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Robert Fost: Poetic Qualities

With the publication of “A Boy’s Will” (1913) and “North to Boston” (1914) Frost became the first American poet to be widely read.

Frost has been regarded as a “regional poet”. His region was New England of two best states in U.S.A. He never felt the slightest desire to include all America within the scope of his poetry. His regionalism resembles from Emily Dickinson’s. The New England provides him with the stories, attitudes, characters, which are appropriate to his needs. He falls in love with the New England tradition and it gives him strength. His work seems to capture the vanished joys of apple picking, hay-making, the sleep of an old man alone in an old farmhouse, the cleaning of the pasture spring. No American writer knows the subjects, people and places as thoroughly as Frost does. Frost is certainly a realist. He never says too much. In stories, he uses suggestion and understatement.

Frost is chiefly lyrical. The poems are a spontaneous expression of the youthful heart. Frost shows emotion, imagery and song. As regards imagery, they are full of beauties of the darkness of late autumn, still depths of winter, and intensity of the swift summer. He has written lyrics light-hearted and humorous and philosophical. Often the two extremes are combines. He has written a few love lyrics too.

The form employed by Frost is dramatic. But in some of his most successful pieces he has subordinated both drama and character to straightforward poetic narrative. In “The Code” a farm hand tells how he killed the employer by burying him under a load of hay violating an unwritten law of the fields because of made some trivial sign on his work. Here Frost has sketched out, half-humorously a story showing peculiar local customs, the odd expressions of personal pride which develop in a remote rural community. In the “Witch of Coos” a humorously gruesome story of violence, brooding and hallucination appears what is probably the most unusual ghost in American literature. At once realistic and fantastic, cynically coarse and delicately beautiful, “Paul’s Wife” is an amazingly successful fusion of the most disparate qualities.



Frost showed a philosophical bent of mind from the very beginning. He does not have any philosophical system or set of beliefs. He inclines to the inquiring manner. Often he expresses himself in a humorous or satirical vein and shows an epigrammatic gift.

Sometimes we have a blend of the familiar essays and the parable in Frost’s philosophical poems with illustrative anecdotes. “Mending Walls” is a humorous portrayal through rural anecdote of the liberal, inquiring man confronted with the man of inertia. Then there are two poems of a different kind. “A Masque of Reason” and “A Masque of Mercy”, in which the poet undertakes, if not Milton’s task of justifying God’s ways to men at least the more modest task of speculating about them.

Many of Frost’s poems are capable of a symbolic interpretation. The surface meaning of “Mending Wall” is ‘Good fences make good neighbours’ but symbolically the poem states the serious problem of our times. Should national boundaries be made stronger for our protection or should they be removed since they restrict our progress towards international brotherhood? “The Mountain” symbolizes the un-inquisitive, the unadventurous and the un-ambitious spirit. “The Road Not Taken” symbolically deals with the choice problem.

Frost is not a Nature poet in the tradition of Wordsworth. He insists upon the boundaries between man and the forces of Nature. He sees no pervading spirit in the natural world and regards it as impersonal and unfeeling. He treats nature both as comfort and menace.

Frost shows a strong disinclination towards city life. He has written no poems on friendship. He has written love poems, but misunderstanding is a constant theme in them. His poetry has curious anti-social quality. Almost every poem in “North of Boston” deals with the theme of alienation. “Desert Places” describes a similar mood and situation. Many of his poems are about the sense and the feeling of loneliness not a peculiarly American dilemma but as a universal situation. Sometimes he approaches this problem in an optimistic manner as in “Our Hold on the Planet”.

A critic has listed the typical qualities of Frost’s poetry like Frost’s tenderness, sadness and humour; his seriousness and honesty; his sorrowful acceptance of things as they are without exaggeration or explanation; his many poems with real people, real speech, real thoughts and real emotions; subtlety and exactness and a classical under-statement and restraint.


In conclusion it may be pointed out that Frost has been described as a symbolist, a spiritual drifter, a home-spun philosopher, a lyricist, a moralist, a preacher and a farmer who writes verse.

Major Themes of Robert Frost

Frost’s poems deal with man in relation with the universe. Man’s environment as seen by frost is quite indifferent to man, neither hostile nor benevolent. Man is alone and frail as compared to the vastness of the universe. Such a view of “man on earth confronting the total universe” is inevitably linked with certain themes in frost’s poetry.

One of the most striking themes in Frost’s poetry is man’s isolation from his universe or alienation from his environment. Frost writes in “Desert Places”, “The loneliness includes me unawares”. Man is essentially alone, as is borne out in frost’s poetry. Frost is not so much concerned with depicting the cultural ethos of New England people as with presenting them “caught up in a struggle with the elementary problem of existence”. The New England of Frost reflects his consciousness of “an agrarian society isolated within an urbanized world”. Man is alone in the countryside or in the city in “Acquainted with the Night”.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
---------------------------------------------------
But not to call me back or say good-by;
In “Home Burial”, the lady suffers from a terrible sense of self-alienation, as well as alienation from her surroundings. And, more than the physical loneliness, man suffers from the loneliness within.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
A concern with barrier is the predominant theme in Frost’s poetry. Man is always erecting and trying to bring down barriers-- between man and environment, between man and man. To Frost, these barriers seem favorable to mutual understanding and respect. Frost insists on recognizing these barriers instead of trying to tear them down as in the modern trend. And he even builds them wherever necessary.

Practically all of Frost’s poems depict the theme of human limitation. The universe seems chaotic and horrific because man’s limited faculties cannot comprehend its meaning. Walls, physical and real, mental and invisible, separate man from Nature. “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep” shows man’s limitation concerning the mysterious universe. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” conveys the sense of an impenetrable and indefinite universe. Frost’s human beings are aware of the gap between the ideal and the actual. The apple-picker had set out on his work with great hopes, but faces disillusionment.
For I have too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
In some poems, however, Frost does indicate that man can exceed his limitations in his thought as in “Sand Dunes”.

Theme of extinction or death also runs through the major themes of Frost. In many a poem he writes of “sleep” which is associated with death. “Fire and Ice” is a noteworthy poem on destruction by excess of desire or hatred. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “After Apple Picking”, “An Old Man’s Winter Night”, all these poems have a reference to death. “Directive” is a poem in which three of Frost’s most obsessive themes isolation, extinction and the final limitations of man are blended. Each life is shown to be pathetic because it wears away into death. The poem dismays but it also consoles.

In most of Frost’s poems, the speaker undergoes a process of self-discovery. The wood-chopper of “Two Tramps in Mud Time” realizes by the end of the poem that he chops wood for love of work only but love and need should not be separated.

Theme of affirmation is also found in some of his poems. Frost ultimately presents the need for man to make the most of his situation. Aware of man’s limitations, he yet desires man to explore and seek knowledge and truth. Man should learn to accept things and his limitations cheerfully. He suggests stoical will and effort in the face of adversity as in “West Running Brook”. In the face of the mystery and riddle of life there is necessity for determined human performance.
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I Sleep
And miles to go before I Sleep
Theme of love is central to Frost’s poems. If there is any force that can help man meet the challenges of the universe, it is love. In several of Frost’s poems, the significance of love between man and woman, or friendly love is brought out. It is when love breaks down or fades off that life becomes unbearable especially for the women in Frost’s poetry.

The major themes as discussed above are expressed through various devices. The symbolic significance invested in certain recurring objects like the stars, the snow, the woods serve to bring home to the reader all the more vividly the position of Man in the Universe.

Robert Frost: A Modern Poet

In spite of the Pastoral element predominant in Frost’s poems, he is still a modern poet because his poetry has been endowed with the awareness of the problems of man living in the modern world dominated by Science and Technology.


Critics have a difference of opinion over considering him a modern poet. Frost is a pastoral poet – poet of pastures and plains, mountains and rivers, woods and gardens, groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, and seeds and birds. They do not treat such characteristically modern subjects as ‘the boredom implicit in sensuality’, ‘the consciousness of neuroses’ and ‘the feeling of damnation’. Cleanth Brooks says:

“Frost’s best poetry exhibits the structure of symbolist metaphysical poetry. Much more clearly than does of many a modern poet.”

