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Understanding Poetry

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information, data and solution. Student should must read and refer the official study material provided by the university.

Attempt all questions.

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Q. 1. Write a critical appreciation of the poem ‘To Coy His Mistress’.
Ans. Discussion:
The poem presents the carpe diem philosophy that the days of youth are short and so should be best used in the
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enjoyment of pleasures of love. The speaker persuades his beloved by presenting this view before her. He pleads her
to accept his proposal without delay since the end of youth is imminent and without youth there is no pleasure.
The speaker gives reference to the two continents where two rivers, the Ganges and the Humber, flow and
maintain the division of the world. The lovers would have been by the banks of the two rivers and would have
passed time in waiting if only they had the privilege of control over time. Then there are references to the beginning
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of the creation, its end and to therecent growth of European imperialism. Had the lovers had that much time, the
speaker says he would have taken a hundred years to look at her beautiful eyes and two hundred years to gaze at her
breasts. In the second stanza, the speaker talks of the old age and death. He says the body of his beloved would
decay and perhaps they could unite only in the moment of death, of dust and ashes. The force of argument is
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strongest here as the beloved can be easily convinced of the futility of union in this state. In the third and the final
stanza, the speaker refers to the glowing skin of the beloved, to the fires burning in the cells of the body and
suggests that the available time should been joyed in love.
Appreciation
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Thoughts In A Garden is celebration of peace, solitude and spirituality, while To His Coy Mistress is the celebration
of youth and beauty. The poems have diversity in theme and style. Marvell’s argument is marked by originality and
copiousness. He compares the amplitude of time that characterizes the slow growth of civilization with the painful
short duration of youth.
The poems have rhetorical constructions and conceits such as Time’s winged chariot and deserts of vast eternity.
They are perfectly in tune with the hyperbolic opening of the poem. They are also examples of epigrammatic
condensation.
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Marvell is one of the metaphysical poets. He wrote of love quite frankly and his persuasions of the bashful
mistress make a delightful reading. He also wrote of spiritual experiences despite his puritan background. He is

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known for his elaborate and often outlandish metaphorical constructs, or “conceits”. Marvell has extended poetic
comparison of the human soul to a drop of dew. Marvell is also known as a charged political writer and many of his
poems–such as “An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return to England” – illustrate his strong belief in Republican

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government and principles that opposed absolute monarchy.
Marvell has highly intellectual style. Eliot praised Marvell’s elaborate poetic techniques. A simplicity of utterance
was an important feature of all the phases of his writing which was also united by a well-directed growth of
emotional life. His journey can be likened to that of W.B. Yeats as both were rooted to deeply private experiences
but explored the spirituality in human life.

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The speaker tries to persuad his beloved by presenting this view that the end of youth is imminent and without
youth there is no pleasure. He gives reference to the two continents where two rivers, the Ganges and the Humber,
flow and maintain the division of the world. The lovers would have been by the banks of the two rivers and would
have passed time in waiting if only they had the privilege of control over time. The speaker talks of the old age and

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death. He says the body of his beloved would decay and perhaps they could unite only in the moment of death, of
dust and ashes. After that he refers to the glowing skin of the beloved, to the fires burning in the cells of the body
and suggests that the available time should be enjoyed in love.
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Q. 2. Critically analyse the poem ‘A Hot Noon in Malabar’.
Ans. Kamala Das was versatile writer. She wrote essays, fictions, short stories, criticism and news features very
successfully in Malayalam and English. The first volume of her collected poems was published in 1984, it won her
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Sahitya Akademi Award for 1985. Her other collection The Soul Knows How to Sing: Selections From Kamala Das
was published in 1997. Her other well-known books included Summer in Calcutta (1965) and The Descendants
(1967), The Old Playhouse and Other Stories (1973).
She made new experiments in Indian English poetry and explored those labyrinths which inhibit many a brave
poets. She talked about biological matters bluntly and openly. Kamala Das allowed the poetic impulse to flow into
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poetry before the social conventions came to arrest the flow. According to C.D. Narasimhaiah says: “Kamala Dasis
perhaps the only Indian poet who owes little to Yeats or Eliot and trusted herown resources and culture”.
She transformed her personal experiences into poetic art. Often she depicted about women’s plight in a society
dominated bymen. Her poetry has the rapeutic and cathartic effect on the poet as well as on the readers.
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Critical Appreciation
In ‘A Hot Noon in Malabar’, the poet talks about some experiences in her home in Malabar. The poet seems to
be fascinated by time at noon. The title is not about what happens to the living and non-living things during a hot
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summer noon in Malabar. It can be interpreted in terms of the background of the poet’s past memories. The word
‘noon’ is repeated six times in the poem to create the atmosphere of noon. The mood of the poem is sad and tone
somber. The theme is the loss of the poet’s sweet experiences at Malabar home.
The poet has created the atmosphere of her Malabar home through the imagery depicting the men and women
who passed her home in the summer noon. Those men and women included men from hills with parrots in cage and
fortune cards, kouba girls who read palm in light singsong, bangle-sellers withred and green and blue bangles and
strangers who part the window drapes andpeer in for shelter and other things. The realistic imagery impart authenticity
to the poem. As bangle-sellers’s feet covered with dust of roads of growth of cracks on the heels and strangers
deluded with the sparkle of sum no seeing a thing in shadowy rooms, turn away further authenticates the description.
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Some of the phrases including a couple of similes show the verbal felicities. The bangle-sellers’ feet devouring
rough miles’, the hot eyes of the bangle-sellers brimming with the sun’ and the strangers who rarely spoke so that

