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900
UNIT
5
The Victorian
Period
1832–1901
COLLECTION 9
Love and Loss
COLLECTION 10
The Transept of The Great Exhibition of 1851 by Joseph Nash (1808-1878) Watercolor and bodycolor.
Inv.:73-1898 Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The Paradox of Progress
“For each age is a dream that is
dying, / Or one that is coming
to birth.”
—Arthur O’Shaughnessy
How can appearance
be different from
reality?
Learn It Online
Find out more about this historical period online.
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L12-901
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901
The Victorian Period
1832–1901
This time line represents a snapshot of British literary events, British
historical events, and world events that took place primarily during
the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. During this period,
Great Britain expanded as an industrial nation and as an empire, but
beneath the successes were many social and moral problems.
1832
1837–1838 Charles Dickens
publishes installments of
Oliver Twist, a novel revealing
the exploitation of poor
children in Victorian England
1850
1848 Poet Dante Gabriel
Rossetti and others form the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,
a group of artists who reject
the ugliness of modern life
1847 Emily Brontë publishes
Wuthering Heights; her sister
Charlotte Brontë publishes
Jane Eyre, a novel about a
young woman coming of age
1857 Mary Ann Evans publishes stories, using her pen
name George Eliot
1865 Charles Darwin publishes his controversial scientific
study On the Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection
1867 Lewis Carroll publishes
Alice in Wonderland
1832
1845 Potato famine begins in
Ireland; close to one million
die of starvation and disease;
massive emigration begins
1842 Great Britain wins First
Opium War, forcing China to
open ports to trade in opium
from British-controlled India;
Hong Kong yielded to Britain
1847 Ten Hours Act limits the
number of hours women and
children can work in factories
1854 Florence Nightingale
nurses soldiers in the Crimea
1858 Change in laws allow
Lionel de Rothschild to
become first Jewish member
of Parliament
1850
1836 Mexican army defeats
Texans at the Alamo
1861 U.S. Civil War begins
902 Unit 5
1869 Suez Canal opens,
allowing two-way navigation
between Europe and Asia
Inaguration procession of the Suez Canal (1865) by Eduoard
Riou. Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs, Paris.
1867 Second Reform Bill gives
the vote to most male industrial workers
1832
Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressing the first
Women’s Rights Convention.
The Granger Collection, NY.
1867 Matthew Arnold publishes “Dover Beach,” a poem
that mourns a world without
faith
1850
1832 The First Reform Bill
extends voting rights to men
who own property worth ten
pounds or more in annual rent
1848 Women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls,
New York
Alice with the Duchess, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in
Wonderland by John Tenniel. Color lithograph.
1867 Last Japanese shogun
resigns; power returns to
emperor; old feudal system
abolished in 1871; severe
social problems result
1869 Mohandas K. Gandhi is
born in India; he later leads
India to independence and
inspires civil rights worldwide
1869 Leo Tolstoy completes
his novel War and Peace
in Russia
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Evaluate and analyze the
philosophical, political, religious, ethical, and social influences
of a historical period. Reading Skills Identify and under-
stand chronological order; identify and understand graphic
elements; use text organizers such as overviews, headings,
and graphic features to locate and categorize information.
Your Turn
Which details in the time line suggest the major social and moral concerns that dominated
Britain during this time?
1870
1890
1878 Thomas Hardy publishes The Return of the Native,
a pessimistic novel about thwarted desire
1895 Oscar Wilde’s satiric comedy The Importance of Being
Earnest is staged, mocking an idle social class that has
outlived its time
1887 Arthur Conan Doyle
introduces Sherlock Holmes in
A Study in Scarlet
1901
1901 Rudyard Kipling publishes Kim, a novel that presents
a picture of English colonial life in the teeming world of
India
Oscar Wilde.
Sherlock Holmes (1901).
The Stapleton Collection, London.
1870
1890
1901
1879 Zulu War against
British in South Africa
begins; Zulu nation eventually defeated
1899 Second Boer War begins,
leading to absorption of two African republics into British Empire
1901 Queen Victoria dies
1889 Emmeline Parkhurst
forms women’s suffrage
organization
Pankhurst is arrested outside
Buckingham Palace. The Granger
Collection, NY.
Queen Victoria, c. 1890.
1870
1890
1880 Dostoyevsky publishes novels Crime and Punishment
and The Brothers Karamazov in Russia
1893 Henry Ford builds his first car in
Detroit, Michigan
1885 Mark Twain publishes novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the U.S.
1898 After the sinking of the battleship
Maine, the U.S. declares war on Spain
1885 Indian National Congress is formed; begins agitating
for Indian self-rule
1901 The first Nobel Prize is awarded
1901
Henry Ford (1853–1947) photographed with his
first automobile in 1896.
The Granger Collection, NY.
Unit Introduction
903
The Victorian1832
Period
– 19 0 1
The Victorian period was a time of vast social, political, and economic progress;
It was also a time of great suffering among the urban poor who lived in filthy
tenements in the industrial cities. The self-confidence as well as the problems
and anxieties of the age are revealed in the works of the great Victorian writers.
Social commentary became a trend, and the novel rose in prominence.
Riots and Reforms
Progress Brings
Prosperity
Decorum and Doubt
History of the Times The Reform
Bill of 1832 answered some of
the demands of the rising middle
classes. When widespread unemployment and soaring bread prices
gave way to a severe depression,
riots broke out. The repeal of the
tax that had forced bread prices up
helped save England from revolution.
History of the Times A spirit of
optimism lifted England in the
middle of the century. Free trade
with Europe brought prosperity
to some, while a series of factory
acts improved the lives of the
working class. New legislation
made education free and mandatory for every child.
History of the Times Middle-class
society held to strict codes of decorum and morality. Many believed
that life would be improved if
it were more refined and better
policed. Despite the optimism of the
age, some people mocked the codes
of decorum and questioned the
view that material comforts satisfied
human needs.
Literature of the Times The enormously popular novels of Charles
Dickens exposed the suffering of
poor people and helped move the
nation toward reform.
Literature of the Times Thomas
Babington Macaulay, a representative writer of this period, based
his optimism on the belief that
history, technology, free enterprise, and God were working
toward the betterment of human
beings.
Literature of the Times Matthew
Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach” gave
voice to the doubts and anxieties of
the late Victorian period.
904 Unit 5
others, and the common elements across cultures; identify
and understand elements of text structures (including headings and sections).
Riots and Reforms
UNIT 5 INTRODUCTION
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Evaluate and analyze the
philosophical, political, religious, ethical, and social influences of a historical period. Reading Skills Read widely
to increase knowledge of the student’s culture, the culture of
History of the Times
Literature of the Times
The first decade of Victoria’s reign was troubled.
Although the Reform Bill of 1832 appeased the
middle classes by giving the vote to more landowning
men, the growth of industry led to serious social
problems. In 1837, the year Victoria became queen,
the country entered a severe depression that by 1842
had put 1.5 million unemployed workers on some
form of poverty relief. This period became known as
the Hungry Forties.
Government commissions learned of children
mangled when they fell asleep at machines at the
end of a twelve-hour working day. They discovered
young girls and boys hauling sledges of coal through
narrow mine tunnels and working shifts so long that
in winter they saw the sun only on Sundays.
In Ireland a potato famine (1845–1849) killed
perhaps a million and forced another two million to
emigrate. Some went to England, where they lived in
crowded slums that had two toilets for 250 people.
The cities became filthy and disorderly as the population swelled.
Massive political rallies were held in the 1840s
to protest policies that kept the price of bread high
and deprived most working men (and all women) of
the vote. Finally, Parliament repealed the tax that had
forced bread prices up. In 1867, the Second Reform
Act gave the right to vote to most working-class men.
A series of factory acts limited child labor by reducing the workday to ten hours.
The novels of Charles Dickens, the most
important figure in Victorian literature, attacked
the excesses of Victorian affluence. They also
attacked the neglect and exploitation of decent
people. Children in his novels endure terrible
suffering, including abuse from adults.
Other early Victorian writers who contributed
to social reforms include John Ruskin and William
Thackery. Ruskin, a leading art and social critic,
wrote on the problems of smog. Thackery, who wrote
Vanity Fair, commented on social pretense.
The General Post Office at One Minute to Six by George Elgar Hicks (1824–1914).
The Museum of London, U.K.
Comprehension Check
What social problems in the Victorian era resulted from
material progress?
Fast Facts
Historical Highlights
• Industrialization leads to the growth of slums.
• Tax reform lowers bread prices and helps prevent revolution.
• A series of reform bills eventually gives greater power to the
middle class by extending the vote to more men.
Literary Highlights
• Charles Dickens uses humor in his novels to attack moral and
social injustices.
• Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” voices doubts in the age of
progress.
Learn It Online
Learn more about this historical period online.
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L12-905
Go
Unit Introduction 905
KEY CONCEPT
Progress Brings Prosperity
India and Ireland to China and Africa. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Great Britain’s power
extended to 200 million people beyond its borders.
During this era, England made great strides in
improving social and political conditions. Reformers made their mark. Florence Nightingale’s work in
improving sanitation and nursing in hospitals
during the Crimean War resulted in better medical
care throughout the world. Social worker Octavia
Hill worked on housing reform and conservation,
and Josephine Butler campaigned for better
treatment of women and girls.
In addition, education improved dramatically.
With new legislation, education became free and
required for every child. In 1870, Great Britain
passed a law establishing state-supported schools.
Schooling became mandatory in 1880, and in 1891
it was guaranteed to be free. As a result of better
schooling, literacy increased, and the reading public
expanded.
Though the Industrial Revolution created problems,
it also steadily created new roads, new towns,
new goods, new wealth, and new jobs for tens of
thousands of people climbing up the levels of the
middle class.
A new spirit of optimism lifted the nation during
the middle years of the century. Reason and courage,
most Victorians believed, could overcome the problems that had festered in the 1840s. In no other
period of English culture before (and maybe since)
were new ideas discussed and debated so vigorously
by such a large segment of society. The Victorians
were also voracious readers: They read not only
the massive novels of Charles Dickens, William
Thackeray, George Eliot, and Charlotte Brontë but
also lengthy essays and religious tracts.
On the domestic front, the nation was stable
and peaceful. On the world stage, Great Britain was
expanding its empire, moving beyond its control of
The BRITISH EMPIRE
circa 1901
5
12
8
6
23
19
3
13
17
25
24
11
27
21
10
30
9
14
29
4
16
31
32
1
26
20
15
28
18
17 Malaysia
2 Bahamas
18 Mauritius
3 Bangladesh
19 Myanmar
4 Botswana
20 New Zealand
5 Canada
21 Nigeria
6 Cyprus
22 Pakistan
7 Egypt
23 Palestine
8 England
24 Papua New
(including Scotland
and Wales)
22
7
2
1 Australia
25 Sierra Leone
10 Guyana
26 South Africa
11 India
27 Sudan
12 Ireland (including 28 Swaziland
Northern Ireland)
29 Tanzania
13 Jamaica
30 Uganda
14 Kenya
31 Zambia
15 Lesotho
32 Zimbabwe
16 Malawi
906 Unit 5
Guinea
9 Ghana
The most eloquent spokesman for Victorian progress
and optimism was Thomas Babington Macaulay.
Macaulay believed that history, technology, free
enterprise, and God were all working in harmony
toward the betterment of human beings. Macaulay
admired cleanliness and order. He wanted London
streets free of garbage, drained, paved, lighted at
night, and patrolled by a sober police force. He
described the progress Victorian London had made
in cleaning up its streets:
We should greatly err if we were to suppose that any of the streets
and squares then bore the same aspect as at present. … If the
most fashionable parts of the capital could be placed before us,
such as they then were, we should be disgusted by their squalid
appearance, and poisoned by their noisome atmosphere. In Covent
Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to the dwellings
of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbage stalks
and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the
Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Durham.
—from A History of England by Thomas Babington Macaulay
Victorian Inventions
The Victorian period was a time of innovation in science and technology. In fact, Victorians believed in the power of invention—that
humans could solve problems in their environment by using their
intellects. Many staples of life today were Victorian inventions.
antiseptic—In 1867, Joseph Lister developed antiseptic techniques
for treating wounds.
bicycle—Kirkpatrick Macmillan invented the bicycle in 1869.
chloroform—James Simpson in 1848 discovered chloroform, an
effective anesthetic.
fingerprinting—Sir Francis Galton in 1872 established the method
of fingerprinting for identification in
forensics.
Kelvin temperature scale—William
Thomson (Lord Kelvin) developed this
scale in 1848.
modern photography—In 1835,
William Henry Fox Talbot developed
modern photography by using lightsensitive paper and short exposure
times.
postage stamp—Roland Hill developed the idea of a uniform postal
charge, and in 1840 the first stamp was
produced.