In fact, Frost’s poetry portrays the disintegration of values in modern life and the disillusionment of the modern man in symbolical and metaphysical terms as much as the poetry of great, modern poets does, because most of his poems deal with persons suffering from loneliness and frustration, regrets and disillusionment which are known as modern disease. In “An old Man’s Winter Night”, the old man is lonely, completely alienated from the society, likeness, the tiredness of the farmer due to over work in “Apple-Picking” and as a result of it his yielding to sleep:

For I have too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of great harvest I myself desired.
In his nature poems, Frost has also commented on the misery of the modern man which due to his going away from nature.


His metaphysical treatment of the subject in some of his poems is also an evidence of his modernity. In “Mending Walls”, Frost juxtaposes the two opposite aspects of the theme of the poem and then leaves it to the reader to draw his own conclusion. The conservative farmer says:
Good fences make good neighbour
and the modern radical farmer says:
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
According to J.F.Lynen the use of the pastoral technique by Frost in his poems, does not mean that the poet seeks an escape from the harsh realities of modern life. He argues that it provides him with a point of view.

Frost uses pastoral technique only to evaluate and comment on the modern lifestyle. His pastoralism thus registers a protest against the disintegration of values in the modern society and here he is one with great poets of the modern age like T.S.Eliot, Yeats and Hopkins.

Another poetic technique adopted by Frost which makes him a modern poet is symbolism. “The Road Not Taken” symbolizes the universal problem of making a choice of invisible barriers built up in the minds of the people which alienate them from one another mentally and emotionally thought they live together or as neighbours in the society. Similarly the Birch trees in “Birches” symbolize man’s desire to seek escape from the harsh suffering man to undergo in this world.

Unlike Romantics he has taken notice of both the bright and dark aspects of nature as we see in his poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time”. Beneath the apparently beautiful calm there is lurking turmoil and storms:
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
In fact the world of nature in Frost’s poetry is not a world of dream. It is much more harsh, horrible and hostile than the modern urban world. Hence his experience of the pastoral technique to comment on the human issue of modern world his realistic treatment of Nature, his employment of symbolic and metaphysical techniques and the projection of the awareness of human problems of the modern society in his poetry justly entitle him to be looked up to as modern poet.

Heart of Darkness: Theme of Isolation

“Heart of Darkness” has a multiplicity of themes interwoven closely and produces a unified pattern. The theme of isolation and its consequences constitute a theme in this book, though a minor one. Marlow and Mr. Kurtz illustrate this theme, dominate the novel and have symbolic roles. Both these men stand for much more than the individuals which they certainly are.

Marlow strikes us from the very start as a lonely figure. Although he is a member of a small group of people sitting on the deck of the streamer called the “Nellie”. He is, at the very outset, differentiated from the others. He sits cross-legged in the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes without a lotus-flower. Then he begins his story, and nowhere in his narration does he appear to be feeing perfectly at home among other people. He seems to have the temperament of a man who would like to stay away from others, though he would certainly like to observe others and to mediate upon his observations.

When Marlow goes to Brussels for an interview, he depicts himself as an alien who has stepped into an unpleasant environment. The city of Brussels makes him think of a “whited sepulcher”. This feeling clearly shows that he has nothing in common with the people of this European city, though he is himself a European. Then he finds something ominous in the atmosphere of the office of the Company. The two knitting-women strike him as mysterious and sinister beings.
"In the outer room the two women knitted black wool, feverishly."

Even the doctor tells him that he is the first Englishman to have come under his observation. Marlow says:
'The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the while. "Good, good for there," he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head.


There seems to be a distance even between Marlow and his aunt who has got him the job. She is enthusiastic and cordial enough, but Marlow has his reservations. He thinks that she is a most unrealistic woman. She is under the impression that the white men go into the backward regions to confer benefits upon the savages. But, in Marlow’s opinion, this view of the white men is entirely wrong.

When voyaging upon the sea in order to get to the Congo Marlow found himself to be perfectly idle and isolated from all the others on board the steamer because he had no point of contact with them. The sound of the sea-waves was the only source of comfort to him because these sounds seemed to be like “the speech of a brother”. He finds a kinship with the sea-waves but no kinship with the human beings on board the steamer.

Marlow’s sense of loneliness increase when he sees certain sights in the Congo. These sights convey to him the futility of the white man’s exertions and activities in the Congo, and miseries of the black natives. His realization by him of white man’s cruelty creates a kind of barrier between him and the white men living in Congo. When he has to deal with the individual white men, his isolation is further emphasized. He finds absolutely no point of contact with the manager of the Central Station, with the manager’s uncle, and with the brick-maker. The manager is a man who inspires no fear, no love, no respect and there is “nothing within this man”. The manager’s uncle is an intriguer and plotter as the manager himself. The brick-maker is described by Marlow as a “papier-mâché Mephistopheles” and a devil who is hollow within. The only man, whom Marlow can respect, is the chief accountant who keeps his account-books in apple-pie order and is always seen dressed neatly and nicely; but perhaps Marlow is speaking here ironically. Actually none of the white men seems to have any merit in him. Marlow does discover some good points in the natives but none in the white men. The cannibal crew of his steamer shows an admirable self-restraint and are hard-working but the white agents seem to be useless fellows and to them he gives the nickname of the “faithless pilgrims”. It is only when Marlow meets Mr. Kurtz that some sort of contact is established between him and the chief of the Inner Station of the Company.

The effect of isolation upon Marlow is profound. He is by nature somewhat unsociable. He is a kind of philosopher who meditates upon whatever he sees. Isolation further heightens his meditative faculty. Finding no point of contact with others, Marlow becomes more of a thinker, and more of a philosopher-cum-psychologist and studies the character and habits of Mr. Kurtz; and it is because of his isolation that he falls a victim to the influence of Mr. Kurtz whom he has himself described as a devil. This isolation can have grave consequences.

Mr. Kurtz is another isolated figure. He has become an absolutely solitary man after his prolonged stay in the Congo. He is not solitary in the sense that he does not mix with other. In fact, he has begun to identify himself with the savages and has become a sharer in their activities and in their interests. He participates in their “unspeakable rites” and he gratifies, without any restraint, his various lusts and his monstrous passions.
“The wilderness has caressed him, loved him, embraced him, entered his blood, consumed his flesh and has taken complete possession of his soul.”

In the case of Mr. Kurtz, it is isolation which proves the man’s undoing. Being cut off from all civilized society at the Inner Station of the Company, Mr. Kurtz begins slowly to fall under the influence of the savage till he becomes one of them. Gradually he acquires great power and begins to be regarded as a god by them. Thus now he has to keep himself at a distance even from them. He “presides” over their midnight dances which end with “unspeakable rites”.

But he is a solitary figure in the context of his western education and European upbringing. Even among the savages, he stands far above them. The savages regard him as a man-god. Mr. Kurtz is indeed a deity for the savages, and therefore he is a solitary figure even among them. Perhaps the savage closest to him under these conditions is the native woman who is his housekeeper and also perhaps his mistress. But the evil within him has already acquired huge proportions. Thus the effects of isolation in Mr. Kurtz’s case are disastrous.

Heart of Darkness: Theme of Isolation

“Heart of Darkness” has a multiplicity of themes interwoven closely and produces a unified pattern. The theme of isolation and its consequences constitute a theme in this book, though a minor one. Marlow and Mr. Kurtz illustrate this theme, dominate the novel and have symbolic roles. Both these men stand for much more than the individuals which they certainly are.

Marlow strikes us from the very start as a lonely figure. Although he is a member of a small group of people sitting on the deck of the streamer called the “Nellie”. He is, at the very outset, differentiated from the others. He sits cross-legged in the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes without a lotus-flower. Then he begins his story, and nowhere in his narration does he appear to be feeing perfectly at home among other people. He seems to have the temperament of a man who would like to stay away from others, though he would certainly like to observe others and to mediate upon his observations.

