The
Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour. |
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SUN-FLOWER
Ah, Sun-flower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done
Where the youth pined away with desire
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go
(William Blake, 1789) |
SOLSIKKE
Åh, solsikke, træt af tiden,
Som tæller solens trin
Og søger efter det søde gylne vejrlig
Hvor den rejsendes rejse er slut
Hvor ynglingen hentæredes af begær
Og den blege jomfru i et ligklæde af sne
Stiger op fra deres grave og aspirerer efter
Hvor min solsikke ønsker at gå hen |
WRITING YOUR OWN POETRY
| How do you write your own poems? - It's certainly hard
to become a new Blake, but that's not necessary. The important thing
is that you express what you think is important to you! You
just go ahead and do it. |
Analyzing poems
:
Maybe it's wrong to do that. Remember the scene in Dead Poets
Society when Keating orders the boys to rip out the page on
mathematical analysis of poems. You may destroy the experience by
analysing the poem in a too detailed and logical way. Poetry is the
language of the heart, the language of passion, but sometimes it helps to bring the brain
along too. It may heighten the understanding. O.K. You can go ahead
in the following way:
| Read the poem aloud, so you get a sense of the
rhythm. See, It's not only a collection of words.
It's a kind of music. The rhythm even changes its pace, e.g.
from the 1st to the 2nd line and in the 6th line, which is
done deliberately to fit the messages of the lines. |
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Figurative speech (metaphors, images): cf.
The traveller's journey = life. Pale virgin = unawakened
desire. Shrouded in snow = death/cold/anti-life. The steps of
the sun = time. What is the sun- flower symbolic of? In what
way does it grow?
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Theme/Message: What does the poet want to
tell us. In this case probably something about the opposition
of life and death forces in man, of Eros and Thanatos, of the
yearning for a life fuller and more meaningful than the one
you can live right now. Is there a religious message: Where
does the sun-flower "wish to go"?
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Kubla Khan
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
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