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when they did speak, their voiceran wild like jungle-voices’ are among the verbal felicities. The word devour has
been used metaphorically convey the idea of the travellers covering miles and miles of dusty road. ‘Brimming with
the Sun’ is another expressive phrase.

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Q. 3. Discuss the title of the poem ‘A Rain of Rites’.
Ans. “A Rain of Rites” suggests a process of purification. The poet has used symbols from his environment to
convey his inner feelings. The poem has symbols of ‘rain’, ‘sky’, and ‘cloud’ to express inner feelings in solitude
andsilence. This poem reveals the areas of the mind unstructured by rational concepts and logic.
Analysis

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A Rain of Rites implies a process of purification. The poet has used symbols from his environment to convey his
inner feelings. The poet has used symbols of ‘rain’, ‘sky’, and ‘cloud’ to express inner feelings in solitude and
silence. This poem reveals the areas of the mind unstructured by rational concepts and logic.
The poem speaks of a troubled soul of a weary and undefined unhappiness. Bruceking says: “The monsoon

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season, which provides symbols for A Rain of Rites is both a time of grey skies, disasters and depressions and also
a period of renewal, birth, regeneration, after the dry, stifling Indian summer. But the rainsbrings no renewal to the
poet. In the poem a contrast is made between the surprising moments when the sun shines through the clouds of the
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grey rain and the poet’s lack of illumination and renewal. The poet says:
“Sometime a rain comes,
Slowly across the sky, that turns upon its grey cloud, breaking
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away into light

Before it reaches its objective”.
The opening stanza talks symbolically of ‘rain’. The poet uses the word in two different senses: one in the sense
of past experience and the other in the sense of purifying agent.
In the second stanza the speaker regrets “The Rain I have known and traded all this life/is thrown like a kelp on
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the beach.” He means to say that the experiences of the past has proved useless like a kelp on the beach.’
He adds another simile to illustrate the same point. He says that since he has some shape of conscience, he has
a sense of right and wrong. He is not supposed to misunderstand the truth and look for right in a wrong place like
looking for “a malignant purpose in a nun’s eyes”.
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The third stanza has a question as to who the last man was “to whom the cold cloud brought the blood to his
face”. The poet refers to the person having right impulse whose thoughts were refined and the loss of it had saddened
the man. The speaker wishes to say that it was long-long ago that loss of such human values outraged the human
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being. The poet examines his own inner feelings to denote the time over which the human beings lost their innocence
and were overtaken by experience. The poet devoid of any feeling approaches this question with shock:
“Numbly I climb to the mountain-tops of ours
Where my own soul quivers on the edge of answers”.
The speaker fails to get the exact answer. Thus, the last stanza ends on anote of interrogation. The speaker
finally wants to know as to why the stale air orold memories “sits on angel’s wings” and they move with the fastest
speed. He would also like to know as to what is that holds our rain or past impressions sothat “it’s hard to overcome”.
The images of ‘rain’, ‘sky’, ‘clouds’ and kelp on the sea’are related to the rainy season which symbolizes both
devastation as well as regeneration. The dictions chosen by the poet is simple but their arrangement into phrases,
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clauses and sentences makes the overall meaning of the poem complex. The images are created with the use of
similes.

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The poet compares the uselessness of the past memories with sea weed on the beach. Similarly, he compares
himself with some shape of conscience.
The theme of the poem is the loss of human innocence or rejuvenating force within because of the worldly

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experience we gain which keeps us going in life.
The poem may also be studied in terms of the poet’s own personal life. A Rain of Rites balances his inner with
outer world. The poem is a reflection on relation with and alienation of the self from external realities in a world
without apparent purpose.
The poem is written in the first person narrative. There is enough gap between the lines of the poem because it

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expresses the narrator’s inner landscape. The mood of the poem is regretful and tone is somber.
Q. 4. Discuss the central theme of the poem ‘Because I Could Not Stop for Death’.
Ans. Emily Dickinson is known for unconventional use of the mechanics of language like the frequent use of
dashes, ungrammatical phrasing, strange and stunning images and aphoristic wit. She has influenced many of the