When Marlow goes to Brussels for an interview, he depicts himself as an alien who has stepped into an unpleasant environment. The city of Brussels makes him think of a “whited sepulcher”. This feeling clearly shows that he has nothing in common with the people of this European city, though he is himself a European. Then he finds something ominous in the atmosphere of the office of the Company. The two knitting-women strike him as mysterious and sinister beings.
"In the outer room the two women knitted black wool, feverishly."

Even the doctor tells him that he is the first Englishman to have come under his observation. Marlow says:
'The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the while. "Good, good for there," he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head.


There seems to be a distance even between Marlow and his aunt who has got him the job. She is enthusiastic and cordial enough, but Marlow has his reservations. He thinks that she is a most unrealistic woman. She is under the impression that the white men go into the backward regions to confer benefits upon the savages. But, in Marlow’s opinion, this view of the white men is entirely wrong.

When voyaging upon the sea in order to get to the Congo Marlow found himself to be perfectly idle and isolated from all the others on board the steamer because he had no point of contact with them. The sound of the sea-waves was the only source of comfort to him because these sounds seemed to be like “the speech of a brother”. He finds a kinship with the sea-waves but no kinship with the human beings on board the steamer.

Marlow’s sense of loneliness increase when he sees certain sights in the Congo. These sights convey to him the futility of the white man’s exertions and activities in the Congo, and miseries of the black natives. His realization by him of white man’s cruelty creates a kind of barrier between him and the white men living in Congo. When he has to deal with the individual white men, his isolation is further emphasized. He finds absolutely no point of contact with the manager of the Central Station, with the manager’s uncle, and with the brick-maker. The manager is a man who inspires no fear, no love, no respect and there is “nothing within this man”. The manager’s uncle is an intriguer and plotter as the manager himself. The brick-maker is described by Marlow as a “papier-mâché Mephistopheles” and a devil who is hollow within. The only man, whom Marlow can respect, is the chief accountant who keeps his account-books in apple-pie order and is always seen dressed neatly and nicely; but perhaps Marlow is speaking here ironically. Actually none of the white men seems to have any merit in him. Marlow does discover some good points in the natives but none in the white men. The cannibal crew of his steamer shows an admirable self-restraint and are hard-working but the white agents seem to be useless fellows and to them he gives the nickname of the “faithless pilgrims”. It is only when Marlow meets Mr. Kurtz that some sort of contact is established between him and the chief of the Inner Station of the Company.

The effect of isolation upon Marlow is profound. He is by nature somewhat unsociable. He is a kind of philosopher who meditates upon whatever he sees. Isolation further heightens his meditative faculty. Finding no point of contact with others, Marlow becomes more of a thinker, and more of a philosopher-cum-psychologist and studies the character and habits of Mr. Kurtz; and it is because of his isolation that he falls a victim to the influence of Mr. Kurtz whom he has himself described as a devil. This isolation can have grave consequences.

Mr. Kurtz is another isolated figure. He has become an absolutely solitary man after his prolonged stay in the Congo. He is not solitary in the sense that he does not mix with other. In fact, he has begun to identify himself with the savages and has become a sharer in their activities and in their interests. He participates in their “unspeakable rites” and he gratifies, without any restraint, his various lusts and his monstrous passions.
“The wilderness has caressed him, loved him, embraced him, entered his blood, consumed his flesh and has taken complete possession of his soul.”

In the case of Mr. Kurtz, it is isolation which proves the man’s undoing. Being cut off from all civilized society at the Inner Station of the Company, Mr. Kurtz begins slowly to fall under the influence of the savage till he becomes one of them. Gradually he acquires great power and begins to be regarded as a god by them. Thus now he has to keep himself at a distance even from them. He “presides” over their midnight dances which end with “unspeakable rites”.

But he is a solitary figure in the context of his western education and European upbringing. Even among the savages, he stands far above them. The savages regard him as a man-god. Mr. Kurtz is indeed a deity for the savages, and therefore he is a solitary figure even among them. Perhaps the savage closest to him under these conditions is the native woman who is his housekeeper and also perhaps his mistress. But the evil within him has already acquired huge proportions. Thus the effects of isolation in Mr. Kurtz’s case are disastrous.

Symbolism in Yeats' Poetry

W. B. Yeats is one of the greatest poets of the English language. He had in common two main methods of writing poetry: one spontaneous and the other a laborious process involving much alteration and substitution. However, it was only in the early phase of his poetic career that he relied entirely on inspiration giving himself upto “the chief temptation of the artistic creation without toil”. In the later phase he became a conscious artist who took great pains and re-polish his verse. He was very painstaking artist and tried to say what he has to say in the best possible words. Following lines from “Adams’s Curse” throw valuable side light on his artistic methods:
I said, “All line will take us hours may be;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”
One of the most admirable things about Yeats was that he continued to grow and mature as a craftsman throughout his long poetic career. His early poetry has a dreamy luxuriant style full of sleepy languorous rhythms. The tone is mostly wistful and nostalgic in these poems. There is an abundance of ornate word pictures as in Spenser.

It is a great tribute to Yeats craftsman that he soon grew dissatisfied with verse of this sort and tried to bring his versification nearer to the day to day speech. Along with this he tried to give a new directness and precision to his poetic language. He did away with archaism and poeticism. His imagery also became more definite and accurate and acquired a new pithy quality. Verbiage and superfluity start giving way to vigour and intensity. His diction now became terse and his poetry grew in density.

Simultaneously, Yeats tried to develop what may be called “passionate syntax” and he came to have remarkable skill in modulating his rhythm so as to be in time with the spirit of the poem. This skill is greatly evident in poems like “The Second Coming”, “Sailing to Byzantium”, “The Tower”, “Easter 1916” and “Among School Children” and even in one of his earliest poems “When You are Old”.

The confidence and assurance found in his poetic style in the later years is astounding. His rhythms were very definite and accurate and above all he could now do justice to demands of grandeur and sublimity with effortless ease. His language became very functional. It has now grown trenchant and adaptable to wide range of ideas. When he chooses he can put the starkest facts into the starkest words. As he says in “Sailing to Byzantium”:
“An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick”
Starkest words as used in “Vacillation”:
“What theme had Homer but original sin?”
He was now able to use poetry for a variety of effects – whether it was exhortation or calm comment, philosophizing or passionate condemnation, lamentation or celebration, nostalgia or prophesy. This does not mean that Yeats’ command over versification and metre was in any way less remarkable during his early poetic career. Even at the time he was able to have close correspondence between the mood of those escapist poems and the language he chose for them. In keeping with the other-worldly atmosphere of his early poetry, his rhythms also were half-entranced. In a collection like “The Wind Among the Reeds” he was able to manipulate wavering and meditative rhythms to great effect.

In his later poetry, again in keeping with his thematic content, Yeats was able to develop subtler, more varied and dramatically more adjustable cadences. His vocabulary had also become more inclusive. As a result, the metaphors were fresher and their range of reference wider. We also find that he employs the metaphorical aphorism. His use of epigram is a properly poetic one, giving the reader a shock of surprise. For example:
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.”
The imaginative structure of the poem and its actual manifestation came to be more firmly worked out and more spontaneous and natural in effect.
As an artist Yeats continued to mature and grow right upto the end of his poetic career. His confidence and assurance grew more and more and he handled words with perfect ease like a master. However, this very self-assurance accounts for his tendency to indulge in hyperboles and exaggerations. This tendency to exaggerate and use hyperboles has been considered a serious fault in his style by a number of critics. D. S. Savage criticizing this weakness in Yeats’ poetry writes:


“This exaggeration and over-heightening, this indulgence in dramatics, is exemplified in the repeated use of hyperboles phrases and of resounding words whose effect is to inflate the meaning.”

To sum up Yeats was a conscious and gifted craftsman who has few equals in the whole range of English poetry. It is true that there are some serious faults in his poetry but they do not detract in any way from his true greatness as an artist. He wrote from inner compulsion which gave to his poetry “its peculiar inner glow, as of inspiration, and classes it among our political monuments, if not precisely among “monument of unaging intellect”.