The Cyclist by Giuseppe Wulz.
Museo de Storia della Fotografia
subway—In 1863, London opened
Fratelli Alinari, Florence/Alinari.
the world’s first subway system, the
Metropolitan.
U N I T 050 _I INNTTRROODTUACBT I O N
Progress was robust in science as well. Scientists
came to understand the earth, its creatures, and its
natural laws. Geologists worked out the history
written in rocks and fossils. Darwin used his observations in the Galápagos Islands to explain the origin
of species. Major advances were made in chemistry,
physics, and medicine.
The showcase of the age was an enormous structure of glass and steel known as the Crystal Palace.
The “palace” was designed to show, through the wonders of modern science and industry, England’s confidence in its present and future accomplishments.
(The Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire in 1936.)
Ask Yourself
What inventions have been made in the past
fifty years? Do those inventions help solve
problems in our environments?
Comprehension Check
What specific advances in social welfare, political rights,
education, and science were made in the Victorian age?
KEY CONCEPT
Decorum and Doubt
Many Victorians thought of
themselves as progressing morally and
intellectually, as well as materially. In
fact, the powerful, mainly middle-class
obsession with gentility or decorum
has made prudery almost a synonym
for Victorianism. Book publishers and
magazine editors deleted or altered
words and episodes that might, in the
phrase of the day, bring “a blush to the
cheek” of a young person.
Sex, birth, and death were softened in art and popular fiction by
sentimental conventions, made into
tender courtships, joyous motherhoods, and deathbed scenes in which
old people were saints and babies were
angels. In the real world, people were
arrested for distributing information
about sexually transmitted diseases.
Victorian society regarded seduced or adulterous
women (but not their male partners) as “fallen” and
pushed them to the margins of society.
Victorian decorum also supported powerful
ideas about authority. Many Victorians were uneasy
about giving strong authority to a central government. In Victorian private lives, however, the autocratic father of middle-class households is a vivid figure in both fact (Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s father,
for example, forbade all of his children to marry) and
fiction.
Women were subject to male authority. Middleclass women especially were expected to marry and
make their homes a comfortable refuge for their
husbands from the male domains of business, politics, and the professions. Women who did not marry
had few occupations open to them. Working-class
women could find jobs as servants in prosperous
households, while unmarried middle-class women
could be governesses or teachers.
908 Unit 5
The Apple of their Eye by James Waite (1832–1920).
The excesses, cruelties, and hypocrisies of all
these repressions were obvious to many Victorians.
However, the codes and barriers of decorum changed
slowly because they were part of the ideology of
progress. Prudery and social order were intended to
control the immorality and sexual excesses that the
Victorians associated with the violent political revolutions of the eighteenth century.
Despite the confidence of the age, there were
voices asking questions and raising doubts. Speaking
for many of their contemporaries, and speaking to
others whom they thought shallow and complacent,
Victorian writers asked whether material comfort
fully satisfied human needs and wishes. They questioned the cost of exploiting the earth and human
beings. They protested or mocked Victorian codes of
decorum and authority.
The dominant note of much mid-Victorian writing
is struck by Matthew Arnold in his poem “Dover
Beach.” “The Sea of Faith,” Arnold writes, has
ebbed. There is no certainty in the world, and the
dwindling of religious faith has brought about a
crisis of consciousness. By the end of the century,
this skepticism had become pervasive in the works
of Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, and others.
The heroes and heroines of earlier writers, such
as Dickens and Eliot, find happiness in nurturing
marriages and in small communities of family
and friends. But there are few such marriages and
communities in the fiction and poetry of Hardy and
Housman. These late-Victorian writers tell of lovers
and friends betrayed by unfaithfulness, war, and
other troubles that we humans add to the natural
trials of mortal life. Matthew Arnold responds with
sadness characteristic of the century’s end. His
famous poem “Dover Beach” mourns the world’s
retreat from faith.
Comprehension Check
According to some later writers, what realities lay
beneath the surface optimism and proprieties of Victorian life?
Wrap Up
Talk About . . .
The Victorians admired material progress, but some
thought progress was made at the expense of human
values. With a partner, discuss how such questions are
relevant today. Try to use each Academic Vocabulary
word listed below at least once in your discussion.
UNIT 5 INTRODUCTION
Write About . . .
The Victorians disagreed on the amount of authority that
should be given to the government. What responsibility
should government have for social welfare; for care of the
environment; and for censorship of books and television?
Academic Vocabulary for Unit 5
Talking and Writing About Literature
Academic Vocabulary is the language you use to write
and talk about literature. Use these words to discuss the
literature you read in this unit. These words are underlined throughout the unit.
benefit (BEHN uh fiht) n.: anything that is for the good of a person or thing. How did progress in science benefit the Victorians?
respond (rih SPAHND) v.: react. Some Victorians responded critically to industrial progress.
statistics (stuh TIHS tihks) n. pl.: numerical facts. Statistics show
that Victorians had a much shorter life expectancy than we do.
Love, Innocence.
Valentine Card, c.1870.
Color lithograph on paper.
publish (PUHB lihsh) v.: print and issue for the public. Most of
Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poems were published after his death.
complex (kuhm PLEHKS) adj.: hard to understand; complicated.
The factors causing the famine are complex.
Your Turn
Copy the words into your Reader/Writer
Notebook. Try to use these words as you
answer questions about the literature in the unit
that follows.
HISTORY
The Night-Soil Men
This Link to Today provides
a look at how the people of
Victorian London dealt with
waste.
Read with a Purpose
Read to see how the dirty jobs
of London were essential to its
operation.
Build Background
In 1854, London was struck with
a cholera epidemic. Dr. John Snow
argued that cholera was spread via
contaminated food or water. Snow
plotted the locations of cholera
deaths on a map and was able to
isolate a water pump on Broad Street
as the source of the contamination.
He convinced authorities to remove
the handle of the pump, effectively
containing the epidemic and demonstrating that cholera was a waterborne disease. This excerpt provides a
snapshot of life in London during the
cholera epidemic—before the invention of safe water sewers or a public
health system.
Author Note
Steven B. Johnson (1968– ) is the
author of Everything Bad Is Good for
You, Mind Wide Open, and Emergence.
Johnson’s writing has appeared in The
New Yorker, Harper’s, The Guardian,
The New York Times, and The Wall
Street Journal.
910 Unit 5
from The Ghost Map
by Steven B. Johnson
t is August 1854, and London is a city of scavengers. Just
the names alone read like some kind of exotic zoological
catalogue: bone-pickers, rag-gatherers, pure-finders, dredgermen, mud-larks, sewer-hunters, dustmen, night-soil men,
bunters, toshers, shoremen. These were the London underclasses, at least a hundred thousand strong. So immense were their
numbers that had the scavengers broken off and formed their
own city, it would have been the fifth-largest in all of England.
But the diversity and precision of their routines were more
remarkable than their sheer number. Early risers strolling along
the Thames would see the toshers wading through the muck of
low tide, dressed almost comically in flowing velveteen coats,
their oversized pockets filled with stray bits of copper recovered from the water’s edge. The toshers walked with a lantern
strapped to their chest to help them see in the predawn gloom,
and carried an eight-foot-long pole that they used to test the
ground in front of them, and to pull themselves out when they
stumbled into a quagmire. The pole and the eerie glow of the
lantern through the robes gave them the look of ragged wizards, scouring the foul river’s edge for magic coins. Beside them
fluttered the mud-larks, often children, dressed in tatters and
content to scavenge all the waste that the toshers rejected as
below their standards: lumps of coal, old wood, scraps of rope.
Above the river, in the streets of the city, the pure-finders eked out a living by collecting dog crap (colloquially called
“pure”) while the bone-pickers foraged for carcasses of any
stripe. Below ground, in the cramped but growing network of
tunnels beneath London’s streets, the sewer-hunters slogged
through the flowing waste of the metropolis. Every few months,
an unusually dense pocket of methane gas would be ignited
by one of their kerosene lamps and the hapless soul would be
Consider the haunting precision of the bonepickers’ daily routine, as captured in Henry
Mayhew’s pioneering 1844 work, London
Labour and the London Poor: “It usually takes
the bone-picker from seven to nine hours
to go over his rounds, during which time he
travels from 20 to 30 miles with a quarter to
Bottom: An old man fashions a shovel from a scrap piece of metal in a
delapidated yard (1900s). Museum of London, U.K.
Below: A man crushes chalk into tires used to build a house made of
recycled tires, cans, bottles, carpet, wood, glass, and other objects.
UNIT 5 INTRODUCTION
incinerated twenty feet below ground, in a
river of raw sewage.
The scavengers, in other words, lived in a
world of excrement and death. Dickens began
his last great novel, Our Mutual Friend, with
a father-daughter team of toshers stumbling
across a corpse floating in the Thames, whose
coins they solemnly pocket. “What world
does a dead man belong to?” the father asks
rhetorically, when chided by a fellow tosher
for stealing from a corpse. “Tother world.
What world does money belong to? This
world.” Dickens’ unspoken point is that the
two worlds, the dead and the living, have
begun to coexist in these marginal spaces.
The bustling commerce of the great city has
conjured up its opposite, a ghost class that
somehow mimics the status markers and
value calculations of the material world.
a half hundredweight1 on his back. In the
summer he usually reaches home about
eleven of the day, and in the winter about one
or two. On his return home he proceeds to
sort the contents of his bag. He separates the
rags from the bones, and these again from
the old metal (if he be lucky enough to have
found any). He divides the rags into various
lots, according as they are white or colored;
and if he have picked up any pieces of canvas
or sacking, he makes these also into a separate parcel. When he has finished the sorting
he takes his several lots to the ragshop or the
marine-store dealer, and realizes upon them
whatever they may be worth.” …
The homeless continue to haunt today’s
postindustrial cities, but they rarely display
1. hundredweight: unit of measurement
equal to 112 pounds; thus, a quarter to a
half hundred weight is 28 to 56 pounds.
Below: Victorian rag pickers.
Right: Clothes being sorted and recycled at the Salvation
Army Trading Company Wellingborough Northamptonshire,
England, U.K.
912 Unit 5
the professional clarity of the bone-picker’s
impromptu trade, for two primary reasons.
First, minimum wages and government assistance are now substantial enough that it no
longer makes economic sense to eke out a
living as a scavenger. (Where wages remain
depressed, scavenging remains a vital occupation; witness the pependadores of Mexico
City.) The bone collector’s trade has also
declined because most modern cities possess
elaborate systems for managing the waste
generated by their inhabitants. (In fact, the
closest American equivalent to the Victorian
scavengers—the aluminum-can collectors
you sometimes see hovering outside supermarkets—rely on precisely those waste-management systems for their paycheck.) But
UNIT 5 INTRODUCTION
We’re naturally inclined to consider these
London in 1854 was a Victorian metropolis
2
scavengers tragic figures, and to fulminate
trying to make do with an Elizabethan
against a system that allowed so many thoupublic infrastructure. The city was vast even
sands to eke out a living by foraging through
by today’s standards, with two and a half
human waste. In many ways, this is the
million people crammed inside a thirty-mile
correct response. (It was, to be sure, the
circumference. But most of the techniques
response of the great crusaders of the age,
for managing that kind of population density
among them Dickens and Mayhew.) But such
that we now take for granted—recycling censocial outrage should be accompanied by a
ters, public-health departments, safe sewage
measure of wonder and respect: without any
removal—hadn’t been invented yet.
central planner coordinating their actions,
And so the city itself improvised a
without any education at all, this itinerant
response—an unplanned, organic response,
underclass managed to conjure up an entire
to be sure, but at the same time a response
system for processing and sorting the waste
that was precisely contoured to the commugenerated by two million people. The great
nity’s waste-removal needs. As the garbage
contribution usually ascribed to Mayhew’s
and excrement grew, an underground marLondon Labour is simply his willingness to see
ket for refuse developed, with hooks into
and record the details of these impoverished
established trades. Specialists emerged, each
lives. But just as valuable was the insight that
dutifully carting goods to the appropriate
came out of that bookkeeping, once he had
site in the official market: the bone collectors
run the numbers: far from being unproducselling their goods to the bone-boilers, the
tive vagabonds, Mayhew discovered, these
pure-finders selling their dog crap to tanners,
people were actually performing an essential
who used the “pure” to rid their leather goods
function for their community. “The removal
of the lime they had soaked in for weeks to
of the refuse of a large town,” he wrote, “is,
remove animal hair. (A process widely
perhaps, one of the most important of social
considered to be, as one tanner put it, “the
operations.” And the scavengers of Victorian
most disagreeable in the whole range of
London
weren’t
manufacture.
