are woven into a poetic and dramatic pattern. The meaning of Whitman's symbols is neither fixed nor constant. The star, Venus, is identified with Lincoln, generally, but it also represents the poet's grief for the dead. Lilacs, which are associated with everreturning spring, are a symbol of resurrection, while its heartshaped Leaves symbolize love. The purple color of the lilac, indicating the passion of the Crucifixion, is highly suggestive of the violence of Lincoln's death. The bird is the symbol of reconciliation with death and its song is the soul's voice. "Death's outlet song of life" means that out of death will come renewed life. Death is described as a "dark mother" or a "strong deliveress," which suggests that it is a necessary process for rebirth. The emotional drama in the poem is built around this symbolic framework. The continual recurrence of the spring season symbolizes the cycle of life and death and rebirth. The words "ever-returning spring," which occur in line 3 and are repeated in line 4, emphasize the idea of rebirth and resurrection. The date of Lincoln's assassination coincided with Easter, the time of Christ's resurrection. These two elements provide the setting to the poem in time and space.

The second stanza of the poem describes the poet's intense grief for the dead. Each line begins with "O," an exclamation which is like the shape of a mouth open in woe.

The second cycle of the poem comprises sections 5-9. It describes the journey of the coffin through natural scenery and industrial cities, both representing facets of American life. The thrush's song in section 4 is a prelude to the journey of the coffin which will pass "over the breast of the spring" through cities, woods, wheat fields, and orchards. But "in the midst of life we are in death," as it says in the Book of Common Prayer, and now the cities are "draped in black" and the states, like "crape-veil'd women," mourn and salute the dead. Somber faces, solemn voices, and mournful dirges mark the journey across the American continent.

To the dead man, the poet offers "my sprig of lilac," his obituary tribute. The poet brings fresh blossoms not for Lincoln alone, but for all men. He chants a song "for you 0 sane and sacred death" and offers flowers to "the coffins all of you 0 death."

The poet now addresses the star shining in the western sky: "Now I know what you must have meant." Last month the star seemed as if it "had something to tell" the poet. Whitman imagines that the star was full of woe "as the night advanced" until it vanished "in the netherward black of the night." Whitman calls upon the bird to continue singing. Yet the poet momentarily lingers on, held by the evening star, "my departing comrade."

The symbols are retained throughout this section. The poet bestows, as a mark of affection, a sprig of lilac on the coffin. The association of death with an object of growing life is significant. The star confides in the poet — a heavenly body identifies itself with an earthly being. The star is identified with Lincoln, and the poet is still under the influence of his personal grief for the dead body of Lincoln, and not yet able to perceive the spiritual existence of Lincoln after death. The song of the hermit thrush finally makes the poet aware of the deathless and the spiritual existence of Lincoln.

In the third cycle of the poem, sections 10-13, the poet wonders how he shall sing "for the large sweet soul that has gone." How shall he compose his tribute for the "dead one there I loved"? With his poem he wishes to "perfume the grave of him I love." The pictures on the dead president's tomb, he says, should be of spring and sun and Leaves, a river, hills, and the sky, the city dense with dwellings, and people at work — in short, "all the scenes of life." The "body and soul" of America will be in them, the beauties of Manhattan spires as well as the shores of the Ohio and the Missouri rivers — all "the varied and ample land." The "gray-brown bird" is singing "from the swamps" its "loud human song" of woe. The song has a liberating effect on the poet's soul, although the star still holds him, as does the mastering odor" of the lilac.

In this cycle the description of natural objects and phenomena indicates the breadth of Lincoln's vision, and the "purple" dawn, "delicious" eve, and "welcome" night suggest the continuous, endless cycle of the day, which, in turn, symbolizes Lincoln's immortality.

Sections 14-16 comprise a restatement of the earlier themes and symbols of the poem in a perspective of immortality. The poet remembers that one day while he sat in the peaceful but "unconscious scenery of my land," a cloud with a "long black trail" appeared and enveloped everything. Suddenly he "knew death." He walked between "the knowledge of death" and "the thought of death." He fled to the bird, who sang "the carol of death." The song of the thrush follows this passage. It praises death, which it describes as "lovely," "soothing," and "delicate." The "fathomless universe" is adored "for life and joy" and "sweet love." Death is described as a "dark mother always gliding near with soft feet." To her, the bird sings a song of "fullest welcome." Death is a "strong deliveress" to whom "the body gratefully" nestles.

The thrush's song is the spiritual ally of the poet. As the bird sings, the poet sees a vision: "And I saw askant the armies." He sees "battle-corpses" and the "debris of all the slain soldiers." These dead soldiers are happy in their resting places, but their parents and relatives continue to suffer because they have lost them. The suffering is not of the dead, but of the living.

The coffin has now reached the end of its journey. It passes the visions," the "song of the hermit bird," and the "tallying song" of the poet's soul. "Death's outlet song" is heard, "sinking and fainting," and yet bursting with joy. The joyful psalm fills the earth and heaven. As the coffin passes him, the poet salutes it, reminding himself that the lilac blooming in the dooryard will return each spring. The coffin has reached its resting place in "the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim." The star, the bird, and the lilac join with the poet as he bids goodbye to Lincoln, his "comrade, the dead I loved so well."