Yeats' Style

W. B. Yeats is one of the greatest poets of the English language. He had in common two main methods of writing poetry: one spontaneous and the other a laborious process involving much alteration and substitution. However, it was only in the early phase of his poetic career that he relied entirely on inspiration giving himself upto “the chief temptation of the artistic creation without toil”. In the later phase he became a conscious artist who took great pains and re-polish his verse. He was very painstaking artist and tried to say what he has to say in the best possible words. Following lines from “Adams’s Curse” throw valuable side light on his artistic methods:
I said, “All line will take us hours may be;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught."
One of the most admirable things about Yeats was that he continued to grow and mature as a craftsman throughout his long poetic career. His early poetry has a dreamy luxuriant style full of sleepy languorous rhythms. The tone is mostly wistful and nostalgic in these poems. There is an abundance of ornate word pictures as in Spenser.

It is a great tribute to Yeats craftsman that he soon grew dissatisfied with verse of this sort and tried to bring his versification nearer to the day to day speech. Along with this he tried to give a new directness and precision to his poetic language. He did away with archaism and poeticism. His imagery also became more definite and accurate and acquired a new pithy quality. Verbiage and superfluity start giving way to vigour and intensity. His diction now became terse and his poetry grew in density.

Simultaneously, Yeats tried to develop what may be called “passionate syntax” and he came to have remarkable skill in modulating his rhythm so as to be in time with the spirit of the poem. This skill is greatly evident in poems like “The Second Coming”, “Sailing to Byzantium”, “The Tower”, “Easter 1916” and “Among School Children” and even in one of his earliest poems “When You are Old”.

The confidence and assurance found in his poetic style in the later years is astounding. His rhythms were very definite and accurate and above all he could now do justice to demands of grandeur and sublimity with effortless ease. His language became very functional. It has now grown trenchant and adaptable to wide range of ideas. When he chooses he can put the starkest facts into the starkest words. As he says in “Sailing to Byzantium”:
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick
Starkest words as used in “Vacillation”:
What theme had Homer but original sin?
He was now able to use poetry for a variety of effects – whether it was exhortation or calm comment, philosophizing or passionate condemnation, lamentation or celebration, nostalgia or prophesy. This does not mean that Yeats’ command over versification and metre was in any way less remarkable during his early poetic career. Even at the time he was able to have close correspondence between the mood of those escapist poems and the language he chose for them. In keeping with the other-worldly atmosphere of his early poetry, his rhythms also were half-entranced. In a collection like “The Wind Among the Reeds” he was able to manipulate wavering and meditative rhythms to great effect.

In his later poetry, again in keeping with his thematic content, Yeats was able to develop subtler, more varied and dramatically more adjustable cadences. His vocabulary had also become more inclusive. As a result, the metaphors were fresher and their range of reference wider. We also find that he employs the metaphorical aphorism. His use of epigram is a properly poetic one, giving the reader a shock of surprise. For example:
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
The imaginative structure of the poem and its actual manifestation came to be more firmly worked out and more spontaneous and natural in effect.


As an artist Yeats continued to mature and grow right upto the end of his poetic career. His confidence and assurance grew more and more and he handled words with perfect ease like a master. However, this very self-assurance accounts for his tendency to indulge in hyperboles and exaggerations. This tendency to exaggerate and use hyperboles has been considered a serious fault in his style by a number of critics. D. S. Savage criticizing this weakness in Yeats’ poetry writes:
This exaggeration and over-heightening, this indulgence in dramatics, is exemplified in the repeated use of hyperboles phrases and of resounding words whose effect is to inflate the meaning.

To sum up Yeats was a conscious and gifted craftsman who has few equals in the whole range of English poetry. It is true that there are some serious faults in his poetry but they do not detract in any way from his true greatness as an artist. He wrote from inner compulsion which gave to his poetry “its peculiar inner glow, as of inspiration, and classes it among our political monuments, if not precisely among “monument of unaging intellect”.

Irish elements in Yeats' poetry

Although Yeats used Irish mythology in his early poems, yet he is not simply intent to retell the Irish legends. Yeats’ impulse to transcend his folk-lore material is a constant pre-occupation with him. As an Irishman, he is passionately attached to his country by ties of ancestors and pride in his country’s history and legends. He gradually became disillusioned when he felt the violence and hatred of the Irish political leaders.

The use of the inherited subject-matter and the mythology of Ireland were not something educational or poetic in a simple way but something more deeply political.

Yeats is keen to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland. His attempt is to revive the folk art which he considered to be the golden dream of the king and peasant. To Yeats Irish folk tales were one of he principal sources from which the Irish imagination might strengthen itself by drinking from the fountains of tradition.

For Yeats the most powerful influence came from John O’Leary, a great Irish patriot. Yeats himself acknowledged this debt:

It was through the old Ferian leader John O’Leary I found my theme.



Yeats not only lived in the troubled modern era but also lived in a country where trouble was brewing all the time. His poem “September 1913” relates to a municipal controversy in Dublin in the year 1913 which involved for Yeats the dignity of culture in Ireland and the hope for an Irish literary and artistic revival. In this sense, “September 1913” is a pierce attack on the whole city of Dublin. “To a Shade”, one of the most significant Irish poems of Yeats, is addressed to Parnell.

Another great Irish poem is “Easter 1916”. For Yeats Easter uprising of 1916 came to have a great significance. For Yeats, people involved in this uprising had changed everything. The poem shows Yeats’ modified attitude of admiration for the Irish revolutions and martyrs. It is an attempt to move not only into the public world but into a great flow of public world which is called history.
All changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born.
It is an attempt to renew the Irish revolution by restoring its soul. The poem like “The Seven Sages”, also tackles Irish themes. Yeats has been described as a last of the romantics and the first of the moderns. It means he carried both romanticism and modernism. He is an Irish poet. He is very much concerned with Irish history, Irish folk-lore and Irish struggle for independence. Yeats enjoyed the sound of words and used them to create rich texture in his poetry. We notice his use of Irish place-names and the names of figures in Irish legend and history.

At the same time, we must not forget that Yeats’ Irishness was always primarily literary and artistic, much more than political. Yeats’ Irishnesss was thus concerned more with the cultivation of the taste of Irish people than with the struggle of parties group around him.

Yeats’ Nationalism at the same time was liberal and broad based as it is very clear from his repeated attacks on narrow-minded nationalists. Yeats, in fact, gradually moved away from the contemporary fanaticism of Iris politics, but as the poem like “Easter 1916” makes it crystal clear, even in his disillusionment with Irish fanaticism, Yeats never stopped responding quickly and sincerely to the heroism of martyrs, some of whom he may not have liked personally.
What is it but nightfall?
The second section of the poem sketches the personalities of the nationalists before their destruction in the Easter rising. Maud Gonne was one of them, beautiful when young, had spoiled her beauty in the favor of politics agitation. Another was the poet and the school teacher. A third had shown sensitivity and intellectual daring, a fourth has seemed only a drunken vain. The beauty which is born out of these deaths is a terrible beauty.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
Yeats’ sense of his own identity and function as a poet began to take shape in the context of Irish nationalism and shows his deliberate and many sided effort to provide the Irish national movement some finer notice than mere hatred of the English.

Yeats complained of the political class in Ireland, the lower middle from which the patriotic associations have drawn their leaders for the past ten years. These people are burning in fire of deep hatred for English.

The poem contains the result of Yeats’ contemplation on the real nature of these people’s sacrifices who last their lives in the Easter uprising of 1916. At the same time Yeats succeed in conveying that the Irish people sacrifices in their freedom struggle were prolonged and spread over a long period.

Milton: Pandemoniun in "Paradise Lost"

Some angels rushed towards a nearby hill, Pandemonium, a hill not far from there that emerged fire and smoke. All the rest of the hill shone with a bright crust, which was a sure sign that in its interior was buried metallic ore or sulphur. Towards that hill a company of numerous angels moved with great haste like groups of miners, hurrying in advance of the royal army to dig trenches in some battlefield or to build a fortification.