”) era refers to the reign of Queen Elizabeth
2. The Elizabethan
I: 1558
1603. just getting rid of that
refuse—they were recycling it.
Ask Yourself
1. Read with a Purpose How does Johnson regard the dirty jobs of the scavengers and their role in Victorian London?
2. Why were there so many different types of scavengers in Victorian London?
Why were such specific jobs necessary?
3. Why does the author state that the job of the bone-picker could not exist in
today’s cities?
4. Why do you suppose the bone-picker in the excerpt from Henry Mayhew’s
book gets home later in the day during winter?
5. What systems could a city put in place to prevent scavengers from interacting
with harmful waste?
Unit Introduction
913
COLLECTION 9
Love and Loss
LITERARY FOCUS
Figurative Language
CONTENTS
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Robert Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Gerard Manley Hopkins
“To live is like to love—all
reason is against it, and all
healthy instinct for it.”
—Samuel Butler
914
Unit 5 • Collection 9
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Understand and analyze
figurative language.
Figurative Language
Characteristics of Figurative Language
• Describes one thing in terms of another, dissimilar
thing and is not meant to be understood literally
• Attempts to make abstract ideas concrete, such as
love, life, death, and loss
• Unifies a poet’s message
• Expresses universal ideas in fresh, new ways
The poets in this collection are masters of figurative
language. Their writing transforms ordinary words and
phrases into memorable impressions that capture an
experience uniquely yet universally. It is no accident
that poets use figurative language extensively in the
highly compressed genre of poetry. Through metaphors, similes, personification and other images, poets
can fully express ideas about death, loss, life, and love
in language that is unique and memorable.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson uses figurative language
to explore his complex feelings about death and loss
in an elegy written to honor his friend Arthur Henry
Hallam. In the poem In Memoriam A.H.H., Tennyson
personifies Nature as a feminine power who wields life
and death without remorse. Nature says, “I bring to life,
I bring to death” (Lyric 56, line 6). By personifying
Nature, giving it human qualities and the ability to
speak, Tennyson uses figurative language to depict the
unexpected and seemingly capricious will that results
in the death of a young man.
Tennyson uses personification throughout In
Memoriam. The forest becomes comforting: “and the
trees / Laid their dark arms about the field.” Tennyson
also uses a metaphor in Lyric 95, lines 21–24 to express
regret that Hallam died so young:
A hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had been,
In those fallen leaves which kept their green,
The noble letters of the dead.
The Last Day in the Old Home (1862) by Robert Braithwaite Martineau 1826–1869.
by Leila Christenbury
In another memorable poem, “Crossing
the Bar,” Tennyson
effectively uses an
extended metaphor
of death as one last
voyage: “When I put
out to sea” (line 4). The
metaphor is developed with references
to the sea journey
that will occur “when
I embark” (line 12). An
extended metaphor
uses multiple and
consistent images to
discuss a less familiar
subject in terms of one
that is more familiar to
the reader. A nautical
Paolo and Francesca (ca. 1887).
term even represents
by Charles Edward Halle.
God: “I hope to see
my Pilot face to face”
(line 15). Tennyson’s use of figurative language creates
a coherent, concrete expression of the abstractions of
death and heaven.
Ask Yourself
1. How does figurative language help a reader
more fully understand the complex questions
and circumstances explored in poetry?
2. What is the relationship between the relatively
brief length of many poems and the use of figurative language?
Learn It Online
Learn about figurative language with PowerNotes.
go.hrw.com
L12-915
Go
Tate Gallery, London.
Literary Focus 915
The Lady of Shalott
Ulysses
from In Memoriam
A.H.H.
Crossing the Bar
How can appearance
be different from
reality?
QuickTalk
Discuss why you think people remain enchanted
with stories of castles, knights, quests, dragons, and
ancient times.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(1809–1892)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson attained a celebrity status in England
similar to what top athletes, actors, and musicians experience
in our country today.
Following the Romantics
When Alfred Tennyson learned that Lord Byron had died, he
went to the woods and carved on a piece of sandstone, “Byron
is dead.” Tennyson was fourteen years old. He felt sure that he
would be a poet, and he was already practicing the dramatic
gestures of the Romantic poets he admired.
Tennyson’s father encouraged Alfred’s interest in poetry.
At Cambridge University, Tennyson’s friends believed that he
was destined to become the greatest poet of their generation.
In 1831, lack of funds forced Tennyson to leave Cambridge. In
1832, he published his first significant book of poems, which
some reviewers mocked for its melancholy themes. The next
year Tennyson was devastated by the death of his closest
friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. Tennyson became engaged in
1836, but the marriage was postponed because of his uncertain financial prospects.
The Melancholy Poet
During this difficult period, when both his physical and mental
health suffered, Tennyson apparently never considered any
career but poetry. Critics responded favorably to his twovolume Poems (1842), and in 1845 the government granted
him an annual pension of two hundred pounds. In 1850, he
published In Memoriam, an elegy to Hallam, was named poet
laureate, and finally married.
Over the next forty years, Tennyson published nearly a
dozen volumes of poetry. He became Alfred, Lord Tennyson in
1884. His poems spoke of the fragility and sadness of life, but
he also believed eventually all losses would be made whole.
As poet laureate, Tennyson was extremely
popular. What attracted Victorian readers so
deeply to Tennyson’s poetry?
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (c. 1840) by Samuel Laurence. Oil on canvas.
National Portrait Gallery, London.
916
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Understand sound devices
in poetry. Reading Skills Identify contrasting images.
The Lady of Shalott
Use your RWN to complete the activities for this selection.
Sound Devices in Poetry Poets use a range of sound devices to create musical effects in their poems. In “The Lady of Shalott,” Tennyson uses
meter, or rhythm, and sound repetitions such as rhyme, alliteration, and
assonance to create a musical current that carries the reader through the
landscape of the poem. The hypnotic force of these rhythms and repetitions also contributes to the poem’s dreamy, otherworldly mood.
Identifying Contrasting Images Poets sometimes use contrasting
images to give their poems a subtle sense of tension. “The Lady of
Shallot” is brimming with such images: the flat, flowing river and the
upright, unchanging tower; the bustling lives of the villagers and the solitary life of the Lady; the weary whisper of the reaper and the robust song
of Sir Lancelot. As you read the poem, note such oppositions in setting,
actions, or imagery—and pay attention to how they affect the mood.
Into Action As you read, use a chart like the one below to record oppositions. Write down at least one opposition from each part of the poem.
Then, label the opposition as setting, action, or imagery.
Opposition
Setting, Action, or Imagery?
Part I
the barges sliding by; the Lady
standing motionless in the tower
window
action
Part II
the red cloaks of the passing villagers; the clear blue of the mirror
surly (SUR lee) adj.: rude or unfriendly. The
Lady of Shalott watches surly peasants traveling along the highway toward Camelot.
brazen (BRAY zuhn) adj.: made of brass. Sir
Lancelot is clad in brazen armor.
burnished (BUR nihsht) v. used as adj.: made
bright and smooth. The knights of Camelot
wear burnished helmets.
waning (WAYN ihng) v.: fading gradually.
The Lady weaves as the light is waning at
nightfall.
countenance (KOWN tuh nuhns) n.: facial
appearance. The Lady’s blank countenance
suggests that she is in a trance.
Multiple-Meaning Words The word
brazen can also mean “bold.” How might this
second meaning relate to a knight? Write
two sentences about a medieval knight,
using a different sense of the word brazen
in each.
Think as a Reader/Writer
Find It in Your Reading The musical sounds of “The Lady of Shalott”
contrast with the poem’s unsettling, haunting images. As you read, note
in your Reader/Writer Notebook examples of such sounds and images.
Te
TechFocus
As you read, imagine “The Lady of Shalott” as a silent film.
Keeping the poem’s contrasting images in mind, think about kinds of
music that might accompany each scene or the film as a whole.
Learn It Online
Prepare to read this poem with the video introduction
online.
go.hrw.com
L12-917
Go
Preparing to Read
917
N A R R AT I V E P O E M
The Lady of Shalott
Play Audio
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Read with a Purpose
Read the poem to discover how a curse affects the life of
the Lady of Shalott.
Build Background
Tennyson wrote “The Lady of Shalott” in 1832 and then extensively
revised it in 1842. He once commented: “I met the story first in some
Part I
5
10
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold° and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot;°
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow°
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott. A
Willows whiten,° aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs forever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
3. wold: rolling plain.
5. Camelot: legendary city, site of King Arthur’s court and
Round Table.
7. blow: blossom.
10. whiten: show the white undersides of their leaves when
blown by the wind.
A
Reading Focus Identifying Contrasting Images What
contrasting images do you find in the first stanza?
918
Italian novelle: but the web, mirror, island, etc., were my own.” The
symbol of Arthur’s Camelot—an orderly, patriarchal kingdom in
which beautiful, enchanted women languish—appealed to
Tennyson and to the Victorian imagination in general. Tennyson
would return to this setting in such works as “Lancelot and Elaine”
and the Idylls of the King, a series of twelve connected poems telling
the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
15
20
25
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers°
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow-veiled,
Slide the heavy barges trailed
By slow horses; and unhailed
The shallop° flitteth silken-sailed
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
17. imbowers: shelters with trees, gardens, and flowers.
22. shallop: small, open boat.
30
35
Hear a song that echoes cheerly°
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers “’Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.” B
Viewing and Interpreting As you read “The Lady of Shalott,” look
for the scene that this painting illustrates. How do the painting’s
details, including the expression on the Lady of Shalott’s face, reflect
the mood, or atmosphere, of the poem?
The Lady of Shalott (1888) by John William Waterhouse (1849–1917).
Tate Gallery, London.
30. cheerly: archaic for “cheerily.”
B
Literary Focus Sound Devices What sound devices are used
to create a musical effect in this stanza?
The Lady of Shalott
919
Part II
40
45
50
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
And moving through a mirror clear°
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village churls,°
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
70
60
65
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,°
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-haired page in crimson clad,
Goes by to towered Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
46. mirror clear: Weavers worked on the back of the tapestry so that they could easily knot their yarns. To see the
front of their designs, weavers looked in a mirror that
reflected the front of the tapestry.
52. churls: peasants; country folk.
56. pad: easy-gaited horse.
C
Reading Focus Identifying Contrasting Images What
contrasting images appear in lines 55–70?
D
Literary Focus Sound Devices Read this stanza aloud. What
sound devices are used? What is the overall effect of this jumble of sounds?
920
C
Part III
75
80
85
55
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
“I am half sick of shadows,” said
90
A bowshot from her bower eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves°
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight° forever kneeled
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott. D
The gemmy° bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.°
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot;
And from his blazoned baldric° slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jeweled shone the saddle leather,
The helmet and the helmet feather
Burned like one burning flame together,
76. greaves: armor for the lower legs.
78. red-cross knight: The red cross is the emblem of Saint
George, England’s patron saint.
82. gemmy: set with jewels.
84. galaxy: Milky Way.
87. blazoned baldric: richly decorated sash worn across the
chest diagonally.
Vocabulary surly (SUR lee) adj.: rude or unfriendly.
brazen (BRAY zuhn) adj.: made of brass.
C U LT U R E L I N K
Camelot
According to legend, Camelot was the capital city of
King Arthur’s realm. Arthur and his chivalrous knights
would set off for their many heroic battles from Camelot,
and to Camelot they would make their triumphant
return. Within the castle at Camelot, the king and his
knights—some versions of the legend give the number
as sixteen hundred—would gather at the Round Table
to make important decisions in a democratic fashion.
Though fictional, the idea of Camelot and the
Round Table is so attractive and powerful that it has
survived the centuries. The term Camelot is now used
to refer to a time, a place, or a situation that seems in many ways perfect
or ideal and that is governed by a strong leader and a fair, well-defined
set of rules. In the 1960s, for example, the presidency of the young,
charismatic John F. Kennedy was often referred to as Camelot. Both this
well-loved president and the idealistic mood of that decade helped
make smash hits out of the Broadway musical Camelot and the 1967 film
of the same name.
Ask Yourself
Sir Lancelot, the most noble knight of the Round Table, ultimately
contributes to the fall of Camelot. Think about the character of
Lancelot in “The Lady of Shalott.” What details make him seem
ideal? What details make him seem less than ideal?
95
100
E
As he rode down to Camelot;
As often through the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed;
On burnished hooves his war horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
Reading Focus Identifying Contrasting Images How do
the appearance and actions of Sir Lancelot contrast with those of the
Lady?
105
110
Top: Camelot, Richard Harris, 1967.