The poet's realization of immortality through the emotional conflict of personal loss is the principal theme of this great poem, which is a symbolistic dramatization of the poet's grief and his ultimate reconciliation with the truths of life and death.

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Notes made from Internet Sources

Themes of The Lord of the Flies

Civilization vs. Savagery

The central concern of Lord of the Flies is the conflict between two competing impulses that exist within all human beings: the instinct to live by rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands, and value the good of the group against the instinct to gratify one’s immediate desires, act violently to obtain supremacy over others, and enforce one’s will. This conflict might be expressed in a number of ways: civilization vs. savagery, order vs. chaos, reason vs. impulse, law vs. anarchy, or the broader heading of good vs. evil. Throughout the novel, Golding associates the instinct of civilization with good and the instinct of savagery with evil.

The conflict between the two instincts is the driving force of the novel, explored through the dissolution of the young English boys’ civilized, moral, disciplined behavior as they accustom themselves to a wild, brutal, barbaric life in the jungle. Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, which means that Golding conveys many of his main ideas and themes through symbolic characters and objects. He represents the conflict between civilization and savagery in the conflict between the novel’s two main characters: Ralph, the protagonist, who represents order and leadership; and Jack, the antagonist, who represents savagery and the desire for power.

As the novel progresses, Golding shows how different people feel the influences of the instincts of civilization and savagery to different degrees. Piggy, for instance, has no savage feelings, while Roger seems barely capable of comprehending the rules of civilization. Generally, however, Golding implies that the instinct of savagery is far more primal and fundamental to the human psyche than the instinct of civilization. Golding sees moral behavior, in many cases, as something that civilization forces upon the individual rather than a natural expression of human individuality. When left to their own devices, Golding implies, people naturally revert to cruelty, savagery, and barbarism. This idea of innate human evil is central to Lord of the Flies, and finds expression in several important symbols, most notably the beast and the sow’s head on the stake. Among all the characters, only Simon seems to possess anything like a natural, innate goodness.

Loss of Innocence

As the boys on the island progress from well-behaved, orderly children longing for rescue to cruel, bloodthirsty hunters who have no desire to return to civilization, they naturally lose the sense of innocence that they possessed at the beginning of the novel. The painted savages in Chapter 12 who have hunted, tortured, and killed animals and human beings are a far cry from the guileless children swimming in the lagoon in Chapter 3. But Golding does not portray this loss of innocence as something that is done to the children; rather, it results naturally from their increasing openness to the innate evil and savagery that has always existed within them. Golding implies that civilization can mitigate but never wipe out the innate evil that exists within all human beings. The forest glade in which Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this loss of innocence. At first, it is a place of natural beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in the novel, he discovers the bloody sow’s head impaled upon a stake in the middle of the clearing. The bloody offering to the beast has disrupted the paradise that existed before—a powerful symbol of innate human evil disrupting childhood innocence.

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Conch Shell

Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach at the start of the novel and use it to summon the boys together after the crash separates them. Used in this capacity, the conch shell becomes a powerful symbol of civilization and order in the novel. The shell effectively governs the boys’ meetings, for the boy who holds the shell holds the right to speak. In this regard, the shell is more than a symbol—it is an actual vessel of political legitimacy and democratic power. As the island civilization erodes and the boys descend into savagery, the conch shell loses its power and influence among them. Ralph clutches the shell desperately when he talks about his role in murdering Simon. Later, the other boys ignore Ralph and throw stones at him when he attempts to blow the conch in Jack’s camp. The boulder that Roger rolls onto Piggy also crushes the conch shell, signifying the demise of the civilized instinct among almost all the boys on the island.

Piggy’s Glasses

Piggy is the most intelligent, rational boy in the group, and his glasses represent the power of science and intellectual endeavor in society. This symbolic significance is clear from the start of the novel, when the boys use the lenses from Piggy’s glasses to focus the sunlight and start a fire. When Jack’s hunters raid Ralph’s camp and steal the glasses, the savages effectively take the power to make fire, leaving Ralph’s group helpless.

The Signal Fire

The signal fire burns on the mountain, and later on the beach, to attract the notice of passing ships that might be able to rescue the boys. As a result, the signal fire becomes a barometer of the boys’ connection to civilization. In the early parts of the novel, the fact that the boys maintain the fire is a sign that they want to be rescued and return to society. When the fire burns low or goes out, we realize that the boys have lost sight of their desire to be rescued and have accepted their savage lives on the island. The signal fire thus functions as a kind of measurement of the strength of the civilized instinct remaining on the island. Ironically, at the end of the novel, a fire finally summons a ship to the island, but not the signal fire. Instead, it is the fire of savagery—the forest fire Jack’s gang starts as part of his quest to hunt and kill Ralph.

The Beast

The imaginary beast that frightens all the boys stands for the primal instinct of savagery that exists within all human beings. The boys are afraid of the beast, but only Simon reaches the realization that they fear the beast because it exists within each of them. As the boys grow more savage, their belief in the beast grows stronger. By the end of the novel, the boys are leaving it sacrifices and treating it as a totemic god. The boys’ behavior is what brings the beast into existence, so the more savagely the boys act, the more real the beast seems to become.