Those angels were guided thither by Mammon. He first taught human beings to pillage the earth, in order to obtain treasures buried. Soon had his companion made a huge opening in the hill and dug out large pieces of gold.

Let nobody feel surprised by the riches that exist in Hell. The soil of Hell perhaps is most appropriate for gold. And here let those who boast of human achievements and who describe, with a feeling of wonder, the Tower of Babel and the Pyramids of Egypt, learn how the greatest monuments, which have been built by human strength and skill and which have become famous, are easily surpassed by the work of worthless Spirits who can do in an hour what countless human beings, with unceasing labour, can hardly accomplish in a long period of time.

Nearby on the plain a second large group angles prepared many cells beneath which burns liquid fire. With wonderful art they melted the massive ore, separating each metal, and skimmed the scum or the impurities. A third group of angels had, with equal promptitude, set up, within the ground, moulds of various kinds and shapes, and filled each hollow recess with the melted gold transported there from the cells by a wonderful device.

Soon out of the earth, a huge structure emerged like a mist. This structure was built like a temple. It was set with round-shaped columns. It had pillars of the Doric style of architecture and the pillars were overlaid with a golden beam. Nor was there lacking cornice or frieze inscribed with sculptures in relief. The roof was carved with gold. Neither Babylon nor Cairo ever attained such splendour in all their glory, even in building temples dedicated to their gods. The rising structure now became complete, having reached its full and impressive height, and at once the doors, opening their brassy leaves, revealed over a wide area within, large spaces on the smooth and level pavement. From the arched roof, many rows of star-like lamps and bright fire-baskets hung as if by some mysterious magic. These lamps were fed with naphtha and asphaltus, and their light fell as if form a sky.

The multitude of angles entered the building hastily, admiring it. Some of them praised the building and some praised the architect. This architect’s sill was known in Heaven by a large number of high buildings, having towers, where angels holding their rods of authority dwelt and sat, like princes whom the supreme ruler, God, had raised to such power and to each of whom He had given the authority to rule according to his status and rank. The name of this architect was also well-known and much respected in ancient Greece; and in Italy he was known by the name of Mulciber. It was told in a fable how this architect had fallen from heaven, having been thrown by angry Jove clean over the bright walls. He had kept falling from morning to noon, and from noon to dewy evening, for the whole of a summer’s day; and with the setting sun he had alighted from the height, like a falling star, on the island of Lemnos in the Aegean sea. Such is the story people relate mistakenly because he, with that rebellious throng of angles, had fallen from Heaven long before that. Nor was it of any use to him now that he had erected building with high towers in Heaven. Not could he escape from his present fate in spite of all his contrivances, but was thrown headlong with his hard-working companion to build a palace for Satan and his followers in Hell.

Milton: Hell in "Paradise Lost"

This is how Milton describes Hell as Satan sees it after his fall from Heaven:


At once, as far as Angles ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild:
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes at all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
Such place Eternal Justice had prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison set,
As fat removed from God and light of Heaven
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell!


This description is brief but vivid and effective. We are to visualize a region which is sinister, barren and wild. The place is a horrible dungeon or pit burning like a huge furnace. Yet from the burning flames comes no light. The flames give out just as much light as is needed to make the darkness visible. The flames of Hell give no light. All around him Satan discerns sights of misery and unhappy dark spaces, where peace and rest can never dwell. It is a place where even hope which comes to all beings, is never felt. This region is far away from God. The contrast between this place and the Heaven conveyed to us is:

Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell!

The place is perpetually afflicted with “floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire”.

Thus Milton's Hell is a place of darkness where flickering light of fire serves only to make more dark. Geologically it is a volcanic region, “fed with ever-burning sulphur” in inexhaustible quantities. Satan and his followers have fallen into a “fiery gulf”, a lake that burns constantly with liquid fire. The shore of this lake marks the beginning of a plain to which Satan flies after raising himself from the lake.

----------------------------- till on dry land
He lights—if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire,
And such appeared in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Aetna, whose combustible
And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds
And leave a singed bottom al involved
With stench and smoke:


This means that in one case it is “liquid fire”, and in the other “solid fire”. The heat of the land is naturally as intense as is that of the boiling lake. Satan walks uncomfortably over the boiling soil. Heat is everywhere. In the background, we are later told, is a volcanic mountain:


There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top
Belched fire and rolling smoke, the rest entire
Shone with a glossy scurf—undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic ore,
The work of sulphur.


All these description are certainly terrifying. Milton’s object in describing Hell is two-fold; firstly, to indicate the torments which the fallen angels have to endure in contrast to the bliss and joy of Heaven which they have lost for ever; and, secondly, to infuse a feeling of horror in the readers. The modern reader, with his scientific background and scientific notions, may not feel as awed or horrified by these descriptions as readers of Milton’s time might have felt. But even the modern reader has to recognize, not only the graphic quality of the description, but its oppressive and overwhelming effect.

The size of Hell, the nature of its tortures or the degree of heat that Satan feels, such thing can be felt to the reader’s imagination, simulated by words which carry frightening associations for all of us. Hell is a place of absolute darkness, fierce heat, hostile elements and most terrible sight of all, the entire space is “valued with fire”. Its all-enclosing dreadfulness typifies the dwarfing awareness of remorse, distance from God and pain from which its inhabitants cannot escape. Though terrible it is not formless; sea and land exist and from its soil the precious metals are refined which go into the construction of Pandemonium.

Milton: Character of "Satan"

Satan occupies the most prominent position in the action of Paradise Lost. Though the main theme of the poem is the “Man’s first disobedience” yet it is the character of Satan which gives a touch of greatness to this epic. Al the poetic powers of Milton are shown on the delineation of the majestic personality of the enemy of God and Man, i.e. Satan.

As it is shown in Paradise Lost Book-I that the character of Satan is a blend of the noble and the ignoble, the exalted and the mean, the great and the low, therefore, it becomes difficult to declare him either a hero or a wholly villain.

In Paradise Lost Book-I we can hardly doubt his heroic qualities because this book fully exhibits his exemplary will-power, unsurpassable determination, unshakable confidence and unbelievable courage. However, the encyclopedia of religion removes some of the confusion from our minds regarding Satan’s character in the following words:
Satan means the arch-enemy of men, the adversary of God and of Christianity, a rebel against God, a lost arch-angle.
Milton also confirms the remarks and tells us that Satan is an archangel. When God declares the Holy Christ his viceroy, Satan refuses to accept God’s order because he himself is a confident for it, his false strength and pride leads him to revolt against God for the fulfillment of his lust for power but he and his army suffers a heavy defeat and throw headlong into the pit of hell.

Milton’s description of Satan’s huge physical dimension, the heavy arms he carries, his tower like personality and his gesture make him every inch a hero. In his first speech, Satan tells Beelzebub that he does not repent of what he did and that defeat has brought no change in him at all. He utters memorable lines:


What though the field be lost?
All is not lost – the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.
Actually he is not ready to bow before the will of God and is determined to wade and eternal war by force and will never compromise. He proudly calls himself the new possessor of the profoundest hell and foolishly claims to have a mind never to be changed by force or time. As he says:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Although Satan undergoes perpetual mental and physical torture in hell yet he is fully satisfied because he is at liberty to do whatever he likes, without any restriction. The following line clearly indicates his concept of freedom.
Better to reign in Hell, the Serve in Heaven.
It can be said without any doubt that Satan gives an evidence of great leadership qualities which are certainly worthy of an epic hero and Beelzebub appreciates him for his undaunted virtues as the commander of undaunted virtue as the commander of fallen angels. His speech to the fallen angels is a sole roof of his great leadership because it infuses a new spirit in the defeated angels who come out of the pit of hill with their swords and are ready to face any danger regardless of their crushing and humiliating defeat at the hands of God. We fully laud Satan’s views on the themes of honour, revenge and freedom, but we cannot help sympathizing him because he embodies evil. He is the embodiment of disobedience to God.