Bottom: President John F. Kennedy and the First
Lady at his inaugural parade.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
“Tirra lirra,” by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot. E
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the waterlily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
Vocabulary burnished (BUR nihsht) v. used as adj.: made
bright and smooth.
The Lady of Shalott
921
115
The mirror cracked from side to side;
“The curse is come upon me,” cried
They heard her singing her last song,
145
Part IV
120
125
130
135
140
In the stormy east wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over towered Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow° she wrote
And down the river’s dim expanse
Like some bold seër° in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance—
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right— F
The leaves upon her falling light—
Through the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot;
And as the boat head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
150
155
160
165
170
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot. G
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the waterside,
Singing in her song she died,
Under tower and balcony,
By garden wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher,° lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.” H
125. prow: front part of a boat.
128. seër: prophet.
160. burgher: townsperson.
F
Reading Focus Identifying Contrasting Images How does
the Lady’s clothing differ from Sir Lancelot’s? What might this contrast
symbolize?
G
Literary Focus Sound Devices How do the sounds in these
lines reflect what is happening at this point in the poem?
922
H
Literary Focus Sound Devices What musical sound effects
are used in the last two stanzas?
Vocabulary waning (WAYN ihng) v.: fading gradually.
countenance (KOWN tuh nuhns) n.: facial appearance.
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Analyze
sound devices in poetry; analyze meter and
rhyme scheme. Reading Skills Identify
contrasting images. Writing Skills Develop
descriptions with sensory details.
The Lady of Shalott
Respond and Think Critically
7. Summarize Summarize the plot of this poem.
What moment marks the climax?
8. Interpret What role does the mirror play in the
Lady’s life? What might the mirror symbolize?
Quick Check
1. Describe where the Lady lives in relation to
Camelot.
9. Hypothesize Why do you think Tennyson chose
not to explain the curse in more detail?
2. How can the Lady of Shalott avoid the curse?
3. After she hears Lancelot sing, what does the
Lady do? What happens as a result?
Read with a Purpose
4. How does the Lady’s life inside the tower differ
from the life of others outside the tower?
Reading Skills: Identifying Contrasting
Images
5. As you read, you recorded the poem’s contrasts.
Add a column to your chart, and tell what
Tennyson achieves through each contrast.
What central idea might the poet be trying to
express?
Part I
Part II
Opposition
Setting,
Action, or
Imagery?
the barges sliding by;
the Lady standing
motionless in the tower
window
action
Literary Skills: Sound Devices
10. Analyze Locate in the poem examples of rhyme,
alliteration, and assonance. How do these sound
devices help bring the poem’s various contrasts
to life?
Literary Skills Review: Meter and Rhyme
Scheme
11. Analyze A pattern of stressed (´) and unstressed
(˘) syllables in a poem is called meter. The pattern of rhymed lines in a poem (for example,
abab) is called rhyme scheme. Scan the poem
for its meter and rhyme scheme. How do these
elements contribute to the poem’s mood?
Poet’s
Purpose?
red cloaks of the passing villagers; the clear
blue of the mirror
Literary Analysis
Use It in Your Writing Review the examples of
sounds and images you listed in your Reader/Writer
Notebook. In a paragraph, rewrite the soothing
sounds with more representative descriptions of their
images. What words don’t sound like their ideas?
How can a reflection in a mirror differ from
reality?
6. Analyze Explain how lines 66–72 could foreshadow, or hint at, Lancelot’s arrival and the
Lady’s actions in the second half of the poem.
Applying Your Skills 923
The Lady of Shalott
Vocabulary Development
Your Turn
1. surly
a. facial appearance
2. brazen
b. made bright and smooth
3. burnished
c. rude or unfriendly
4. waning
d. fading gradually
5. countenance
e. made of brass
Using a table like the one below, write out the Vocabulary words from “The Lady of Shalott,” the feelings or
associations that go with each, and a less powerful
synonym. Then, explain whether you think Tennyson
made a good word choice and why.
Word
Feelings or
Associations
Less Powerful
Word
Good Choice?
Why?
Vocabulary Skills: Connotations
Imagine the perfect pair of sunglasses. Are they a subdued color, such as black or brown, or are they a flashy
gold or silver? Are the frames slim and streamlined, or
big and round? Even though all sunglasses serve the
same purpose, they express different aspects of the
wearer’s personality.
Words work the same way. Although two words
might have the same meaning, they each carry their
own connotations. Connotations are the feelings and
associations attached to a word. For example, would
you rather be described as nerdy or bright? If you
answered bright, you probably are not alone. For most
people, the word bright carries positive connotations,
while the word nerdy carries negative ones.
The following chart contains some words from
“The Lady of Shalott,” the feelings and associations that
go with each word, and a less powerful word the poet
chose not to use.
Word
Feelings or
Associations
Less Powerful
Word
gazing (line 7)
dreamy, unhurried
looking
imbowers (line 17)
romantic; evokes
images of the
Garden of Eden
shelters
casement (line 25)
romantic, airy,
antiquated
window
924
Multiple-Meaning Words Many words have
more than one meaning, for example, the word lie.
This word can mean “to recline or stretch out,” but
it can also mean “to say something that is not true.”
Below are sentences from “The Lady of Shalott.”
Consider the meanings for the italicized word, and
decide which meaning the poet intended.
1. “Little breezes dusk and shiver through the wave
that runs forever.”
a. To make dark or shadowy
b. The time of day right after the sun goes down
2. “By the margin, willow-veiled, slide the heavy
barges.”
a. A blank space around the edge of a page
b. The outer edge of something
Academic Vocabulary
Write About
Movies have been made, poems have been
written, and books have been published
about perfect, ideal places. In a short
paragraph, describe a movie or piece of
writing about an ideal place. Try to use the
underlined vocabulary in your response.
SKILLS FOCUS Vocabulary Skills Refine
vocabulary for interpersonal, academic, and
workplace situations; understand denotation and connotation; identify and correctly
use multiple-meaning words. Grammar
Skills Identify and use adjectives; identify
and use adverbs. Listening and Speaking
Skills Present oral messages.
Grammar Link
Adjective or Adverb?
Both adjectives and adverbs modify, or describe, other
words. However, sometimes they can look suspiciously
similar: clear and clearly, for example, or merry and
merrily. How can you tell which is which?
An adjective modifies a noun or a pronoun. It tells
what kind, which one, how many, or how much. An
adverb modifies a verb, an adjective, or another
adverb. It tells where, when, how, or to what extent.
Often, but not always, an adverb ends in –ly. Study this
sentence from “The Lady of Shallot.”
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot.
The first italicized word is an adjective. It modifies the
noun bells by telling what kind of bells they are. The
second italicized word is an adverb. It modifies the verb
rang by telling how the bells rang.
Your Turn
For each italicized word, do the following:
• Tell whether it is an adjective or an adverb.
• Identify the word it modifies.
• Explain how it modifies that word.
As you respond to the Choices, use these Academic Vocabulary
words as appropriate: benefit, respond, publish, statistics, complex.
REVIEW
Talk About Opposites and Theme
In “The Lady of Shalott,” Tennyson explores the
tension between numerous opposites—for example,
life and death, shadows and realities, solitude and
society. Choose one of these pairs of opposites, and
jot down details or images in the poem that seem
related to the pair you chose. What central idea
about the opposites do you think Tennyson is trying
to communicate through these details? Present your
evidence and your conclusion in the form of a short
speech.
CONNECT
Investigate the Tragedy
Group Activity What was she thinking? Why did
she do it? Do some investigative reporting to answer
these questions. Have three classmates play the roles
of a reaper, Sir Lancelot, and a townsperson. Before
an audience, conduct “live” interviews with each
character and obtain as much newsworthy information about the Lady as you can. Then, in a concluding
report, speculate about why and how the Lady died.
Offer observations, too, about crime statistics and
how the Lady’s death is affecting the community.
1. Long fields of barley lie on either side of the
river.
EXTEND
2. In a gray tower on an island lives a solitary Lady.
Make a Silent Movie
3. The lady weaves steadily both night and day.
4. Villagers pass onward toward Shalott.
5. The Lady sees in her mirror a red-cross knight.
6. The knight’s armor glints brightly in the sun.
Writing Application Choose a paragraph you have
already written and underline the adjectives, circle the
adverbs, or put a question mark next to the word if you
are not sure.
TechFocus Review your notes about the kinds of
Te
background music that would work well in a silentmovie version of “The Lady of Shalott.” Next, work
with three or four classmates to film a scene from the
poem, silent-movie style. Experiment with different
background music options, and analyze the effects
of each. After finalizing your soundtrack, play the
movie and its accompanying music for your class.
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Understand theme.
Reading Skills Summarize as a strategy for comprehension.
Ulysses
Theme In works of literature, most writers attempt to convey a central
idea or insight about a subject. This idea is called the theme of a work.
A subject and a theme are not the same. A subject can be summed up
in a word or two—love or change, for example. A theme, however, is a
complete idea that can be stated as a sentence: True love is an illusion,
or Change is painful but leads to growth. In “Ulysses,” Tennyson’s subject
is old age. As you read, ask yourself what the theme might be.
Literary Perspectives Apply the literary perspective described on page
927 as you read this poem.
hoard (hawrd) v.: save or store, often in
secret. Ulysses longs to spend rather than
hoard his remaining years.
vexed (vehkst) v.: troubled or disturbed.
Strong winds vexed the surface of the sea.
discerning (dih SURN ihng) v. used as adj.:
displaying good judgment; perceptive.
Ulysses knows his discerning son will not be
blind to the people’s needs.
prudence (PROO duhns) n.: cautious management. Ulysses hopes his son will use
prudence rather than carelessness in his role
as king.
Summarizing Teasing out a poem’s theme is often easier if you
summarize sections of the poem as you read. When you summarize, you
use your own words to create a shortened version of a text. A summary
usually includes the most important ideas in that text or section of text,
along with one or two key details.
abides (uh BYDZ) v.: endures. Ulysses has lost
strength, but his adventurous spirit abides.
Into Action As you read, use a chart like this one to summarize each of
the following sections of “Ulysses”: lines 1–17, lines 18–32, lines 33–43,
lines 44–56, and lines 57–70.
Antonyms If you see an unfamiliar word,
look at other words in the sentence. Do
any of them seem to be antonyms, or
opposites, of the unknown word? If so, they
might provide a clue to the word’s meaning.
Examples of antonyms are simple/difficult
and begin/finish. Find an antonym for one of
the Vocabulary words in the sample
sentences given above.
“Ulysses”
Summary
lines 1–17
Ulysses is tired of life at home. He fondly recalls the years of his
youth, during which he sailed to distant lands and fought in wars.
lines 18–32
Ulysses’ experiences have left him wanting more. He feels that . . . .
Find It in Your Reading In your Reader/Writer Notebook, make note of
lines that express the theme of the poem. Broad statements like “I will
drink / Life to the lees” contain strong clues to the poem’s theme.
926
Learn It Online
Listen to this poem online.
go.hrw.com
L12-926
Go
POEM
Ulysses
Read with a Purpose
Read to discover what this “idle king” longs to do.
Build Background
Ulysses (Odysseus in Greek) is one of the Greek leaders who fought in
the ten-year-long Trojan war. Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey tells of
Play Audio
5
10
15
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole°
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees.° All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades°
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,—cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all,—
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
A
Reading Focus Summarizing How would you summarize Ulysses’ complaint in the first five lines?
Vocabulary hoard (hawrd) v.: save or store, often in
secret.
vexed (vehkst) v.: troubled or disturbed.
Ulysses’ equally long journey home from Troy to Ithaca. In Tennyson’s
poem, Ulysses, now an old king, is at home with his wife and son,
Telemachus (tuh LEHM uh kuhs). After an exciting life of both marvels and horrors, the old king might finally rest, but a final journey
tempts him.
3. mete and dole: measure
and give out.
A
7. lees: dregs or sediment.
10. Hyades (HY uh deez):
stars that were thought to indicate rainy weather.
Analyzing Biographical Information Use biographical
information to consider how events in Tennyson’s own life may
have helped shape “Ulysses.” About the poem, Tennyson himself
said: “‘Ulysses’ was written soon after Arthur Hallam’s death,
and gave my feeling about the need of going forward, and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in
In Memoriam.” (In Memoriam is Tennyson’s famous elegy to his
beloved friend.) As you read the poem, watch for words spoken by
Ulysses that echo those of Tennyson.
As you read, be sure to notice the questions in the text,
which will guide you in using this perspective.
Ulysses
927
20
25
30
35
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! B
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,°—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
B
Literary Focus Theme How does Ulysses think life should be lived?