The Lord of the Flies

The Lord of the Flies is the bloody, severed sow’s head that Jack impales on a stake in the forest glade as an offering to the beast. This complicated symbol becomes the most important image in the novel when Simon confronts the sow’s head in the glade and it seems to speak to him, telling him that evil lies within every human heart and promising to have some “fun” with him. (This “fun” foreshadows Simon’s death in the following chapter.) In this way, the Lord of the Flies becomes both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure who evokes the beast within each human being. Looking at the novel in the context of biblical parallels, the Lord of the Flies recalls the devil, just as Simon recalls Jesus. In fact, the name “Lord of the Flies” is a literal translation of the name of the biblical name Beelzebub, a powerful demon in hell sometimes thought to be the devil himself.

Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, and Roger

Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, and many of its characters signify important ideas or themes. Ralph represents order, leadership, and civilization. Piggy represents the scientific and intellectual aspects of civilization. Jack represents unbridled savagery and the desire for power. Simon represents natural human goodness. Roger represents brutality and bloodlust at their most extreme. To the extent that the boys’ society resembles a political state, the littluns might be seen as the common people, while the older boys represent the ruling classes and political leaders. The relationships that develop between the older boys and the younger ones emphasize the older boys’ connection to either the civilized or the savage instinct: civilized boys like Ralph and Simon use their power to protect the younger boys and advance the good of the group; savage boys like Jack and Roger use their power to gratify their own desires, treating the littler boys as objects for their own amusement.

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Notes made from Internet sources

Analysis of Pope's The Rape of the Lock

The Rape of the Lock is a humorous indictment of the vanities and idleness of 18th-century high society. Basing his poem on a real incident among families of his acquaintance, Pope intended his verses to cool hot tempers and to encourage his friends to laugh at their own folly.

The poem is perhaps the most outstanding example in the English language of the genre of mock-epic. The epic had long been considered one of the most serious of literary forms; it had been applied, in the classical period, to the lofty subject matter of love and war, and, more recently, by Milton, to the intricacies of the Christian faith. The strategy of Pope’s mock-epic is not to mock the form itself, but to mock his society in its very failure to rise to epic standards, exposing its pettiness by casting it against the grandeur of the traditional epic subjects and the bravery and fortitude of epic heroes: Pope’s mock-heroic treatment in The Rape of the Lock underscores the ridiculousness of a society in which values have lost all proportion, and the trivial is handled with the gravity and solemnity that ought to be accorded to truly important issues. The society on display in this poem is one that fails to distinguish between things that matter and things that do not. The poem mocks the men it portrays by showing them as unworthy of a form that suited a more heroic culture. Thus the mock-epic resembles the epic in that its central concerns are serious and often moral, but the fact that the approach must now be satirical rather than earnest is symptomatic of how far the culture has fallen.

Pope’s use of the mock-epic genre is intricate and exhaustive. The Rape of the Lock is a poem in which every element of the contemporary scene conjures up some image from epic tradition or the classical world view, and the pieces are wrought together with a cleverness and expertise that makes the poem surprising and delightful. Pope’s transformations are numerous, striking, and loaded with moral implications. The great battles of epic become bouts of gambling and flirtatious tiffs. The great, if capricious, Greek and Roman gods are converted into a relatively undifferentiated army of basically ineffectual sprites. Cosmetics, clothing, and jewelry substitute for armor and weapons, and the rituals of religious sacrifice are transplanted to the dressing room and the altar of love.

The verse form of The Rape of the Lock is the heroic couplet; Pope still reigns as the uncontested master of the form. The heroic couplet consists of rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter lines (lines of ten syllables each, alternating stressed and unstressed syllables). Pope’s couplets do not fall into strict iambs, however, flowering instead with a rich rhythmic variation that keeps the highly regular meter from becoming heavy or tedious. Pope distributes his sentences, with their resolutely parallel grammar, across the lines and half-lines of the poem in a way that enhances the judicious quality of his ideas. Moreover, the inherent balance of the couplet form is strikingly well suited to a subject matter that draws on comparisons and contrasts: the form invites configurations in which two ideas or circumstances are balanced, measured, or compared against one another. It is thus perfect for the evaluative, moralizing premise of the poem, particularly in the hands of this brilliant poet.

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Notes made from books and internet sources
https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/rapeofthelock/plot-analysis/

Romantic elements in Kubla Khan

The Romantic lives in a world, not of things, but of images; not of laws, but of metaphors. Although best known for his poetry, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was also an important literary critic who helped to popularize the Romantic Movement among English speaking peoples. Romanticism had emerged from the German Sturm und Drang movement of the second half of the eighteenth century, which itself had arisen as a reaction to Enlightenment philosophy and values. Whereas Enlightenment thinkers envisioned an orderly universe and advocated for the use of reason as guide for productive living, the Sturm und Drang called for a passionate approach to life in a world more sensual than sensible. The Romantics, while maintaining distance from the objective rationalism of the Enlightenment, also distanced themselves from the impetuousness of Sturm und Drang. They focused on a subjective view of reality that, while transcending the strictures of logic and reason, also avoids complete domination by ungoverned emotionalism. For the Romantic, meaning is best found through the use of imagination rather than strict adherence to calculation or passion. Coleridge’s critical essays and his poetry, especially “Kubla Khan,” serve as a Romantic counterargument to the ideals of the Enlightenment as described by Emmanuel Kant in his seminal essay “What is Enlightenment?” Indeed, “Kubla Khan,” in its very form and message, illustrates the Romantic principles that Coleridge advances in his criticism.