As the poem proceeds, the character of Satan degenerates and he fails to produce any impression to true heroism because he is morally a degraded figure. When we closely examine his addressed to his followers, we find that it is full of contradictions and absurdities, because he tries to throw dust into the eyes of his comrades. In fact, on the one hand, he says that they will provoke war against God and on the other hand, he wants peace which is only possible through submission. Then, on reaching the earth, he enters into a serpent and is completely degrades. Pride is the cause of his fall from Heaven – Pride that has ‘raised’ him to contend with the mightiest. But where is that pride when the Archangel enters into the mouth of a sleeping serpent and hides himself in its “Mazy folds”. Here from the grand figure that he is in the beginning, he degenerates into a man and cunning fellow, and then he tries to tempt Eve by guile. So, Satan degenerates from the role of a brave hero to that of a cunning villain as C. S. Lewis remarks:
From hero to general, from general to politician, from politician to secret service agent, and thence to a thing that peers in at bed-room or bath-room window and thence toad, and finally to a snake – such is the progress of Satan.
So, it can easily be said in the light of above mentioned facts that Satan is out and pouter hero in Book-I of Paradise Lost, but in Book-IX he appears before us every inch a villain because of his evil design and he himself says that his chief pleasure lies in the destruction of mankind which lowers him in our estimation as a hero.

Paradise Lost: A Classical Epic

Homer and Virgil were the two great masters of the Classical epic. Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid have invariably served as models for all writers of the classical epic. Milton was a great classical scholar and he sought to write an epic. He dreamt of immortality and he aspired to be one with Homer and Virgil as the author of a classical epic. Milton turned his great classical and Biblical learning to a poem to “assert eternal providence, and justify the ways of God to men”.
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Milton achieved eminent success in making Paradise Lost as classical epic. In spite of certain drawbacks and defects, Milton’s epic is entitled to take its rightful place among half a dozen classical epics in the world. The first essential feature of the epic is its theme. The theme of an epic must have a national importance or significance; that is, the epic must be a true and faithful mirror of the life and of a nation. Homer represented the national life, thought and culture of ht Greeks in the Iliad, and Virgil gave expression to the hopes and aspirations of the Romans in the Aeneid. The Fall of Man is the theme of the epic.
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
The epic action has three qualifications. First, it should be one action, secondly, it should be an entire action, and thirdly, it should be a great action. In short, the action of an epic should be one, entire and great. All these three qualities of epic action are followed by Milton.

The action of Paradise Lost is one and there is a unity of action. The central action is the Fall of Man, and everything in the epic as, the battle of angels, the creation of the world, is subordinated to this central action. There are digressions at the beginning of the third and seventh books, but they do not affect the unity and central action of the poem. The whole action of Paradise Lost is single and compact. In the second place, its action is entire which means that it has a beginning, middle and an end. The action in Paradise Lost is contrived in hell, executed upon earth, and punished by heaven. In the third place the action ought to be great, by greatness of the action, Aristotle means that it should not only be great in its nature but also in its duration. The entire action of Paradise Lost has a stamp of grandeur and greatness about it. Milton’s subject is greater than Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid. It does not determine the fate of one single person or nation; but of the whole human race.

Milton plunges into the middle of the action. Milton, in imitation of the great poets, opens his Paradise Lost, with an infernal council plotting the fall of man.

The characters of the epic must have dignity and variety. In Paradise Lost, we have a wide variety of characters marked with qualities. In Paradise Lost, we have human as well as superhuman characters. Adams and Eve are human characters, whereas God, Christ and Satan are superhuman characters.

An epic must have a hero with great qualities. Identification of the hero is different in Paradise Lost. Adam can be called the hero of the epic. He is not a warrior or a conqueror but a noble figure.

An epic is a serious poem embodying sublime and nobler thoughts. Milton’s Paradise Lost is a sublime and noble poem characterized by loftiness of thought and sentiment.

An epic is not without a moral. Moral forms an integral and intrinsic part in Milton’s poem. It seeks to “vindicate the ways of God to man, to show the reasonableness of religion and the necessity of obedience to the Divine Law”.

Milton, in conformity with the epic practice, begins Paradise Lost by invoking the Muse to help him in his great task. But since Milton seeks the aid of the Heavenly Muse, the Holy spirit,
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know’st:
He requests:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -: what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support,
In and epic poem the poet narrates very little in his person. The characters themselves carry forward the mission of the poet.

Lastly the language of an epic must be sublime and rose above the language of common parlance.
- - - - - - - - - - - What though the fields be lost?
All is not lost
Aristotle observes that a sublime style can be formed by three methods --- by the use of metaphors, by making use of the idioms and by lengthening of the phrase by the addition of words. Milton employs all these three methods to give the air of grandeur to his epic. His similes and metaphors are epical. Latin words are frequently introduced. The style of Paradise Lost is the truest example of grand style. On one place, Satan says:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n
On the other place:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
Milton’s Paradise Lost is a successful classical epic. Paradise lost has thus many excellences as an epic but the defects in it also not be forgotten. The introduction of allegorical persons like sin and death, the frequent allusions to heathen mythological fables, the intervention of grotesque incidents, the frequent indulgence in puns and useless display of learning and the unnecessary use of technical terms as in the description of Pandemonium are some blemishes in the style of the poem.

One other point must also be noted. An epic is an objective poem, and personal reflections are out of place in it. But the most sublime parts of Paradise Lost reflect the individuality of the poet. How ever this has added to the interest of the work as a poem though it is not, strictly speaking, permissible in an epic.

John Donne: A love poet

Donne was the first English poet to challenge and break the supremacy of Petrarchan tradition. Though at times he adopts the Petrarchan devices, yet his imagery and rhythm, texture and colour of his love poetry is different. There are three distinct strains of his love poetry – Cynical, Platonic and Conjugal love.

Giving an allusion to Donne’s originality as the poet of love, Grierson makes the following observation:
“His genius temperament and learning gave a certain qualities to his love poems … which arrest our attention immediately. His love poems, for instance, do have a power which is at once realistic and distracting.”
Donne’s greatness as a love-poet arises from the fact that this poetry covers a wider range of emotions than that of any previous poet. His poetry is not bookish but is rooted in his personal experiences. Is love experience were wide and varied and so is the emotional range of his love-poetry. He had love affairs with a number of women. Some of them were lasting and permanent, other were only of a short duration.

Donne is quite original in presenting the love situations and moods.

The “experience of love” must produce a “sense of connection” in both the lovers. This “sense of connection” must be based on equal urge and longing on both the sides.

“The room of love” must be shared equally by the two partners.

Donne magnifies the ideal of “Sense of connection” into the physical fulfillment of love.
"My face in thine eyes thine in mime appears"
This aspect of love helps him in the virtual analysis of the experience of love. Donne was a shrewd observer who had first hand knowledge of “love and related affairs. That is why in almost all his poems, he has a deep insight.

His love as expressed in his poetry was based not on conventions but on his own experiences. He experienced all phase of love – platonic, sensuous, serene, cynical, conjugal, illicit, lusty, picturesque and sensual. He could also be grotesque blending thought with passion.

Another peculiar quality of Donne’s love lyrics is its “metaphysical strain”. His poems are sensuous and fantastic. Donne’s metaphysical strain made his reader confused his sincerity.

Donne’s genius temperament and learning gave to his love poems power and fascination. There is a depth and rang of feeling unknown to the majority of Elizabethan poets. Donne’s poetry is startlingly unconventional even when he dallies, half ironically, with the hyperboles of petrarch.

Donne is realistic not an idealistic. He knows the weakness of Flesh, the pleasure of sex, the joy of secret meeting. However he tries to establish a relationship between the body and the soul. Donne is very realistic poet.