Vocabulary discerning (dih SURN ihng) v. used as adj.: displaying good judgment; perceptive.
prudence (PROO duhns) adj.: cautious management.
928
Viewing and Interpreting In Greek
mythology, Polyphemus was a famous
Cyclops and the son of Poseidon, the god
of the sea. Where is Polyphemus in this
painting? What does this representation
of Polyphemus tell you about Ulysses,
who manages to defeat Polyphemus in
Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey?
Ulysses deriding Polyphemus in Homer’s Odyssey,
by Joseph Mallord William (1775–1851). Oil on
canvas. The National Gallery, London.
34. isle: Ithaca, Ulysses’ island
kingdom off the west coast of
Greece.
40
45
50
55
60
65
70
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet° adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. C
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. D
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows;° for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die. E
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,°
And see the great Achilles,° whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,—
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
42. meet: proper.
Ulysses and his son Telemachus. Mosaic, 1st CE.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.
58–59. smite . . . furrows: row
against the waves.
63. Happy Isles: in Greek
mythology, Elysium (ih LIHZ
ee uhm), where dead heroes
lived for eternity.
64. Achilles (uh KIHL eez):
Greek warrior and leader in the
Trojan War.
C
Reading Focus Summarizing What will Telemachus’s job be when Ulysses is
gone? Summarize this verse paragraph.
D
E
Literary Focus Theme What does Ulysses believe about old age?
Literary Perspectives Analyzing Biographical Information How do lines
58–61 echo Tennyson’s own words about life and death?
Vocabulary abides (uh BYDZ) v.: endures.
Ulysses
929
SKILLS FOCUS Literatury Skills Analyze theme;
analyze imagery; analyze biographical information. Reading Skills Summarize as a strategy for
comprehension. Vocabulary Skills Demonstrate
knowledge of literal meanings of words and their
usage. Writing Skills Write poems.
Ulysses
12. Interpret What does Ulysses mean by his metaphor describing “all experience”?
13. Infer What do Ulysses’ references to his wife and
son reveal about his feelings toward them?
Quick Check
1. Describe Ulysses’ current situation as he portrays it in lines 1–11 of the poem.
2. Why is Ulysses comforted by his son’s presence?
3. What other individuals does Ulysses address?
Read with a Purpose
4. What does Ulysses claim is his purpose?
Reading Skills: Summarizing
Summary
Key Words and
Phrases
lines 1–17
Match the Vocabulary words with their definitions.
6. hoard
a. endures
7. vexed
b. cautious management
8. discerning
c. disturbed
9. prudence
d. stockpile
10. abides
15. Literary Perspectives Tennyson’s close friend
Arthur Hallam died at the young age of twentytwo, and Tennyson wrote “Ulysses” shortly thereafter. How are Tennyson’s feelings of loss represented in the poem?
Literary Skills: Theme
5. While reading, you summarized five different
sections of the poem. Review these summaries. In a new column, choose a few words and
phrases from your summaries that seem most
strongly related to the poem’s central meaning.
“Ulysses”
14. Evaluate What do you think of Ulysses’ decision
to “sail beyond the sunset”?
e. perceptive
16. Evaluate In your view, what is the theme of
“Ulysses”? Before stating the poem’s theme, you
may want to review the last column of your summary chart, as well the notes you made in your
Reader/Writer Notebook.
Literary Skills Review: Imagery
17. Analyze Poets often use imagery, or language
that appeals to the senses. Find three images in
the last verse paragraph of “Ulysses” that describe
elements of nature. What do these images tell
you about the old king’s attitude toward nature?
Use It in Your Writing Review the grand statements
made by Ulysses that you recorded in your Reader/
Writer Notebook. Choose one with which you disagree, and write your own opposing declaration. Use
this declaration in a short poem addressed to Ulysses.
Literary Analysis
11. Compare and Contrast How does Ulysses contrast his past and present lives? What conclusions
can you draw about his values?
930
What does Ulysses say about the appearance and reality of old age?
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Understand the use of
tone. Reading Skills Analyze an author’s style.
from In Memoriam A.H.H.
Tone The tone of a literary work is the author’s attitude toward the subject. For example, the tone of a work might be reverent, sarcastic, exultant, or somber. In Memoriam (Latin for “in memory of”) is an elegy, or a
poem that mourns the death of someone important. As you might guess,
the tone of such a poem is not light or playful. As you read, compare the
tone at the beginning of the elegy with the tone of the later verses. As
Tennyson processes his grief, his attitude toward death and loss shifts
changes.
derives (dih RYVZ) v.: comes from a certain
source. The poet’s feeling of despair derives
from his grief.
discord (DIHS kawrd) n.: conflict. There is
often discord between our desires and reality.
redress (rih DREHS) n.: compensation or payment for a loss. Tennyson seeks redress for
the loss of his close friend.
diffusive (dih FYOO sihv) adj.: spread out; not
concentrated in one place. The poet senses
the diffusive presence of his friend’s spirit.
Analyzing an Author’s Style An author’s style is the manner in which
he or she expresses ideas. Style results from how a poet selects and uses
certain tools, including words, images, sounds, rhythms, and syntax, or
sentence structure. Look closely at what kinds of words Tennyson chooses
and how he arranges them into phrases and sentences. Even as the tone
of the poem shifts, what stylistic elements stay the same?
Into Action As you read, use a chart like this one to record words and
phrases, images, and sound patterns that you find “uniquely Tennyson.”
Words and Phrases
Images
Sounds
“dust and chaff” (l. 18)
“Nature, red in tooth and
claw” (l. 15)
Alliteration: “falter
where I firmly trod”
(l. 13)
Roots The Latin word cor means “heart.”
Words built on cor include accord, which
means “agreement or harmony,” and cordial, meaning “warm and friendly.” Which
Vocabulary word on the list above is related
to these words?
Find It in Your Reading If you have ever lost something or someone you
loved, you know that mourning often begins with the question “Why?” As
you read Lyrics 55 and 56 of In Memoriam, record in your Reader/Writer
Notebook some of the rhetorical questions Tennyson poses.
TechFocus As you read this elegy, think about modern ways that peoTe
ple remember their loved ones.
Learn It Online
Learn more about the events that shaped Tennyson at
the Writers’ Lives site online.
go.hrw.com
L12-931
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Preparing to Read
931
POEM
from
In Memoriam A.H.H.
Read with a Purpose
Read to discover what Tennyson ultimately believes about
life after death.
Build Background
In Memoriam is Tennyson’s elegy for Arthur Henry Hallam, his closest
friend at Cambridge and his sister’s fiancé. In the 131 separate
Play Audio
lyrics of this elegy, written over seventeen years, Tennyson asks and
gradually answers profound questions about life and death, religion
and science, and the immortality of the soul. Tennyson considered
In Memoriam so intensely personal that he did not plan to publish it;
however, in 1850 he did finally publish what is often considered his
masterpiece.
55
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
5
10
15
20
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type° she seems,
So careless of the single life,
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar stairs
That slope through darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.° A
A
Reading Focus Analyzing an Author’s Style Paraphrase lines 17–20. How does
the length and complexity of this single sentence reflect the idea it expresses?
Vocabulary derives (dih RYVZ) v.: comes from a certain source.
932
7. type: species.
20. larger hope: Tennyson
explains this phrase in his
Memoirs: “that the whole
human race would through,
perhaps, ages of suffering, be at
length purified and saved.”
Clytie (c.1890) by Frederick Leighton (1830-96)
56
“So careful of the type?” but no.
From scarpèd° cliff and quarried stone
She° cries, “A thousand types are gone;
I care for nothing, all shall go.
5
10
15
20
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, U.K.
2. scarpèd: eroded to a steep
slope.
3. She: Nature.
“Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death;
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.” And he, shall he, B
Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes° of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law—
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw°
With ravine, shrieked against his creed—
Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or sealed within the iron hills?°
12. fanes: temples.
15. red . . . claw: The phrase
refers to the view of all life as a
ruthless struggle for survival.
20. sealed . . . hills: preserved
like fossils in rock.
B
Reading Focus Analyzing an Author’s Style What words, phrases, and sounds
are echoed in this verse?
In Memoriam A.H.H.
933
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare° each other in their slime,
Were mellow music matched with him.
25
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy° voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress? C
Behind the veil, behind the veil.°
23. tare: archaic for “tore.”
26. thy: Hallam’s.
28. veil: veil of death.
95
By night we lingered on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth; and o’er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn; D
5
10
15
20
And calm that let the tapers° burn
Unwavering: Not a cricket chirred;
The brook alone far off was heard,
and on the board the fluttering urn.°
And bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheeled or lit the filmy shapes°
NThat haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes; E
While now we sang old songs that pealed
From knoll to knoll, where, couched at ease,
The white kine° glimmered, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field.
But when those others, one by one,
Withdrew themselves from me and night,
And in the house light after light
Went out, and I was all alone,
C
Literary Focus Tone How do the exclamation points and question mark help
convey a certain tone?
D
Literary Focus Tone How do the images in this verse help signal a shift in tone?
E
Reading Focus Analyzing an Author’s Style Find seven repetitions of the word
and in the first three stanzas of this lyric. How does this repetition help create a certain mood?
Vocabulary discord (DIHS kawrd) n.: conflict.
redress (rih DREHS) n.: compensation or payment for a loss.
934
5. tapers: candles.
8. fluttering urn: teapot or coffee urn heated by a candle.
10. filmy shapes: moths.
15. kine: archaic word meaning “cattle.”
A hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had been,
In those fallen leaves which kept their green,
The noble letters of the dead.
25
30
35
40
And strangely on the silence broke
The silent-speaking words, and strange
Was love’s dumb cry defying change
To test his worth; and strangely spoke
The faith, the vigor, bold to dwell
On doubts that drive the coward back,
And keen through wordy snares to track
Suggestion to her inmost cell.
So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touched me from the past,
And all at once it seemed at last
The living soul° was flashed on mine,
And mine in this was wound, and whirled
About empyreal° heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,
Aeonian° music measuring out
The steps of Time—the shocks of Chance—
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was canceled, stricken through with doubt.
45
50
55
36. the living soul: Originally,
the phrase read “his living soul.”
Tennyson said he changed it
because he wanted the soul to
be not Hallam’s but the soul of
“the Deity, maybe.”
38. empyreal (ehm PIHR ee
uhl): heavenly.
41. aeonian (ee OH nee uhn):
eternal.
Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-molded forms of speech,
Or even for intellect to reach
Through memory that which I became; F
Till now the doubtful dusk revealed
The knolls once more where, couched at ease,
The white kine glimmered, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field;
And sucked from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o’er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume,
F
Literary Focus Tone How does the poet express his attitude here?
In Memoriam A.H.H.
935
60
And gathering freshlier overhead
Rocked the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The lilies to and fro, and said, G
“The dawn, the dawn,” and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixed their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day.
130
Thy° voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
5
10
15
1. thy: Hallam’s.
What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But though I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diff usive power,
I do not therefore love thee less.
My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Though mixed with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee though I die. H
G
Reading Focus Analyzing an Author’s Style What poetic devices does Tennyson
use in this stanza?
H
Literary Focus Tone How do words like art, thee, and thy help the poet establish a
certain tone in this lyric?
Vocabulary diffusive (dih FYOO sihv) adj.: spread out; not concentrated in one
place.
936
Autumn Morning by John Atkinson Grimshaw
(1836–1893). Oil on canvas.
Mallett Gallery, London.
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Understand metaphor.
Crossing the Bar
Metaphor A metaphor is a comparison between two seemingly unlike
things: for example, Life is a journey. By using metaphors, poets can make
abstract ideas more concrete and understandable.
A metaphor does not use a connective word such as like or as.
Instead, the comparison is either directly stated (You are my sunshine)
or implied (The rays of your love warm my life). Note that in the implied
metaphor, you must use the clues rays and warm to guess that your
love is being compared to sunshine.
An extended metaphor is a comparison that is extended or developed over the course of several lines or verses, or even throughout an
entire poem. “Crossing the Bar” is an example of the latter. In it, Tennyson
uses a common experience—setting out to sea—as a metaphor for a
profound and mysterious human experience.
Multiple-Meaning Words The word
bar has several meanings in the English language. In this poem, bar refers to a sandbar,
or a long underwater ridge of sand near a
shore. Use a dictionary to discover at least
three other meanings for the word bar. Do
any of these other meanings seem relevant
to the poem?
Into Action Once you identify both halves of the comparison Tennyson
is making, use a chart like the one below to keep track of images in the
poem and the ideas they may represent.
