In class: Individually you are finishing W.E.B. Du Bois "Smoke King'"
When you have handed in your work, please pick up a copy of the late 19th century poetry with a choice project.
See class handout / copy below. This project is due on Tuesday,
April 28 at the end of class. You have three in-class days to complete the work. Plan your time accordingly.
Poem Collection There are ten
poems of varying levels of difficulty; hence they have different point values. You may earn up to 100 points,
depending upon your choice of poems.
Directions: For each poem you choose, you must respond to all the
questions as directed in well-written, complete sentences on a separate sheet
of paper.
Organization: begin with an
MLA heading
Write out
the name of your poem and its author. Be cognizant that poems are put into
quotations.
Write the
number of the question and complete the response.
Use both
sides of the paper
As you
use more paper, remember to include your surname and page number on the top
right
We’ll
staple everything together when you have finished.
Poem
Point value
The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls
The Chambered Nautilus 25
Auspex 25
Hope 15
Tell All the Truth 15
I never saw a moor 15
A Noiseless Patient Spider 25
Because I could not stop for death 15
I heard a fly buzz 15
When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer 25
The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The tide rises, the
tide falls,
The twilight darkens,
the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands
damp and brown
The traveler hastens
toward the town,
And the tide rises, the
tide falls. 5
Darkness settles on
roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in
darkness calls;
The little waves, with
their soft, white hands
Efface the footprints
in the sands,
And the tide rises, the
tide falls. 10
The morning breaks; the
steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the
hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveler to
the shore.
And the tide rises, the tide falls 15
1. Identify the setting
2. What do the “little waves” do?
3. What happens in the third stanza?
4. What details of the setting in the first
stanza suggest that the traveler is nearing death?
5. What does the poem suggest about the
relationship between humanity and nature?
6. What is the effect of the refrain or
repeated line?
7. How does the rhythm contribute to the
meaning?
8. What do the details in lines 11-13
suggest about Longfellow’s attitude toward death?
THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS by Oliver Wendell Holmes
This is the ship of
pearl, which, poets feign,
Sail the unshadowed
main,--
The venturous bark that
flings
On the sweet summer
wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted,
where the Siren sings, 5
And coral reefs lie
bare,
Where the cold sea-maids
rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living
gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of
pearl!
And every chambered
cell,
10
Where its dim dreaming
life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant
shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies
revealed,--
Its irised ceiling
rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld
the silent toil
15
That spread his
lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral
grew,
He left the past year's
dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step
its shining archway through,
Built up its idle
door,
20
Stretched in his
last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 25
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn;
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that
sings:--
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
30
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! 35
1. What has
happened to the nautilus the speaker is describing?
2. What did the
nautilus do “as the spiral grew”?
3. What does the
voice that rings ‘through the deep caves of thought” tell the speaker?
4. Each year
throughout the course of its life, the nautilus creates a new chamber of shell
to house its growing body. How does
Holmes compare this process to the development of the human soul?
5. What is it
about the chambered nautilus that makes it appropriate for Holmes’ message?
6. What can be
learned from the life of the nautilus?
AUSPEX by James
Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
(in ancient Rome, an auspex was someone who watched for
omens in the flight of birds)
My heart, I cannot
still it,
Nest that had
song-birds in it;
And when the last shall
go,
The dreary days to fill
it,
Instead of lark or linnet, 5
Shall whirl dead leaves
and snow.
Had they been swallows
only,
Without the passion
stronger
That skyward longs and
sings,--
Woe's me, I shall be
lonely 10
When I can feel no
longer
The impatience of their
wings!
A moment, sweet
delusion,
Like birds the brown
leaves hover;
But it will not be
long 15
Before their wild
confusion
Fall wavering down to
cover
The poet and his song.
1. According to the first stanza, what will
“ill” the speaker’s heart when the songbirds have gone?
2. According the second stanza. When will
the speaker be lonely?
3. What is the “sweetest delusion” the
speaker refers to in lines 11-14?
4. What will happen when the delusion ends?
5. In this poem, Lowell compares songbirds
to the happiness that provides him with poetic inspiration. To what does he compare the emptiness
following the disappearance of his happiness?
6. What do the swallows (7) represent? How
is this different than what the songbirds represent?
7. What does the image of the leaves
falling and covering the poet represent?
8. What type event in Lowell’s life might
have prompted him to write the poem?