Grierson distinguished three distinct strains in it. First there is the cynical strain. Secondly, there is the strain f conjugal love to be noticed in poems like “valediction: forbidding mourning”. Thirdly, there is platonic strain. The platonic strain is to b found in poems like “Twicknam Garden”, “The Funeral”, “The Blossoms”, and “The Primroses”. These poems were probably addressed to the high-born lady friends. Towards them he adopts the helpless pose of flirtations and in high platonic vein boasts that:
Different of sex no more we know
Than our Guardian Angles doe
In between the cynical realistic strain and the highest spiritual strain, there are a number of poems which show an endless variety of mood and tone. Thus thee are poems in which the tone is harsh, others which are coarse and brutal, still other in which he holds out a making threat to his faithless mistress and still others in which he is in a reflective mood. More often that not, a number of strains and moods are mixed up in the same poem. This makes Donne as a love poet singularly, original, unconventional and realistic.

Whatever may be the tone or mood of a particular poem, it is always an expression of some personal experience and is, therefore, presented with remarkable force, sincerity and seriousness. Each poem deals with a love situation which is intellectually analyzed with the skill of an experienced lawyer.

Hence the difficult nature of his poetry and the charge of obscurity have been brought against him. The difficulty of the readers is further increased by the extreme condensation and destiny of Donne’s poetry.

The fantastic nature of the metaphysical conceits and poetry would become clear even we examine a few examples. In “Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” true lovers now parted are likened to the legs of a compass. The image is elaborated at length. The lovers are spiritually one, just as the head of the compass is one even when the legs are apart. One leg remains fixed and the other moves round it. The lover cannot forget the beloved even when separated from her. The two loves meet together in the end just as the two legs of the compass are together again, as soon as circle has been drawn.

At other times, he uses equally extravagated hyperboles. For example, he mistakes his beloved to an angel, for to imagine her less than an angle would be profanity.

In Donne’s poetry, there is always an “intellectual analysis” of emotion. Like a clever lawyer, Donne gives arguments after arguments in support of his points of view. Thus in “Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” he proves that true lovers need not mourn at the time of parting. In “Canonization” he establishes that lovers are saints of love and in “The Blossome” he argues against the petrarchan love tradition. In all this Donne is a realistic love poet.

Francis Bacon: Worldly Wisdom

Bacon was, definitely, a worldly wise man. He was the wisest and the meanest of mankind. He was truly of Renaissance; the age of accumulating knowledge, wealth and power. Being a true follower of Machiavellian principles, he led his life for worldly success. He was a man of shrewd and sagacious intellect with his eyes fixed on the main chance. And what he preached in his essays was also the knowledge, needed for worldly success.

There is no doubt that Bacon’s essays are a treasure house of worldly wisdom. The term worldly wisdom means a wisdom which is necessary for worldly success. It does not need any deep philosophy or any ideal morality. But Bacon was a man of high wisdom, as he himself pronounced, “I have taken all knowledge to be my province”. Bacon also preached morality but his morality is subordinate to worldly success and he never hesitated to sacrifice it for worldly benefit. His essays are rich with the art which a man should employ for achieving success in his life, such as shrewdness, sagacity, tact, foresight, judgment of character and so on.

The subject of Bacon in his essays is the man who needs prosperity in worldly terms. Bacon’s essays bring men to ‘come home to men’s business and bosoms’. He teaches them, how to exercise one’s authority and much more. When he condemns cunning, it is not because of a hateful and vile thing, but because it is unwise. That is why the wisdom in his essay is considered a ‘cynical’ kind of wisdom. He describes his essays as ‘Counsels – civil and moral’.

In his essay “Of Truth”, Bacon appreciates truth and wishes people to speak the truth. He says:

"A lie faces God and shrinks from man."


He warns human beings against the punishment for the liar on the doomsday. But at the same time, he considers a lie as an ‘alloy’ which increases the strength of gold and feels it necessary for the survival on earth. He says:

"A lie doth ever add pleasure."

---this is purely a statement of a “worldly wise man”.

The essay “Of Great Places” though contains a large number of moral precepts yet in this very same essay he also preaches worldly success.
"It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; By pains men come to greater pains."

And
"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown."

Then Bacon suggests that men in authority should work not only for the betterment of public but also for their own status:
"All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man’s self whilst he is rising and to behave himself when he is placed."

It is purely a utilitarian advice and it surely holds a compromise between morality and worldly success. Even when Bacon urges a man not to speak ill of his predecessor, it is not because of high morality but because of the fact that the man who does not follow advice would suffer with unpleasant consequences.

Bacon’s approach towards studies is also purely utilitarian. In his essay “Of Studies”, he does not emphasize on study for its own sake, but for the benefit which it can provide to man to be supplemented by practical experience.
"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man."

And then he says:
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."

Bacon also points out the effects of different branches of studies on a man’s mind and thinks it helpful in the cure of different mental ailments and follies.



His essay “Of Suitors” totally reveals Bacon’s shrewd insight. Although he suggests that a suitor should not be disloyal towards his petition and should tell him the truth about the chances of winning the suit without leaving him wandering in false hopes. Bacon suggests that a patron should not charge extensive amounts for a small case. But then he dilutes all this by saying if the patron wants to support the non-deserving party, he should make a compromise between both of them, so that the deserving party would bear not great loss. This is a purely utilitarian approach and it shows what Bacon himself had been in his career, for it was his own profession.

In the essay “Of Revenge” Bacon shows a certain high morality by saying that:
"Revenge is a kind of wild justice; One who studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green."

He feels dignity in forgiving ones enemy. But then he says that even revenge is just in the cases when one can save one’s skin from the hands of law.


Bacon showed a certain incapacity for emotions. He took the relation of friendship for its benefit and made a purely worldly approach to the subject which intimately deals between two persons. He gave us the uses and abused of friendship. He says:
"Those that want friends to open themselves unto, are cannibals of their own hearts."

This essay clearly shows Bacon’s cynical wisdom and that his morality is stuffed with purely utilitarian considerations.

Bacon considers love as a ‘child of folly’. In his essay “Of Love” he says:
"It is impossible to love and to be wise."

He considers wife and children as hindrance in the way of success and progress. He says:
"He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune."

Afterwards in his essay “Of Marriage and Single Life” he tells the ‘benefits’ of a wife.
"Wives are young men’s mistresses, companion to middle age and old man’s nurse."

In his essay “Of Parents and Children” Bacon puts:
"Children sweeten labour, but they make misfortune more bitter."


All these statements show his essentially mean and benefit seeking attitude, even in the matters of heart. In short, Bacon’s essays are a “hand book” of practical wisdom enriched with maxims which are very helpful for worldly wisdom and success.

Francis Bacon: Wisest, Brightest, Meanest

If parts allure these think how Bacon shin’d
The wisest, brightest and meanest of mankind.
Bacon was the wisest because of his worldly wisdom, he was brightest owing to his powerful intellect and the art of writing terse essays, and he was meanest due to his treacherous character.

The above mentioned remark on Bacon was made by a renowned and marvelous poet, “Alexander Pope”. If we observe critically, this statement holds its validity. For Bacon appeared to be a true child of Renaissance. Undoubtedly he was a man of wisdom and powerful intellect. But all at once he was a calculating character, keeping an eye on the main chance. He was a true follower of Machiavelli. He failed to harmonize his mixed motives, complex principles and high aims together. He wanted to strive after the selfless scientific truth but he was conscious that nothing could be done without money and power. So, he strived after material success. Bacon belonged to the age of glory and greatness, surprising meanness and dishonest conduct and he could not avoid these evils.

Bacon was a man of multi-talents. His wisdom was undeniable. The thirst for infinite knowledge and his versatility was truly astonishing. He possessed an intellect of the highest order. He was learned in Greek, French, Latin, English, Science, Philosophy, Classics and many other fields of knowledge. He is regarded as the creator of the modern school of experimental research. He held that “man is the servant and interpreter of nature”. He supplied the impulse which broke with the medieval preconceptions and set scientific inquiry on modern lines. He emphasized on experimentation and not to accept things for granted. Bacon was indeed an eloquent prophet of new era and the pioneer of modern sciences.