Image
Idea
“sound and foam”
the distractions of life
Find It in Your Reading Rather than ask questions, Tennyson forcefully
declares his statements. As you read the poem, keep track of the verbs
that Tennyson uses in these statements by writing them down in your
Reader/Writer Notebook.
Learn It Online
Check out Tennyson in the twenty-first century with
these Internet links.
go.hrw.com
L12-937
Go
Preparing to Read
937
POEM
Crossing the Bar
Play Audio
Read with a Purpose
Build Background
Read to discover what the speaker hopes
to do once he has “crossed the bar.”
“Crossing the Bar” has been praised as a poem in which every image can be seen to have
a double meaning. The images of a sea voyage were fresh in Tennyson’s mind, because he
wrote this poem in 1889, while crossing the channel that separates the Isle of Wight from
the southern coast of England.
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
5
10
15
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that° which drew from out the boundless deep A
Turns again home.
7. that: the soul.
13. bourne (bawrn): archaic
word meaning “boundary.”
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For though from out our bourne° of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face B
When I have crossed the bar.
A
Literary Focus Metaphor Metaphorically speaking, what is the “boundless deep”
of the sea?
B
Literary Focus Metaphor To whom or what is Tennyson implicitly comparing the
pilot of a ship?
938
Sunset over the Needles Lighthouse and rocks,
Alum Bay, Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight, England.
13. bourne (bawrn): archaic
word meaning “boundary.”
the use of tone; analyze metaphor; analyze
rhyme. Reading Skills Analyze an author’s
style. Vocabulary Skills Demonstrate
knowledge of literal meanings of words and
their usage. Writing Skills Formulate
questions; use writing to explore.
from In Memoriam A.H.H. / Crossing the Bar
10. Analyze Lyric 95 moves from a local scene to
“empyreal heights of thought” (line 38) and back.
How is this movement related to the speaker’s
mood in Lyrics 55 and 56, as well as in Lyric 130?
Quick Check
1. In Lyric 55 of In Memoriam, what complaint does
the speaker voice against Nature?
2. The speaker of “Crossing the Bar” is a mariner, or
sailor. What is the mariner about to do?
Read with a Purpose
3. What do these two poems reveal about Tennyson’s views of life after death?
Reading Skills: Analyzing an Author’s Style
4. Review the words and phrases you recorded in
your chart for In Memoriam. Then, write a sentence or two in which you make some generalizations about Tennyson’s style. Which elements
of his style seem most dominant?
11. Interpret Paraphrase each of the speaker’s wishes and hopes, and explain what they show about
the speaker’s feelings.
Literary Skills: Tone / Metaphor
12. Evaluate How would you characterize the
poet’s tone in Lyrics 55 and 56 of In Memoriam?
How does this tone change in Lyrics 95 and
130?
13. Analyze In “Crossing the Bar,” Tennyson uses
the experience of a sailor embarking on a long
voyage as a metaphor for death. Use details
from the poem to explain how the metaphor is
extended.
Literary Skills Review: Rhyme
Complete each sentence with a Vocabulary word:
derives
discord
redress
diffusive
5. In Memoriam addresses the confusion and
that can follow the death of a loved one.
14. Compare and Contrast The pattern of rhymed
lines in a poem is called its rhyme scheme.
How do the different rhyme schemes of the two
poems contribute to the poems’ moods?
6. The speaker complains that after such a loss,
adequate
seems impossible.
7. The speaker discovers that true joy
a deep connection to nature.
from
8. He realizes that in nature, he can sense the
presences of his friend’s immortal soul.
Literary Analysis
9. Compare and Contrast Compare the aspects of
Nature described in Lyrics 55 and 56 with those
in Lyric 130. What difference is there?
Use It in Your Writing Review the notes you took on
Tennyson’s use of questions and direct statements.
Pose your own question, and use at least three of
Tennyson’s verbs as you try to answer the question.
How can we view death as a beginning
instead of an ending?
from In Memoriam A.H.H.
Crossing the Bar
tone; analyze metaphor. Writing Skills
Support persuasive arguments and opinions
with reasons and evidence; develop questions
to guide research. Listening and Speaking
Demonstrate effective tone/mood when
speaking; deliver informative presentations.
As you respond to the Choices, use these Academic Vocabulary words as appropriate: benefit, respond,
publish, statistics, complex.
REVIEW
Argue About Life and Death
Identify Tone of Voice
The speaker’s attitude toward
death in “Crossing the Bar” can be described as noble,
courageous, accepting, reverent, complex—and
unusual. Was the mariner able to live up to his lofty
ideas about death when it came time for him to
“cross”? Write an expository essay analyzing the
views on death and the use of language in “Crossing
the Bar.” Be sure to cite passages from the text to support your response.
Literary tone is closely linked with tone of voice. In
a conversation, you can identify a person’s tone by
considering the topic and by listening to the rhythms
and pitches of the voice. You might decide that the
speaker’s tone is sullen, earnest, or pleading. With a
partner, take turns reading aloud “Crossing the Bar”
or a lyric from In Memoriam. Use a different tone of
voice each time. Then discuss which tone seems
more consistent with Tennyson’s and why.
EXTEND
Picture This Word Picture
Research Victorian Grief
A metaphor is a kind of word picture: It helps a
reader envision an everyday object or idea in a fresh,
surprising way. If it is a powerful metaphor, the
image lingers in the reader’s mind and haunts it long
after the book is closed. The extended metaphor in
Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” is this kind of metaphor. Though the poem is short, the image it presents is clear, simple, and strong. Using the medium
of your choice, create a visual representation of the
metaphor. As you plan your rendering, consider what
details you might use to suggest both the literal and
the figurative meanings present in the poem.
Tennyson’s response to the death of
his friend was not considered excessive at the time. Victorians took the
matter of death and grieving very
seriously. With a partner, research
Victorian attitudes toward death and
grieving. In addition to your own
questions, use these questions to
guide your research:
• What traditions did the Victorians
follow after the death of a relative?
• How did the Victorians use art forms
such as poetry, song, and sculpture
to express their grief?
CONNECT
A Victorian
mourning card
(1896).
Modern Elegies
TechFocus How do modern people create memoTe
rials for their loved ones? Compile a list of different
types of online or modern memorials, and compare
and contrast them to Tennyson’s poem. What advantages are there in a poetic elegy? What benefits does
technology provide? Do modern memorials also
address the questions of life and death that Tennyson
did? Share your findings with your class.
940
Research Victorian Science
Choose a natural phenomenon in the poem—such
as the evening star or ocean tides—and research
how it was perceived or explained by Victorian scientists. Do your findings shed additional light on
Tennyson’s poem? Posing as a Victorian scientist and
fan of Tennyson, present your findings to the class.
SKILLS FOCUS Reading Skills Draw inferences
from textual clues.
My Last Duchess / Porphyria’s Lover
Drawing Inferences from
Textual Clues
by Kylene Beers
To understand complex poetry, you need to be a bit
of a detective. Like a skilled crime-scene investigator,
good readers draw inferences from clues in the poem
and their own experience. You will find clues in the
author’s use of language, character description, and
events. Putting all of the clues together will help you
unravel the poem’s mysteries.
The poet supplies the textual clues in the poem,
and you provide the background information or internal clues from your experience. Together, this information becomes an inference—a connection between
mind and text. An active reader is always making inferences and then reading further to confirm or adjust his
or her inferences as information is revealed. The clues
reveal the mysteries of reading poetry.
In Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “My
Last Duchess,” the reader has the opportunity to practice inference skills. The first character introduced is the
poem’s speaker, the Duke. The reader can immediately
begin to infer aspects of the Duke’s personality from
his words (textual clues).
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they
durst. (lines 9–11)
The Duke’s words remind us of people we have
known who were arrogant (“if they durst”) and controlling (“none . . . but I”). The words and our experience
(internal clues) combine so that we can infer that the
Duke is a domineering and haughty man who sought
to control the Duchess as well as everyone else. As you
continue to read, this inference may be confirmed and
expanded , or you may adjust the inference about the
Duke.
The Duke continues to speak in lines 31–34:
She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she
ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift.
These lines confirm the first inference that the Duke is
an arrogant, egotistical man who expects subservience
and obedience from his wife. While the Duke criticizes
his late wife, his words actually confirm and expand our
inference about him.
Your Turn
Re-read lines 31–34. Focus this time on making
inferences about the Duchess. Combine your background experience with people (internal clues) and
the words describing the Duchess (textual clues) to
make an inference about her. What kind of person
can we infer her to be, based on the text and our
experience?
Read lines 43–45 to add clues to your inference
about the Duchess.
Oh, sir she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed
without
Much the same smile?
How does this additional information confirm or
adjust your inferences about the Duke and his last
Duchess?
Reading Focus
941
Robert Browning
My Last Duchess
Porphyria’s Lover
(1812–1889)
Robert Browning pioneered psychological portraiture in poetry
by digging into fascinating and macabre characters to discover
their motives.
Ambitions and Education
How can appearance
be different from
reality?
What does true love look like? Can you tell it when
you see it? Write a quick description of how people
appear when they are in love, and then think about
how the appearance of love can mask real motives
that have little to do with love.
Robert Browning aspired to dazzle the world with his range
and variety as a poet. His education allowed him to indulge his
wide-ranging interests in music, art, the history of medicine,
drama, literature, entomology, and other widely varying topics.
Browning was mainly educated at home by tutors and by his
wide reading in his banker-father’s extensive library. As a teenager, Browning was brilliant, undisciplined, and determined to
be a poet like his idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley. After a term at the
University of London, he published (at his family’s expense)
several poems and plays, but not until he began writing the
short dramatic monologues of the 1840s—poems like “My Last
Duchess”—did he find his proper form.
A Marriage of True Minds
In 1845, Browning wrote to Elizabeth Barrett, already an established poet: “I do . . . love these books with all my heart—and I
love you too.” Four months after the two poets began their correspondence, they met and fell in love. They secretly married in
1846, and a week later they eloped to Italy. Mr. Barrett, who forbade his daughter to marry, estranged himself from his famous
daughter for the rest of her life.
Browning’s happy marriage confirmed his belief that only
by acting boldly can one wrest what is good from an imperfect
world. He lived in Italy until Elizabeth’s death in 1861, when he
returned to England with their son. During the 1860s, his fame
began to grow. Readers understood that by asking them to figure out and judge wicked men like the Duke in “My Last Duchess,” Browning was really challenging them to discover when
love nourished and why it kills. Browning believed that human
beings must act by a moral standard and that those who act
bravely will be rewarded.
How did Browning’s ideas about love in his own
life work their way into his poetry?
Robert Browning (1858) by Michele Gordigiani. Oil on canvas. National Portrait Gallery, London.
942
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Understand the characteristics of dramatic monologue. Reading Skills Draw inferences from textual clues.
Dramatic Monologue “My Last Duchess” and “Porphyria’s Lover” are two
of Browning’s earliest and most popular dramatic monologues, poems
in which a speaker who is not the poet addresses a listener who does
not speak. Instead of telling us directly what the speakers and the other
characters are like, Browning allows the speakers to reveal themselves,
the other characters, and the situation by dropping indirect clues that we
must piece together.
Literary Perspectives Apply the literary perspective described on page
944 as you read these poems.
officious (uh FIHSH uhs) adj.: eager to give
unwanted help. The Duke remembers his
wife’s kind response to officious young men.
munificence (myoo NIHF uh suhns) n.:
generosity. The Duke views munificence as a
form of weakness.
pretense (prih TEHNS) n.: weakly supported
claim. The Duke’s pretense that his wife was
foolish goes unchallenged.
object (AHB jihkt) n.: goal or purpose. What
was the Duke’s true object in showing the
portrait?
Drawing Inferences from Textual Clues Reading one of Browning’s
dramatic monologues is like having a curtain pulled slowly aside to
reveal a portrait of the speaker. By putting what you “see”—clues from
the text—together with what you already know about human behavior,
you can draw inferences, or logical conclusions, about each speaker’s
motives and character traits.
Into Action As you read each poem, use a chart to record the speaker
and each character he introduces. Then, write down details from the
poem that give clues to each person’s character and to the situation.
Character
Clues About the Character
Clues About the Situation
Duke
No one draws aside the curtain
except him.
He is showing someone a portrait of his late wife.
Duchess
She is no longer the Duchess.
displaced (dihs PLAYST) v. used as adj.:
moved from its usual location. Porphyria’s
displaced hair gives the speaker an evil idea.
Multiple-Meaning Words The word last
has several meanings in English. In the title
“My Last Duchess,” last means “previous” (as
in “last night” or “last week”) rather than
“final.” What does this use of the word last
imply about the Duke and his wife or wives?