S.T. Coleridge may be distinguished as the most representative of the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century. Kubla Khan, a celebratory poem of Coleridge is romantic in its tone, temperament and content.

Coleridge excels his contemporaries in the psychological treatment of the Middle Ages, where, a strange beauty is there to be won by strong imagination out of things unlikely or remote. The exquisite, distant setting of Kubla Khan is laid in harmony with this aspect of Romanticism, that is, “strangeness added to beauty”. The first stanza gives a sensuous, typical pictorial presentation of an earthly paradise, which does not have any historical significance. It is the landscape of Xandu, which Kubla Khan has selected for building his pleasure-dome, on the bank of the river Alph. Thus a medieval, autocratic Chinese monarch forms the subject of the poem. The names--- Xandu, Alph etc.—unfamiliar and wrought with the spirit of mystery, lend to the poem an enchantment of their own. The exotic plot of land is one of teeming nature—garden, hills, serpentine rivulets, forests and spots of vegetation—all these embracing the centrally located “miracle of rare device”, that is, Kubla’s palace. Down the slopes of the green hills runs a “deep romantic chasm”. A mysterious atmosphere hangs over the place as a woman is heard lamenting for her deserted demon-lover. The story derives its origin from the Gothic tales. The nocturnal beauty of the paradisal landscape is maligned by the “waning” lunar crescent. This is a morbid aspect of romanticism. The second part of the poem also exhibits his inclination for medievalism as here the poet transports us to the far-off land of Abyssinia.

It is the perception of “strangeness added to beauty” that makes for the Romantics’ interest in the supernatural—in things veiled under mystery. The essence of Coleridge’s romanticism lies in his artistic rendering of the supernatural phenomena. The “woman wailing for her demon lover” and “the ancestral voices prophesying war” are obviously supernatural occurrences. The process of the genesis of the river—the bursting of the fountain volleying up huge fragments and its subterranean terminus evokes a sense of wonder and awe. Towards the end of the poem the poet is presented as a supernatural being feeding on honey-dew and milk of paradise.

Kubla Khan is remarkable for its sensuousness which is a great romantic feature. It abounds in sensuous and picturesque description of the vast stretch of land overgrown with the beauties of nature:

 “And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree:

And here were forests ancients as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”

The shadow of the dome floating midway on the waves is also sensuous. The sensuousness is further reinforced with the description of the Abyssinian maid playing on her stringed instrument and singing of Mount Abora. The images employed in the poem are sensuous. The dome is an agreed emblem of fulfilment and satisfaction. Its spherical shape is likened to a woman’s breast, both being circular and complete. Moreover, the word “pleasure” is the recurrent qualifier of dome---“a stately pleasure dome” in the line 2, “the dome of pleasure” in the line 31, “a sunny pleasure-dome” in the line 36. The other sensuous images are “thresher’s flail”, “rebounding hail”, “caves of ice”, “sunny dome” etc.

Kubla Khan is essentially a dream-poem recounting in a poetic form what the poet saw in a vision. It has all the marks of a dream—vividness, free association and inconsequence. The dream-like texture of Coleridge’s poem gives it a kind of twilight vagueness intensifying its mystery. This dream-quality contributes greatly to making the poem romantic.

To conclude, it has been rightly said that Coleridge’s poetry is “the most finished, supreme embodiment of all that is purest and ethereal in the romantic spirit”.

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Notes made by using books and Internet sources. 

COLERIDGE AND HIS POETRY

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s place in the canon of English poetry rests on a comparatively small body of achievement: a few poems from the late 1790s and early 1800s and his participation in the revolutionary publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1797. Unlike Wordsworth, his work cannot be understood through the lens of the 1802 preface to the second edition of that book; though it does resemble Wordsworth’s in its idealization of nature and its emphasis on human joy, Coleridge’s poems often favor musical effects over the plainness of common speech. The intentional archaisms of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and the hypnotic drone of “Kubla Khan” do not imitate common speech, creating instead a more strikingly stylized effect.

Further, Coleridge’s poems complicate the phenomena Wordsworth takes for granted: the simple unity between the child and nature and the adult’s reconnection with nature through memories of childhood; in poems such as “Frost at Midnight,” Coleridge indicates the fragility of the child’s innocence by relating his own urban childhood. In poems such as “Dejection: An Ode” and “Nightingale,” he stresses the division between his own mind and the beauty of the natural world. Finally, Coleridge often privileges weird tales and bizarre imagery over the commonplace, rustic simplicities Wordsworth advocates; the “thousand thousand slimy things” that crawl upon the rotting sea in the “Rime” would be out of place in a Wordsworth poem.

If Wordsworth represents the central pillar of early Romanticism, Coleridge is nevertheless an important structural support. His emphasis on the imagination, its independence from the outside world and its creation of fantastic pictures such as those found in the “Rime,” exerted a profound influence on later writers such as Shelley; his depiction of feelings of alienation and numbness helped to define more sharply the Romantics’ idealized contrast between the emptiness of the city—where such feelings are experienced—and the joys of nature. The heightened understanding of these feelings also helped to shape the stereotype of the suffering Romantic genius, often further characterized by drug addiction: this figure of the idealist, brilliant yet tragically unable to attain his own ideals, is a major pose for Coleridge in his poetry.