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20th century poets. As one of the foremost women writers of the 19th century America too, Dickinson gains
significance. She led a life of solitude and kept away from the society as possible. We will study about her life and
works in this chapter. We will also discuss three of her poems.
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“Because I could not Stop for Death” deals with Death and Immortality, two recurring themes in Emily Dickinson’s
poetry. The poem conceives of death in terms of routine life, not as something alien and sublime. The poet has a
clear perception which manifests in the precision of images chosen by her.
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Death is presented as a gentleman taking a lady out for a ride. Throughout the poem Death is viewed from
diverse perspectives. The poet portrays death as a solemn guide that leads man to immortality.
The poem presents three images: playing school children, fields of grain and the setting sun. They represent the
three stages in human life, childhood, maturity and old age.
A Critical Appreciation
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“Because I could not Stop for Death” deals with Death and Immortality, two recurring themes in Emily
Dickinson’s poetry. The poem conceives of death in terms of routine life, not as something alien and sublime. The
poet has a clear perception which manifests in the precision of images chosen by her.
Further it moves to present a more conventional vision of death—things become cold and more sinister, the
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speaker’s dress is not thick enough to warm or protect her. Yet it quickly becomes clear that though this part of
death—the coldness, and the next stanza’s image of the grave as home—may not be ideal, it is worth it, for it leads
to the final stanza, which ends with immortality. Additionally, the use of alliteration in this stanza that emphasizes
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the material trappings—”gossamer” “gown” and “tippet” “tulle”—makes the stanza as a whole less sinister.
That immorality is the goal is hinted at in the first stanza, where “Immortality” is the only other occupant of the
carriage, yet it is only in the final stanza that we see that the speaker has obtained it. Time suddenly loses its
meaning; hundreds of years feel no different than a day. Because time is gone, the speaker can still feel with relish
that moment of realization, that death was not just death, but immortality, for she “surmised the Horses’ Heads/
Were toward Eternity –.” By ending with “Eternity –,” the poem itself enacts this eternity, trailing out into the
infinite.
Q. 5. Explain with reference to the context the following lines:
(a) Must come and bide. And such are we?
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Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary ?
That I can hope

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Health, love friends, scope
In full for thee; can dream thou’lt find
Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!

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Ans. Context: These lines are taken from the poem To An Unborn Pauper Child by Thomas Hardy.
Explanation: The poet feels the child would gladly find some enclosed land in the earth, where the child would
stay without a tear or disquietude. But he is incapable to do this as he is as weak as the baby. He cannot change the
common fate to a rare one. As he is unable to change the baby’s fate or to give warning of what is in store for it, he
asks the child to come and dwell on the earth. And since humans are by nature happily optimistic, visionary and not

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given to reason, he can hope and wish that the baby, once it is born, will live in love, good health, friendship and
possibilities galore. He dreams that the child will have joys which are rarely achieved by human beings.
In the last stanza, the poet prays that things may be better for the child. The terrible things may be applicable to
any child born into the world. The poet has seen several disruptive events in the world. “Though skies spoutfire and
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blood and nations quake” might be a reference to the aerial warfare and blitzkrieg during the World War.
The poem is an “apostrophe”: A rhetorical device in the form of an address to someone not present. Many of the
stanzas opens with injunctions and interjections. The poem makes use of alliterations such as, “hid heart”, “cease
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silently”, “birth-hour beckons”, “Travails and teens”,”surge and sigh” and “pending plan”. Time has been personified
in the poem.
(b) All the earth and air
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with thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,
From one lovely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow’d
Ans. Context: These lines are taken from the poem To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
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Explanation: The bird is like the poet who sings for the mankind from an unknown destination. Then the
skylark is compared with the aristocratic maiden soothing her love laden soul with song. The singing of the bird has
heavenly blessings. Then it is compared with the rose covered by the green leaves. So the bird though not seen
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properly is communicating with the audience in clear music.

The poet wishes that the bird should teach the mankind the heavenly happiness it enjoys. He also wants to know
about the theme of the song of the bird. The poet also is curious to know about the reason behind such happiness and
absence of sorrow. The bird knows only love but does not know the sadness inherited in the human love. Its love is
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sacred. The bird is given eternity. It is singing from time immemorial.

Then the poet contrasts the song of the bird with the woes of human being. Human wants are unlimited. Human
wants never get fulfilled. The good songs of the human world are always accompanied with the saddest thoughts.
So goes the beautiful description “our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts”. The poet wants to
learn about the secret of the beauty of the skylark. The skylark is the scorner of the ground. It scorns the earth which
is full of afflictions and miseries. The poet wants that the skylark should teach him half of the gladness it enjoys. He
can learn from the bird and write poetry. Each stanza consists of four short lines and the last long line. The rhyme
patter is very much similar in the poem.