Find It in Your Reading Browning heightens the tension in “My Last
Duchess” with rhetorical questions, or questions that the listener is not
meant to answer. Make note of these in your Reader/Writer Notebook.
Te
TechFocus
As you read these poems, think about how you would present them as a podcast.
Learn It Online
Meet “My Last Duchess” through the video
introduction online.
go.hrw.com
L12-943
Go
Preparing to Read
943
POEM
Play Audio
My Last Duchess
by Robert Browning
Read with a Purpose
Build Background
Read to discover why the “last” Duchess is
no longer the Duke’s wife.
Browning identified his speaker as Alfonso II d’Este (1533–1597), the fifth and last Duke
of Ferrara, a powerful Italian nobleman of the Renaissance. The Duke’s three marriages
were all political alliances. His first wife, Lucrezia de’ Medici, the fourteen-year-old daughter of the Duke of Florence, died two years into the marriage—possibly from poisoning.
In the poem the Duke is negotiating to marry the daughter of a Count.
5
10
15
20
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Frà Pandolf ’s° hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will ’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Frà Pandolf ” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not A
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle° laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or, “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
A
Literary Focus Dramatic Monologue What clues
in lines 1–13 suggest that the poem is going to be a monologue
rather than a conversation?
944
1–13. Paraphrase these
opening lines. What are the
speaker and his guest doing?
What does the guest ask the
speaker?
3. Frà Pandolf ’s: reference to
Brother Pandolf, a fictitious
painter and monk.
13–21. What does the
speaker think brought the
“spot of joy” (line 21) to his
wife’s face?
Analyzing Style You can use this perspective to identify
elements of these two poems that make them dramatic monologues—for example, a speaker and a silent listener—and to
evaluate how well Browning executes the form. You can also use
this perspective to identify and analyze other formal elements of
the poems, such as meter, rhyme scheme, word choice, and imagery, that contribute to Browning’s style. How do these elements
affect the poems’ overall tone and meaning?
As you read, be sure to notice the questions in each poem,
which will guide you in using this perspective.
The Veiled Woman, or La Donna Velata (c. 1516 ) by Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio of
Urbino) (1483–1520). Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy.
Viewing and Interpreting How does this image convey “the depth
and passion of its earnest glance?” How does the woman in the painting
compare with the “last” Duchess in the poem?
My Last Duchess
945
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favor° at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule B
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth,° and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, C
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will ’t please you rise? We’ll meet D
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant° that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune,° though,
Taming a seahorse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck° cast in bronze for me!
B
Literary Perspectives Analyzing Style What are the rhyming words in this
couplet (lines 27–28)? What does this word choice imply about the speaker’s attitude toward
his wife?
C
Reading Focus Drawing Inferences from Textual Clues What inferences can
you draw about the Duke from these lines?
D
Reading Focus Drawing Inferences from Textual Clues What do you suspect
happened to the Duchess? On what clues do you base this guess?
Vocabulary officious (uh FIHSH uhs) adj.: eager to give unwanted help.
munificence (myoo NIHF uh suhns) n.: generosity.
pretense (prih TEHNS) n.: weakly supported claim.
object (AHB jihkt) n.: goal or purpose.
946
25. favor: gift; token of love.
21–34. What complaints
does the speaker make
against the Duchess’s character
in these lines? What most bothers
him?
41. forsooth: archaic for “in
truth.”
50. warrant: guarantee.
54. Neptune: in Roman
mythology, god of the sea.
56. Claus of Innsbruck: imaginary sculptor.
POEM
Porphyria’s Lover
Play Audio
by Robert Browning
Read with a Purpose
Build Background
Read to discover the mental state of
Porphyria’s lover.
Like the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, Browning had a taste for morbid psychology;
he once accused his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, of lacking “a scientific interest in
evil.” In “Porphyria’s Lover,” he pursues that interest, exploring the complexity of human
motivation.
5
10
15
20
The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o’er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me—she
Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavor,
To set its struggling passion free
25
30
35
40
45
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,°
And give herself to me forever. A
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could tonight’s gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipped me: Surprise B
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped° her lids; again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
24. dissever: separate.
44. oped: archaic for “opened.”
Vocabulary displaced (dihs PLAYST) v. used as adj.: moved
from its usual location.
A
Reading Focus Drawing Inferences from Textual
Clues What appears to be the main obstacle to this relationship?
B
Literary Focus Dramatic Monologue What does the speaker
reveal about himself and his perceptions in lines 26–33?
Porphyria’s Lover
947
Viewing and Interpreting How might this
image represent the speaker’s feelings about
Porphyria?
Mannshode I Kviinnehar (Man’s Head in Woman’s Hair),
1896, by Edvard Munch (1863–1944).
The Museum of Modern Art, NY.
50
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still;
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
C
Literary Focus Dramatic Monologue What do lines 46–55
suggest about the speaker?
948
55
60
D
And I, its love, am gained instead! C
Porphyria’s love: She guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word! D
Literary Perspectives Analyzing Style Is the meter of this
poem regular or irregular? How does the meter contribute to the poem’s
cold, detached tone?
the characteristics of dramatic monologue;
analyze irony; analyze style. Reading
Skills Draw inferences from textual
clues. Writing Skills Write literary texts.
7. Extend “Porphyria’s Lover” was originally published with another monologue under the title
Madhouse Cells. How does knowing the collection’s title affect your interpretation of the poem?
Read with a Purpose
1. In “My Last Duchess,” how does the Duke’s
version of the demise of the last Duchess differ
from your interpretation of the events? Why?
2. At the end of “Porphyria’s Lover,” how does
understanding when the monologue occurs
change your understanding of the events?
Reading Skills: Drawing Inferences from
Textual Clues
3. Now that you have read the poems, review the
textual clues you recorded in your charts. Add
another column to your chart, and record at
least two inferences about each character in it.
Character
Character
Clues
Situation
Clues
Inferences
Duke
No one
draws aside
the curtain
except him.
He is showing
someone a
portrait of
his late wife.
1•
2•
Literary Analysis
4. Infer Assume that the Count’s emissary in
“My Last Duchess” is an insightful person. What
impression is the Duke unintentionally making?
5. Analyze Read the last sentence of “My Last
Duchess.” Is it an effective conclusion? What
might the speaker intend to convey with such a
comment?
6. Evaluate What leads the speaker in “Porphyria’s
Lover” to assert that Porphyria “felt no pain”?
What do you think of this claim?
8. Literary Perspectives Choose either rhyme,
meter, or word choice, and explain how Browning’s use of this formal element contributes to
the mood, or feel, of each poem. Use specific
examples from the poems to support your
claims.
Literary Skills: Dramatic Monologue
9. Analyze In a dramatic monologue, the reader
sees things only through the perspective of the
speaker. Summarize each speaker’s attitude
toward his former lover. Why might you question
their assessments? Why or why not?
Literary Skills Review: Irony
10. Analyze A discrepancy between what is said
and what is really meant, or between what
appears to be true and what is really true, is irony.
What irony can you find in “My Last Duchess” and
“Porphyria’s Lover”?
Use It in Your Writing Review the rhetorical questions you recorded in your Reader/Writer Notebook as
you read “My Last Duchess.” Choose one of them, and
use it as a starting point for your own dramatic monologue in response to the Duke.
Which speaker more successfully hides
reality from us? Explain.
Vocabulary Development
Your Turn
Match each Vocabulary word with its meaning.
1. officious
a. generosity
2. munificence
b. eager to give unwanted help
3. pretense
c. weak claim
4. object
d. moved
5. displaced
e. goal or purpose
Using a dictionary, find two meanings for each of the
following words: object, stoop, fair. If both the meanings share the same origin, create for that word a chart
like the one for favor. If they have different origins,
create a chart like the following.
Word
Meaning 1
Meaning 2
Word Origin
Word Origin
Vocabulary Skills: Multiple-Meaning Words
Many words have, over time, accumulated more than
one meaning. Consider Browning’s usage of the word
favor in line 25 of “My Last Duchess.” Browning uses
the word favor in a sense that was common from the
medieval period through the Victorian age—to refer to
a small token of romantic love. Today, when we refer to
a trinket given or received at a party—a “party favor”—
we are invoking this meaning of the word. If we say,
“You favor your father,” we are using the word in a very
different sense—to resemble someone in appearance.
All of these definitions of favor are related, however, in
that they share the same origin: They all come from a
Latin word meaning “to regard with goodwill.”
favor
Meanings:
Word Origin:
• a small gift of love
• to resemble someone
Latin favere meaning “regard
with goodwill”
Idioms An idiom is a frequently used expression
that is not meant to be taken literally. For example,
the Duke says that in some of her behaviors, the
Duchess missed the mark. This does not mean that
she was literally trying to hit a target and missed. It
means that her words or actions were in some way
not appropriate. To help you remember the meanings of these expressions, try making a simple
sketch for each that suggests both their literal and
nonliteral meanings.
Academic Vocabulary
Talk About
In a small group, discuss the complex
aspects of romantic relationships revealed
in the two monologues by Browning. Do
these situations exist today? Specify modern-day examples in your response.
950
the characteristics of a dramatic monologue.
Reading Skills Read to research information Vocabulary Skills Refine vocabulary
for interpersonal, academic, and workplace
situations; identify and correctly use multiple-
meaning words. Grammar Skills Identify
and use participles and participial phrases
correctly. Listening and Speaking Skills
Demonstrate effective verbal techniques when
speaking; demonstrate effective nonverbal
techniques when speaking.
Grammar Link
Using Participles to Combine Sentences
A participle is a verb form that can be used as an
adjective, or modifier. For example, in the phrase falling
star, the participle falling modifies the noun star.
A participial phrase is made up of a participle and all
of its own modifiers and complements. Consider the
opening sentence from “My Last Duchess”:
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.
In this sentence, the participial phrase looking as if she
were alive modifies the noun Duchess. Participial phrases like this one are often used to combine two sentences. For example, Browning might have expressed the
same idea in this way:
As you respond to the Choices, use these Academic Vocabulary
words as appropriate: benefit, respond, publish, statistics, complex.
REVIEW
Perform a Dramatic Reading
Group Activity Because a dramatic monologue is a
kind of poetic speech, it begs to be read aloud. Work
with a partner to prepare two dramatic readings of
either of Browning’s poems, each one conveying
a different interpretation of the Duke’s tone. (For
example, the Duke’s words may sound sinister if read
one way, but regretful or mournful if read another
way.) Use facial expressions, gestures, and tone of
voice to create two distinct impressions. Perform
your dramatic readings for the class.
CONNECT
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall.
She looks as if she were alive.
In your view, which version is more effective? Why?
Your Turn
Use a participle or a participial phrase to combine each
pair of sentences.
1. The Duke drew the curtain aside. He smiled at
his guest.
2. The Duke turned to leave. He pointed out a
bronze sculpture of Neptune.
3. Porphyria knelt. She lit a fire in the hearth.
4. Porphyria unwrapped her shawl. She sat down
next to her lover.
5. She looked in his eyes. She drew her last breath.
Writing Application Choose a composition or essay
you have already written, and look for short or choppy
sentences that can be combined by using participles.
Rewrite a few of these sentences. How does the use of
participles affect the sound and flow of your writing?
Conduct an Interview
Choose either the Duke or Porphyria’s lover, and
work with a partner to conduct a TV interview with
that character. During the course of the interview,
the speaker should be questioned about his relationship to either the Duchess or Porphyria and his role
in her disappearance. Prepare some questions that
can be answered by quoting directly from the poem.
After rehearsing your interview, present it to the
class or publish a transcript of it in your school paper.
EXTEND
Capture the Story Digitally
TechFocus Choose one of these poems, and record
Te
it as a podcast. As you read, pay attention to the tone
of voice you use to bring the dramatic monologues
alive. How can you use your voice to illustrate the
tone and mood of the poem, as well as to reveal the
character of the speaker? Share your finished podcast with your class.
Learn It Online
Explore Multiple Meaning words online.
go.hrw.com
L12-951
Go
Sonnet 43
Elizabeth Barrett
Browning
(1806–1861)
How can appearance
be different from
reality?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most famous poets
of her day—more successful during her lifetime than her husband, Robert Browning.
A Renaissance Woman
What kind of love do you think is most powerful—
romantic love, love between friends, love of family,
or some other kind of love? Record your thoughts in
your Reader/Writer Notebook.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1858) by Michele Gordigiani. Oil on
canvas. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Barrett Browning is remembered today for her Sonnets from
the Portuguese, of which “How Do I Love Thee?” is the best
known. During her lifetime, Barrett Browning was well known
as a daring, versatile poet who frequently wrote on intellectual,
religious, and political matters. When she was young, she studied Greek, Latin, French, Italian, history, and philosophy—an
uncommon education for a woman in nineteenth-century England. She published long narratives, a novel in verse, translations of Greek plays, and poems that dealt with the abolition of
slavery, the exploitation of children in factories, religious belief,
and Italian nationalism.