His portrayal of the mind as it moves, whether in silence (“Frost at Midnight”) or in frenzy (“Kubla Khan”) also helped to define the intimate emotionalism of Romanticism; while much of poetry is constituted of emotion recollected in tranquility, the origin of Coleridge’s poems often seems to be emotion recollected in emotion. But (unlike Wordsworth, it could be argued) Coleridge maintains not only an emotional intensity but also a legitimate intellectual presence throughout his oeuvre and applies constant philosophical pressure to his ideas. In his later years, Coleridge worked a great deal on metaphysics and politics, and a philosophical consciousness infuses much of his verse—particularly poems such as “The Nightingale” and “Dejection: An Ode,” in which the relationship between mind and nature is defined via the specific rejection of fallacious versions of it. The mind, to Coleridge, cannot take its feeling from nature and cannot falsely imbue nature with its own feeling; rather, the mind must be so suffused with its own joy that it opens up to the real, independent, “immortal” joy of nature.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

The Transformative Power of the Imagination

Coleridge believed that a strong, active imagination could become a vehicle for transcending unpleasant circumstances. Many of his poems are powered exclusively by imaginative flights, wherein the Speaker temporarily abandons his immediate surroundings, exchanging them for an entirely new and completely fabricated experience. Using the imagination in this way is both empowering and surprising because it encourages a total and complete disrespect for the confines of time and place. These mental and emotional jumps are often well rewarded. Perhaps Coleridge’s most famous use of imagination occurs in “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” (1797), in which the speaker employs a keen poetic mind that allows him to take part in a journey that he cannot physically make. When he “returns” to the bower, after having imagined himself on a fantastic stroll through the countryside, the speaker discovers, as a reward, plenty of things to enjoy from inside the bower itself, including the leaves, the trees, and the shadows. The power of imagination transforms the prison into a perfectly pleasant spot.

The Interplay of Philosophy, Piety, and Poetry

Coleridge used his poetry to explore conflicting issues in philosophy and religious piety. Some critics argue that Coleridge’s interest in philosophy was simply his attempt to understand the imaginative and intellectual impulses that fueled his poetry. To support the claim that his imaginative and intellectual forces were, in fact, organic and derived from the natural world, Coleridge linked them to God, spirituality, and worship. In his work, however, poetry, philosophy, and piety clashed, creating friction and disorder for Coleridge, both on and off the page. In “The Eolian Harp” (1795), Coleridge struggles to reconcile the three forces. Here, the speaker’s philosophical tendencies, particularly the belief that an “intellectual breeze” (47) brushes by and inhabits all living things with consciousness, collide with those of his orthodox wife, who disapproves of his unconventional ideas and urges him to Christ. While his wife lies untroubled, the speaker agonizes over his spiritual conflict, caught between Christianity and a unique, individual spirituality that equates nature with God. The poem ends by discounting the pantheist spirit, and the speaker concludes by privileging God and Christ over nature and praising them for having healed him from the spiritual wounds inflicted by these unorthodox views.

Nature and the Development of the Individual

Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other romantic poets praised the unencumbered, imaginative soul of youth, finding images in nature with which to describe it. According to their formulation, experiencing nature was an integral part of the development of a complete soul and sense of personhood. The death of his father forced Coleridge to attend school in London, far away from the rural idylls of his youth, and he lamented the missed opportunities of his sheltered, city-bound adolescence in many poems, including “Frost at Midnight” (1798). Here, the speaker sits quietly by a fire, musing on his life, while his infant son sleeps nearby. He recalls his boarding school days, during which he would both daydream and lull himself to sleep by remembering his home far away from the city, and he tells his son that he shall never be removed from nature, the way the speaker once was. Unlike the speaker, the son shall experience the seasons and shall learn about God by discovering the beauty and bounty of the natural world. The son shall be given the opportunity to develop a relationship with God and with nature, an opportunity denied to both the speaker and Coleridge himself. For Coleridge, nature had the capacity to teach joy, love, freedom, and piety, crucial characteristics for a worthy, developed individual.

Motifs

Conversation Poems

Coleridge wanted to mimic the patterns and cadences of everyday speech in his poetry. Many of his poems openly address a single figure—the speaker’s wife, son, friend, and so on—who listens silently to the simple, straightforward language of the speaker. Unlike the descriptive, long, digressive poems of Coleridge’s classicist predecessors, Coleridge’s so-called conversation poems are short, self-contained, and often without a discernable poetic form. Colloquial, spontaneous, and friendly, Coleridge’s conversation poetry is also highly personal, frequently incorporating events and details of his domestic life in an effort to widen the scope of possible poetic content. Although he sometimes wrote in Blank Verse, unrhymed Iambic Pentameter, he adapted this metrical form to suit a more colloquial rhythm. Both Wordsworth and Coleridge believed that everyday language and speech rhythms would help broaden poetry’s audience to include the middle and lower classes, who might have felt excluded or put off by the form and content of neoclassicists, such as Alexander Pope, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and John Dryden.