Hope by Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with
feathers
That perches in the
soul,
And sings the
tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the
gale is heard;
And sore must be the
storm
That could abash the
little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the
chillest land,
And on the strangest
sea;
Yet, never, in
extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
1. According to the speaker, what “perches
in the soul”? What type of tune does it
sing? When does it stop singing?
2. Name two places where the speaker has
heard the ‘little Bird”? What has the
“little Bird” never done?
3. Throughout the poem Dickinson develops a
comparison between hope and a “little Bird.” What is the effect of this
comparison?
4. What qualities does the bird
possess? What does this suggest about
the characteristics of hope?
5. In what way do the final two lines
suggest that hope is something that we cannot consciously control?
6. What does this poem suggest about the
human ability to endure hardships?
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant by
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the Truth but
tell it slant---
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our
infirm Delight
The Truth's superb
surprise
As Lightening to the
Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle
gradually
Or every man be
blind---
1. According to the speaker, what is “to
bright for our infirm Delight”?
2. Why must the truth “dazzle gradually”?
3. What does Dickinson mean when she tells
us to “to tell all the Truth but tell it slant”?
4. To what type of “Truth” do you think
Dickinson is referring?
I never saw a moor by Emily Dickinson
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the
heather looks,
And what a wave must
be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the
spot
As if the chart were
given.
1. What two things has the speaker never
seen? What does she know in spite of
never having seen them?
2. With whom has the speaker never
spoken? Where has she never visited? Of
what is she certain?
3. How might the speaker have acquired the
knowledge she claims to possess in the first stanza? In what way is the
knowledge presented in the second stanza different from that of the first
stanza? How might she have acquired the
knowledge in the second stanza?
4. Explain the difference between intuition
and experience?
A Noiseless Patient
Spider by Walt Whitman
A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood,
isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of
itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them. 5
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the
spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile
anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my
Soul.
10
1. Where is
the spider standing when the speaker first sees it?
2. How does
the spider explore its “vacant vast surroundings”?
3. Where is the speaker’s soul standing?
What is it doing?
4. What
similarities does the speaker see between his soul and spider?
5. With
what do you think the speaker’s soul is seeking connection? (lines 8-10)
6. Like the
Transcendentalist, Whitman believed that the human spirit was mirrored in the
world of nature? How does this poem reflect this belief/
7. Whitman presents a
paradox, or apparent self-contradiction, in line 7, when he describes the soul
as being “surrounded” and “detached.”
Why do you think this paradox might be used to describe the position of
the poet in society?
Because I could not stop for Death…Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
1. Explain why
Death stops for the speaker.
What does Death’s carriage hold?
2. What does the
speaker “put away” in the second stanza/
3. In the third
stanza, what three things does the carriage pass? Where does the carriage pause
in the fifth stanza?
4. How is death
portrayed in the first two stanzas? What is ironic about this portrayal?
5. How does the
speaker’s attitude toward death change in the fourth stanza?
6. How does Death
affect the speaker’s conception of time?
I heard a fly buzz—Emily Dickinson
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness
round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry, 5
And breaths were
gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in
his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of
me I 10
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed
a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the
light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then 15
I could not see
to see.
1. What does the
speaker hear? When does she see it?
2. To what does the speaker compare the
stillness of the room?
3. For what were
breaths gathering firm in the second stanza?
4. According to
the final stanza, what happens when the windows fail?
5. What does the
buzzing of the fly heighten the speaker’s awareness of the stillness and
tension in the room?
6. What does the
speaker’s attitude toward death seem to be?
How is this attitude reflected by the fly?
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer by Walt Whitman
WHEN I heard the learn’d
astronomer;
When the proofs, the
figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the
charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard
the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon,
unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
5
Till rising and gliding
out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist
night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect
silence at the stars.
1. What
visual aids does the astronomer use during his lecture?
2. How
does the speaker respond to the lecture?
3. Where
does the speaker go when he leaves the lecture?
What does he look up at from time to time?
4. How
is the speaker’s attitude toward the stars different from that of the
astronomer?
5. The
word mystical means “spiritually significant.” Why do you think Whitman chose
this word to describe the moist night air in line 7?
6. Who
do you think is more ‘learn’d” in regard to the stars? Explain.
7. What
is the theme of the poem? How does
Whitman’s use of parallel structures in the first four lines reinforce the
theme?
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