Through Suffering to Freedom
Through the first half of her busy literary career, Elizabeth
Barrett was a semi-invalid. Her illnesses have been variously
diagnosed: She may have had a lung problem dating from
childhood, as well as an injured spine from a fall she took as a
teenager. It is certain, however, that her ailments were intensified by the sometime bullying protectiveness of her father and
by the drugs routinely prescribed in those days for a “nervous
collapse.”
In 1845, she met Robert Browning. During their secret
courtship, Barrett wrote forty-four sonnets tracing the development of her love for him. The next year they married secretly
and eloped to the Continent. Her father never forgave her for
the marriage (he had forbidden all his children to marry), nor
did he ever see her again. Barrett Browning flourished in Italy
and bore a son when she was forty-three years old: her own
“young Florentine” with “brave blue English eyes.”
How do you think childhood experiences
contribute to a person’s development?
952
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Understand the Petrarchan
sonnet form. Reading Skills Paraphrase a text..
Petrarchan Sonnet All forty-four poems in Sonnets from the Portuguese
are written in the form of the Petrarchan sonnet. This kind of sonnet,
also called Italian, is organized into a group of eight lines (an octave)
followed by a sestet (six lines). Each line is in iambic pentameter and
rhymes abbaabba cdcdcd. Petrarchan sonnets often have a break in
thought, or turn, between the octave and the sestet. Sonnet 43, however,
lacks this feature and is instead broken into short units of thought.
Synonyms Barrett Browning uses language that would have been considered
old-fashioned at the time (for example,
thee instead of you) to make her work sound
more serious and poetic. As you paraphrase
the poem, think of modern or simpler word
choices that have the same meaning. These
words may literally mean the same thing as
Barrett Browning’s, but how do they change
the tone of the poem?
Paraphrasing The key to understanding what you read is being able to
express it in your own words. When you paraphrase a sentence or passage, you not only replace the original words with your own but also use
new grammar and sentence structure.
Into Action As you read, create a chart like the one below to practice
paraphrasing. First, list each of the ways of loving that the speaker identifies. Then, paraphrase that statement in your own language, using your
own sentence structure.
Original Sentence
Paraphrase
“I love thee to the depth and breadth
and height / My soul can reach, when
feeling out of sight / For the ends of
Being and ideal Grace.”
My love for you extends as far as my
spirit can seek out the very reason for
existence.
Find It in Your Reading As you read, note how the writer begins the
poem by asking a question and then uses repetition as she tries to
answer it. In your Reader/Writer Notebook, identify where the repetition
occurs and make notes about how it enhances the poem’s rhythm as well
as its theme.
Learn It Online
Listen to this famous sonnet online.
go.hrw.com
L12-953
Go
Preparing to Read
953
POEM
Sonnet 43
Play Audio
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Read with a Purpose
Read to discover the many aspects of mature love.
Build Background
Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote her sonnets before her marriage
but did not show them to her husband until two years later. Reluctant to publish the poems because they were so personal, she deliberately gave them a title that suggested that they were translated
into English from an original Portuguese source.
5
10
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. A
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. B
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints°—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
A
Reading Focus Paraphrasing Put the first four lines into your own words. How
does your paraphrase help you understand the poem’s theme?
B Literary Focus Petrarchan Sonnet In a regular Petrarchan sonnet, a turn of
thought would occur here. Instead of having one major division, how many units of thought
does the poem contain?
954
Love Among the Ruins by Sir Edward
Burne-Jones (1833–1898). Oil on canvas.
Wightwick Manor Staffordshire, U.K.
12. lost saints: childhood faith.
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Analyze the
Petrarchan sonnet; analyze diction. Reading
Skills Paraphrase a text. Writing Skills
Enhance meaning by employing repetition.
Sonnet 43
Quick Check
Literary Analysis
1. How many distinct ways does the speaker say
that she loves her beloved?
6. Infer What do you think the poem expresses
about the speaker’s religious faith?
2. In lines 2–6, what are the two contrasting levels
of love that the poet expresses?
7. Analyze How are the pauses in the last three
lines different in rhythm from those in the rest of
the poem? What is the emotional effect of this
change in rhythm?
3. In lines 9–14, what are the three stages of life
that the speaker contrasts?
Read with a Purpose
4. How would you define mature love based on the
features identified by the speaker of the poem?
Reading Skills: Paraphrasing
5. As you read the poem, you paraphrased each
statement in your own words. Re-read each sentence, both the original and your paraphrase,
and rate how easy it is to understand by writing
a number from 5 (most difficult to understand)
to 1 (easiest to understand) next to it. If any of
your paraphrases received less than a 5, rewrite
them so that they are easier to understand and
are expressed as much as possible in your own
voice.
8. Evaluate In your opinion, has Barrett Browning
described all of the important emotional aspects
of love? Explain your response.
Literary Skills: Petrarchan Sonnet
9. Compare and Contrast How would Sonnet 43
have been different if Barrett Browning had written it as a Shakespearean sonnet (see page 392)?
Literary Skills Review: Diction
10. Analyze A writer or speaker’s choice of words
is called diction. What examples of concrete and
abstract words can you find in the poem?
Original Sentence
Paraphrase
“I love thee to the depth
and breadth and height / My
soul can reach, when feeling
out of sight / For the ends of
Being and ideal Grace.”
Rating: 5
My love for you extends as
far as my spirit can seek out
the very reason for existence.
Rating: 2
Use It in Your Writing. In your Reader/Writer Notebook, write a poem or a short speech that begins with
a question. (If you choose to write a poem, you do not
have to use meter and rhyme.) Then, use repetition as
you try to answer your question in a variety of different ways.
What else is love about besides creating
happiness?
Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley
Hopkins
(1844–1889)
How can appearance
be different from
reality?
Throughout his short life, Gerard Manley Hopkins combined
learning, service, and religious conviction with a desire to push
the established bounds of poetry.
A Journey of Faith
Hopkins commented that his poetry “errs on the
side of oddness” by rejoicing in strange, surprising
aspects of creation. What meaning do you find in
small, everyday things?
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889).
The eldest son of highly educated parents devoted to the
Church of England, Hopkins attended Highgate, a London
boarding school, where he won a poetry prize and later a scholarship to study classics at Oxford. Hopkins intended to enter
the Anglican ministry, but after much soul-searching, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1866—a shocking thing to do
at the time.
In 1868, Hopkins joined the Jesuits, a Roman Catholic order
dedicated to teaching, and burned almost all his poetry. For
seven years he wrote no poetry until, in 1875, he was asked to
write an ode to five Franciscan nuns who had drowned at sea.
He sent “The Wreck of the Deutschland” to a Jesuit periodical.
The poem’s form was so eccentric that the editors “dared not
print it.”
Poetic Innovation
Hopkins composed a small but very powerful body of poetry
that he sent to his friends with explanations of his ideas for
using native English vocabulary. Hopkins’s poems are characterized by assonance, alliteration, internal rhyme, and what he
called sprung rhythm, which imitates the sound of natural
speech. Unlike conventional metrics, sprung rhythm does not
employ only one kind of metrical unit (for example, the alternation of unstressed and stressed syllables in iambic pentameter).
Despite his metrical and linguistic creativity, Hopkins shared
with the Romantics a focus on nature, the transcendent, and
personal struggle.
What challenges do you think Hopkins faced
in going against convention in both his
spiritual and artistic lives? Discuss.
956
SKILLS FOCUS Literary Skills Understand alliteration
and assonance Reading Skills Draw conclusions about
meaning.
Alliteration and Assonance In much of his poetry, Hopkins uses two
sound devices: alliteration, the repetition of consonant sounds, and
assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds. Like tongue-twisters, Hopkins’s poetry can be challenging to read aloud as a result. In “Pied Beauty,”
the repeated sounds also serve a thematic purpose. Like the creatures’
colorful spots, the sounds create points of connection between otherwise unlike things—“Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls” and “finches’ wings,”
for example, are united by the f sound they share. Try reading the poem
aloud, and consider the emotions these sounds conjure as you read.
Word Definitions Hopkins uses several
words that are either archaic (that is, no longer in use) or that he invented himself. Make
a list of unfamiliar words, and use context
clues, definitions provided with the poem,
and a dictionary to discover their meanings.
Drawing Conclusions About Meaning When you read carefully, you
draw conclusions from a text based on the evidence before you. In poetry as challenging as “Pied Beauty,” you may need to re-read a line several
times and draw inferences about words or phrases you don’t understand
by studying their context.
Into Action As you read, use a Venn diagram like the one below to draw
conclusions about each image that Hopkins presents in lines 2–5. In the
left-hand circle, record something for which the speaker is thankful. On
the right, record something with which it is compared or juxtaposed.
Keep in mind that some of these comparisons are made directly as
similes but others are not.
“skies
of couplecolor”
“brinded
cow”
Find It in Your Reading In your Reader/Writer Notebook, identify
examples of how Hopkins uses assonance and alliteration. Record
each example according to the consonant or vowel that is repeated, for
example “G: ‘Glory be to God.’”
Learn It Online
Learn more about Hopkins with these Internet links.
go.hrw.com
L12-957
Go
Preparing to Read
957
POEM
Play Audio
Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Read with a Purpose
Build Background
Read to discover how the speaker uses
nature’s diversity to praise God.
“Pied Beauty” is a song of praise to God for all things that are pied—that is, covered
with different-colored spots. Hopkins composed the poem in 1877, shortly before he
was ordained a Roman Catholic priest. Before then, he had kept a “seven-year silence” by
refusing to write poetry. He did, however, keep journals that provided material for much
of his later verse. For example, on an 1872 vacation to the Isle of Man, Hopkins described
the hillsides as “plotted and painted” with square fields, the origin of the poem’s phrase
“plotted and pieced.”
5
10
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-color as a brinded° cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple° upon trout that swim; A
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls;° finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced°—fold, fallow, and plow;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; B
He fathers-forth° whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
A
Literary Focus Alliteration and Assonance In this line, what effect is created by the
alliteration of s, t, and z sounds and the assonance of o (rose moles) and short i (stipple/swim)?
B
Reading Focus Drawing Conclusions About Meaning What image of creation is conveyed by listing these three pairs of opposites?
958
2. brinded: archaic for “brindled”; having a light brown or
gray coat streaked with a darker
color.
3. stipple: random dots or
spots.
4. chestnut-falls: chestnuts falling from a tree.
5. pieced: parceled into fields.
10. fathers-forth: creates.
alliteration and assonance; analyze characteristics of metaphysical poetry Reading
Skills Draw conclusions about meaning.
Writing Skills Describe an object; illustrate
beliefs about life.
Pied Beauty
Quick Check
Literary Analysis
1. What specific examples of “pied beauty” does
the poet mention in lines 2–6?
6. Interpret Most of the poem is concerned with
animals and other aspects of nature. In what line
does Hopkins indirectly mention people?
2. What do you think the poet means by saying “all
things counter” (line 7)?
3. In line 10, what contrast does the poet make
between the beauty of the physical world and
that of God the creator?
7. Make Judgments Is the poet’s praise for that
which is varied and changing typical of literature
written in praise of a person or of God? Explain.
Literary Skills: Alliteration and Assonance
Read with a Purpose
8. Compare and Contrast How does the use of
alliteration and assonance in “Pied Beauty” compare with that in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(pages 196–202)? Do you notice any similarities
in the meter of both poems?
4. How does Hopkins’s poem create a visual image
or landscape in praise of God?
Reading Skills: Drawing Conclusions About
Meaning
5. You created a Venn diagram to record each
comparison that Hopkins makes between a
thing in nature and something else. Now you
can complete your understanding of how these
two seemingly different things relate. Determine the meanings of any unfamiliar words.
Then, in the space where the two circles overlap, write the feature that both things share.
Literary Skills Review: Metaphysical Poetry
9. Extend A type of poetry is known for its startling imagery, philosophical and spiritual content, verbal wit, and irregular meter is called
metaphysical poetry. What aspects of “Pied
Beauty” could qualify it for this definition?
.
skies
of couple-color
light
streaked
with dark
“brinded
cow”
Use It in Your Writing. In your Reader/Writer Notebook, write a paragraph or poem in praise of a thing,
not a person, whose beauty should be celebrated.
Use alliteration or assonance to link images and ideas.
How can unusual language help reveal
hidden beauty?

SEaudio_g12_c9

Transcription

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