Delight in the Natural World

Like the other romantics, Coleridge worshiped nature and recognized poetry’s capacity to describe the beauty of the natural world. Nearly all of Coleridge’s poems express a respect for and delight in natural beauty. Close observation, great attention to detail, and precise descriptions of color aptly demonstrate Coleridge’s respect and delight. Some poems, such as “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” “Youth and Age” (1834), and “Frost at Midnight,” mourn the speakers’ physical isolation from the outside world. Others, including “The Eolian Harp,” use images of nature to explore philosophical and analytical ideas. Still other poems, including “The Nightingale” (ca. 1798), simply praise nature’s beauty. Even poems that don’t directly deal with nature, including “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” derive some symbols and images from nature. Nevertheless, Coleridge guarded against the Pathetic Fallacy, or the attribution of human feeling to the natural world. To Coleridge, nature contained an innate, constant joyousness wholly separate from the ups and downs of human experience.

Prayer

Although Coleridge’s prose reveals more of his religious philosophizing than his poetry, God, Christianity, and the act of prayer appear in some form in nearly all of his poems. The son of an Anglican vicar, Coleridge vacillated from supporting to criticizing Christian tenets and the Church of England. Despite his criticisms, Coleridge remained defiantly supportive of prayer, praising it in his notebooks and repeatedly referencing it in his poems. He once told the novelist Thomas de Quincey that prayer demanded such close attention that it was the one of the hardest actions of which human hearts were capable. The conclusion to Part 1of Christabel portrays Christabel in prayer, “a lovely sight to see” (279). In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the mariner is stripped of his ability to speak as part of his extreme punishment and, consequently, left incapable of praying. “The Pains of Sleep” (1803) contrasts the speaker at restful prayer, in which he prays silently, with the speaker at passionate prayer, in which he battles imaginary demons to pray aloud. In the sad poem, “Epitaph” (1833), Coleridge composes an epitaph for himself, which urges people to pray for him after he dies. Rather than recommend a manner or method of prayer, Coleridge’s poems reflect a wide variety, which emphasizes his belief in the importance of individuality.

Symbols

The Sun

Coleridge believed that symbolic language was the only acceptable way of expressing deep religious truths and consistently employed the sun as a symbol of God. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge compares the sun to “God’s own head” (97) and, later, attributes the first phase of the mariner’s punishment to the sun, as it dehydrates the crew. All told, this poem contains eleven references to the sun, many of which signify the Christian conception of a wrathful, vengeful God. Bad, troubling things happen to the crew during the day, while smooth sailing and calm weather occur at night, by the light of the moon. Frequently, the sun stands in for God’s influence and power, as well as a symbol of his authority. The setting sun spurs philosophical musings, as in “The Eolian Harp,” and the dancing rays of sunlight represent a pinnacle of nature’s beauty, as in “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison.”

The Moon

Like the sun, the moon often symbolizes God, but the moon has more positive connotations than the sun. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the sun and the moon represent two sides of the Christian God: the sun represents the angry, wrathful God, whereas the moon represents the benevolent, repentant God. All told, the moon appears fourteen times in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and generally favorable things occur during night, in contrast to the horrors that occur during the day. For example, the mariner’s curse lifts and he returns home by moonlight. “Dejection: An Ode” (1802) begins with an epitaph about the new moon and goes on to describe the beauty of a moonlit night, contrasting its beauty with the speaker’s sorrowful soul. Similarly, “Frost at Midnight” also praises the moon as it illuminates icicles on a winter evening and spurs the speaker to great thought.

Dreams and Dreaming

Coleridge explores dreams and dreaming in his poetry to communicate the power of the imagination, as well as the inaccessible clarity of vision. “Kubla Khan” is subtitled “A Vision in a Dream.” According to Coleridge, he fell asleep while reading and dreamed of a marvelous pleasure palace for the next few hours. Upon awakening, he began transcribing the dream-vision but was soon called away; when he returned, he wrote out the fragments that now comprise “Kubla Khan.” Some critics doubt Coleridge’s story, attributing it to an attempt at increasing the poem’s dramatic effect. Nevertheless, the poem speaks to the imaginative possibilities of the subconscious. Dreams usually have a pleasurable connotation, as in “Frost at Midnight.” There, the speaker, lonely and insomniac as a child at boarding school, comforts himself by imagining and then dreaming of his rural home. In his real life, however, Coleridge suffered from nightmares so terrible that sometimes his own screams would wake him, a phenomenon he details in “The Pains of Sleep.” Opium probably gave Coleridge a sense of well-being that allowed him to sleep without the threat of nightmares.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Notes made with the help of internet sources.

Ecocritical Reading of Ruskin Bond’s Children’s Stories

Ecocriticism demonstrates how nature is presented in literature. As defined by Glotfelty:

Ecocriticism as a critical stance has "one foot in literature and the other on land; as a theoretical discourse, it negotiates between the human and the nonhuman."

It studies representations of nature in literary works and of the relationship between literature and the environment. It redirects readers from “ego-consciousness to eco-consciousness” and draws our attention towards an alarming environmental problem. My attempt through this paper will be to explore the contribution of Ruskin Bond’s short stories especially An Island of Trees to the ecological consciousness advocated by Ecocriticism today. Ecocriticism studies the relationship between literature and the physical environment. As sited in an article entitled ‘Ecology and Literature’, it also bears a similarity to Feminist criticism and Marxist criticism. When we examine Feminist criticism, it can be seen that it examines language from a gender-conscious perspective and Marxist criticism elicits an awareness of modes of production and economic class to its reading of texts. Similarly, Ecocriticism is based on an "earth centred approach to literary studies." All ecological criticism points to the fact that "human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it."

Bond’s short stories evince that humans should treat themselves as part of nature, promote an ecological vision, and establish a harmonious relationship with nature. Bond has endeared himself as a writer who opens ‘magic casements’ in his nature writings while his delightful accounts of nature might not altogether be unexpected of someone dedicated to the craft of writing and who has made the forests and mountains his home for decades and lives there like a “complete pagan’.

According to M. Vannucci, The Atharva Veda says:

“Nature is to be understood as a friend, revered as mother, obeyed as father and nurtured as a beloved child. Nature is sacred because man depends entirely on it and because of this everything is sanctified, including man and the terrifying aspects of nature itself, such as glaciers, landslides, earthquakes, storms …” (75).

As observed, Man belongs to the earth in much the same way as animals and plants do. Human beings are species of animal, part of the ecosystem of the earth and dependent upon it for their survival. The human species is a product of a long process called evolution in which the "ecological balance played a decisive role". (J. Donald Hughes, 20)

Ruskin Bond’s simple, yet highly evocative writing reflects a deep kinship with nature. So, in his works, he hails the presence of weeds, wet and wilderness. He feels executing his thought through an adult, urbanised and industrial mind would have been unreal and unjustified, so he brings the task to the innocent saplings of nature. Nature’s comforting presence in the lives of children is nicely captured and portrayed in the stories of Ruskin Bond. His stories prompt readers to contemplate on the humblest aspect of nature. Further, his belief in mystical unity is embodied in images of a mountain pool, a banyan tree, a cherry tree or an island of trees that have become small ecosystems representing the universe in a microcosm. Children in Bond’s creative world are presented in a safe and benign place where there is loving, nurturing relationship between children and adults. Bond’s stories are set in small towns of India, where summertime serves as a metaphor for the carefree age of mischief and fun, conveying a mood of comfort, optimism and joyousness. Insights from ecology open up newer possibilities, and give new dimensions to child consciousness in Bond’s writing. My study of Bond’s Stories is done by keeping in view the domains and configurations of children’s world and Ecocriticism.

According to Paul Shepard:

 "Man is in the world and his ecology is the nature of that inness. He is in the world as is in a room, and in transience, as in the belly of a tiger or in love."(1).

Man's superiority arises out of the fact that he considers himself to be the only creature endowed with the ability to speak and therefore considers himself as the only species on the planet worthy of being a topic of discourse. But ecology presents a different picture, humbling man to a non-entity.

Short Stories of Ruskin Bond explain the interconnectedness of man and the natural environment and concentrates on the processes and relationships which govern the interaction of ideas, creatures, and environment.  Writings of Bond show how literature affects and changes the reader's attitudes towards the environment and into a more environmentally sound behaviour. The world of child as we see in Bond’s stories is a safe and benign one, where nature and humans exist in harmony. Bond’s philosophy is that “in everything is good, in everything is beauty”. This theme is distilled to its essence in his simple lyrical verses to each new sunrise and the beautiful night that follows, to old trees that bless the house with their shade, to foolish beetles without a sense of direction, to a lovely fox dancing, and to a boy riding a mule on the rough mountain path. In nature, Bond finds the personal qualities to a lead a meaningful life: a quiet and gentle voice to comfort others and a story and upright demeanour like the chestnuts and pines, but also to be humble like the willow/ which bows low gracefully’ (Growing With Love)

A symbolic relationship between people and trees is also presented. In the poem entitled GRANNY’S TREE CLIMBING, an elderly grandmother is willing to

“grow old disgracefully” (pg. 92)

but she can’t give up her tree climbing because,

 “Ever since her childhood, she’d had this gift

   For being happier in a tree than in a lift” (pg. 93)

Bond believes that trees have an enduring presence in our lives; they are our connections to the past, even in the midst of the change, as is shown in the following lines:

“I listen to their whisperings

Their own mysterious diction

And bow my heads before their arms

And ask for benediction.”      (pg. 63)

The writer moves from idyllic view of nature to a more realistic one in order to show that children are part of nature’s battle for survival. Bond began writing for children with rather romantic pastoral images of childhood but he became more realistic as time went by. His child protagonists do not just revel in glory of their natural surroundings; they face danger, natural disasters or death or illness of an adult caregiver. They go on adventures and solve mysteries. Their adventures are associated with surviving floods, forest fires, earthquakes or predators and the mysteries they solve pertain to an understanding of their place in nature’s Universal Scheme. Bond explores his protagonist’s changing relationship with the river, from deep love and gratitude for its many boons to an awareness of its duality, to an understanding of its mystical nature.

Like the protagonists of his nature stories, Bond has developed a loving relationship with trees. The theme of tree planting recurs in several of Bond’s stories. In the autobiographical ONCE UPON A MONSOON TIME, the protagonist and his father are shown planting trees on a rocky island in a dry river bed, hoping that the saplings will be left alone and that floods will not wash them away.

“Just think- just imagine!- ten years from now this little island may be a green paradise, and birds and squirrels and insects will be living in the trees we’ve planted”

Another story entitled A HORNBILL CALLED HAROLD, presents a vivid graphic imagery employed by Bond. The memorable enactment of the bird’s life from the moment of its birth to its death is captured picturesquely in only four pages. We actually see the bird with his flaming red bill and his rouge pot, dancing and tumbling like a circus clown and hear him too chuckling to himself before the onset of a shower. When he is dead the author rounds off his account with a brief prayer that brings a lump to the reader’s throat. Thus Nature in Bond’s tales is always present as an individual. From the ecocritical perspective, we find Nature in Bond’s stories to be having an individual and unique persona which is unmatched and is essential for every aspect and phase of human life. The nature presented in Bond’s tales is not part of the story’s backdrop; rather it is a character, without which the entire anatomy of the story will be shattered completely.

In MY FATHER’S TREES IN DEHRA, the protagonist, now an adult, revisits this spot and is amazed that the trees are thriving and that his father’s dream has come true. As a writer Bond believes trees to be the best critics, because as long as he is aware of their presence he can try avoiding trivial and banal in his writings.

In his poems, short stories, novels for children Bond’s characters come to a realization of their spiritual affinity with nature through a single manifestation of nature. Whether it is a raindrop, a cherry tree, a hidden pool, a water-stream, a banyan tree, a single facet serves as a symbol of harmony with nature and a transcendental vision of life. Poems and stories in An Island of Trees prompt young readers to contemplate the significance of the humblest aspect of nature. They celebrate a direct interaction with nature. Whether it is the lullaby that encourages Rakesh not to be afraid of the dark night and big river, as exhibited in the following lines:

“Little one, don’t be afraid of this big river.

  Be safe in these warm arms for ever.

  ….

 Love well, my son, laugh all day long,

 But do not take from any man his song (pg. 23)

The bravery of a snail crossing the hazardous road to get its meals, as seen in the following lines:

“Leaving the safety of a rocky ledge

The snail sets out

On his long journey

Across a busy path.

….

He’s there at last,his prize-

Rich leaf-mould where the grass grows tall.

I salute you, snail.

Somehow, you’ve made me feel quite small.”(pg. 86)

 or the owl’s right hoot in the night as seen in:

“If men must speak,

Then owls must hoot-

They have the right.

On me it casts no spell:

Rather, it seems to cry,

“The night is good- all’s well, all’s well.” (pg. 69)

or the bat doing stunts under the furniture; each poem respects the unique qualities and differences of others and declares that we can all live in harmony by “not taking from any man his song”.

Christopher Manes observes:

"As hominids, we dwell at the outermost fringes of important ecological processes such as photosynthesis and the conversion of biomass into usable nutrients." Therefore man's claim as "the paragon of animals or the torchbearer of evolution" falls flat before this ecological fact. For example if fungus, one of the "lowliest" of forms on a humanistic scale of values, were to go extinct tomorrow, the effect on the rest of the biosphere would be disastrous, since the health of forests depends on this fungus. The disappearance of forests in turn would disrupt the hydrology, atmosphere, and temperature of the entire globe. On the other hand if Homo sapiens disappeared the event would go virtually unnoticed by the vast majority of the earth's life forms. (24)

Similarly earthworms though in appearance "a small and despicable link in the chain of nature" if lost would make a "lamentable chasm". Viewing ecology as a study of a natural web of life points to the fact that man stands somewhere in the web. (Worster8).

A word about Bond’s characterization is also needed here. Each one of Bond’s characters is a vividly realized presence whether it is the Grandfather with his “sun burnt face and short red beard” or Binya with her “pink cheeks and dark eyes and black hair tied in a pigtail’, or the mischievous Toto - all come to life at the artist’s stroke of the brush. As for an element of sensuousness mouth-watering descriptions of some of the choicest delicacies scattered across the pages and loving elaborated upon can assure the author a permanent place not only in the child’s but the adult heart’s as well.

Bond achieves his effects through an engaging style of narration with a liberal shower of both pathos and humour. If he can tickle our ribs with descriptions of a hornbill snatching away a lighted cigar from the hand of an American cousin, or a crocodile sliding into the water with a cot on its back; he can at the same time stir our hearts with accounts of a little girl’s touching devotion to her old and helpless grandfather in the wake of her grandmother’s death. Irony is not missing either in these stories. Bond’s nature poems and stories gently prod readers toward re-examining their relationship with nature toward introspection and self-knowledge and toward establishing harmony between the spiritual and material spheres. They offer a mode of creative enquiry by which “microcosmic man can be brought into harmony with the macrocosmic universe through visualization of the divine pattern.”

 Works Cited:

Bond, Ruskin. An Island of Trees, Delhi, Ratna Sagar P.Ltd, 2000. Print.

Bond, Ruskin. Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra. Delhi, Penguin, 2000. Print.

Alda, Anita: Ecocriticism and Ruskin Bond’s Short Stories.(JSTOR)

Ecology and Literature: Beehive Digital Concepts Cochin for Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam(JSTOR)
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My Research Paper @ the beginning of my Ph.D