The essays of Bacon also portray his intellect and practical wisdom. The varied range of subjects too expresses that ‘he had taken all knowledge to be his province’. Bacon could utter weighty and pregnant remarks on almost any subject, from “Greatness of Kingdoms” to “Gardens”. The essays are loaded with the ripest wisdom of experience and observation conveyed through short, compact and terse sentences. One cannot deny the sagacity and shrewdness of his counsels. Bacon’s essays deal with man. He is an able analyst of human nature, and his conduct in public and private affairs. His comments regarding man’s behaviour may at times sound cynical but they are undeniable truths. He says:
A mixture of a lie doth even add pleasure.
Bacon is true here for most of the people would find life terrible without false hopes and false impressions. His views about friendship, though lacks in feelings and emotions, yet these are undeniably true to human nature.


Following are a few examples of his wisdom.

One who studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green.
And
Men in great places are thrice servants.
So, like a very wise man he coin ideas and teaches them to make people wise in worldly terms.

Bacons brightness is best illustrated in the way in which he clothes his wisdom into brevity and lends the readers a great pleasure. The compactness of thought and conciseness of expression was a virtue in an age when looseness in thought and language was the rule. The essays are enriched with maxims and proverbs. He supports his ideas and arguments with innumerable quotations, allusions and analogies which prove his wide knowledge and learning. The aptness of the similes, the witty turn of phrases and the compact expression of weighty thoughts are evidence enough of the brightness of his intellect.
Suspicions among thoughts are like bats among birds.
Money is like much, except it be spread.
Virtue is like precious adours --- most fragrant, when they are incensed or crushed.
Moreover, the precise and authentic turn of sentences and the condensation of thoughts in them have been enhanced by the antithetical presentation. Such as:

A lie faces God and shrinks from man.
The ways to enrich are many and most of them are foul.
It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty.
Through indignation, men rise to dignity.
Thus with the tool of antithesis, Bacon made his argument many times stronger and influential than a simple sentence. He created so much wit and strength in such precise writings that they are still valid and famous. No man individually did provide such strength and simplicity to the English language than Bacon. Bacon tried to reach the reader’s mind by a series of aphoristic attacks. Therefore he is considered as the pioneer of modern prose. There is hardly any equal of him for clear, terse and compact writing.

Now, it appears to be an irony of nature that a man with such a tremendous intellect and wisdom had such a mean character. Bacon was not mean in the sense of being a miser. He was indeed reputed to be a very generous. The manner in which Bacon betrayed his friends, especially Essex, proved him most ungrateful and ignoble man. He made friendship and uprightness subordinate to his success. He always kept his eye on the main chance, worshipping the rising sun and avoiding of the setting one.

His marriage was also a marriage of convenience. He did not hesitate to take part in political intrigues in order to promote his ambition. His letter to the king and queen were also full of flattery that it was hard to believe that they came from the pen of such an intellectual man.

Though he was wise yet he showed certain incapacity of emotions and this trait can also be witnessed in his essays. He took the purely personal and domestic matters of a man – like marriage, friendship, love etc in terms of pure utility. Such as:
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.
And

Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own heart.


In short, Bacon was a man of the world – worldly wisdom and worldly convenience. He had a “great brain” but not a “great soul”. His complex and contradictory characters will continue to be a psychological enigma for the readers to understand. So, he was definitely the wisest, brightest and meanest of mankind

Bacon as an essayist

Bacon challenged the basic beliefs of man e.g. truth, love, friendship, honesty, secrecy and reshaped them. He challenged the most established norm and ideals of mankind.

He questioned everything; he questioned what was, generally, considered unquestionable. He was an iconoclast. His approach was revolutionary. He begins his essays with a challenging statement i.e. what is truth, what is friendship and what is love.

He was very skeptical. He believed that the test of the truth of everything is in practical observation. He believes that experience is the basis of every judgment. This is called empirical approach. And no doubt he was an empiricist. His way of thinking was inductive. It was based upon facts and upon data. His spirit of inquiry and spirit of skepticism was the outcome of Renaissance. Bacon was very utilitarian. Like a scientist, he did only what was useful.

His training had been as a scholastic but his approach was anti-scholastic. He was bitterly against the scholastic approach. He said that the arguments of scholastics appear to be very intelligent and philosophical but actually these are nothing but only mental luxury. He said that scholastic try to prove the proven, means, who is God, what is sin or reward. In philosophy, this attitude is called begging in question. What is to be proved, it is taken as supposed.

Bacon says the reasoning of schoolmen is in fact very smart and full of life but actually this life is like the life of worms in rotten flesh. They appear to be very active but this is a very deadly activity. They are not agent of life rather they are the agents of death. The arguments of scholastics kill the mind than to develop the mind. Thus Bacon demolished the scholasticism with their own tools.

Bacon gave the theory of “duality of truth”. He proved that ideals are definitely good but ideals are only for ideal and perfect people. Imperfect people can’t follow the ideals and when they can’t follow them they go reverse and tell lies. Bacon said that everyone should try to be as good as possible. One must realize his faculties. An imperfect man must compromise with his imperfection. Instead of cursing himself one should compromise with his imperfection. This is called “expediency”. That truth is only for ideal people and for common man expediency should be the principle.

Bacon said that there are two kinds of truths – heavenly truth and earthly truth. He further said that heavenly truth is contained in Bible and it is for “salvation”. But earthly truth is in the laws of nature and in the means of science and it is necessary for earthly success. And this earthly truth is different from heavenly truth. Both are opposite to each other and can’t function for its opposite and one must be able to differentiate between them. This is called relativity of truth or duality of truth. L. C. Knight wrote that Bacon did not give the theory of the duality of truth but he only stated the facts who actually believe in their conducts.

What Bacon’s essays reveal is that:

1. Man in relation to the world and society.
2. Man in relation to himself
3. Man in relation his Maker.

Rape of the Lock - A Sex Symbol

The eighteenth century is and age of psychological insight. Every writer as well as his work is being analyzed in psychological terms. Modern psychology has proved that it is the sex psychology which determined the superiority of a sex. Sex is the nucleus of human life and its all activities. It is not the product of conventions, rather, it is just a natural instinct, which is reduced to some discipline by accepted social convention, morals, laws, etc. Sex is at the root of all moral and physical health. So it may be disciplined, but if it is curbed and suppressed, it leads to drastic consequences.


In fact, frustrations, depreciation, persecution, disparities coupled with economic problems result in dejection and in order to bring about catharsis, one may get depressed or find any easy escape and become immoral in the eyes of the world.

The lock in “The Rape of the Lock” is a symbol of the female organ and the rape of the lock symbolizes the rape of Belinda by the hands of Lord Peter. In fact, the poem projects a synthesis between sex and religion. The boys and the girls were allured to have relations and were in favour of free sex but religion did not allow it. Besides, they were also afraid of their social disreputation. So they had to suppress their natural instinct sometimes. Resultantly, they established relations with others secretly. Belinda’s grief was not the loss of chastity but her social disreputation. That’s why she repented would that Baron had cut “hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these”. So the sex philosophy in that age was that sex, being a natural instinct, should not be suppressed, but the fear of religion and social disreputation did not allow the boys and the girls have free sexual relations and such relations were dubbed as immoral. That’s what happened with Belinda and her shock was social disreputation and not the loss of chastity.

We notice that throughout the poem, there is a competitive spirit between the female and the male sexes. The game of Ombre is the game of sex in which both the sexes try to dominate each other. The victory of Belinda yielding to lords and the lords playing toy with them. Pope has also indicated their secret relations with the beaus. In this way, if we read the poem, we will find sex symbols scattered here and there and a lot of sex implications. He talks about “soft bosoms”, “winning lips”, “melting maids”, “mid-night masquerades”, “the charge of petticoat”, etc. These are all sex implications and the modern psychology has interpreted them in terms of the sexual behaviour and sexual relations of the women of that age. Even the lock reaching the sky and turning into a comet has a sex implication i.e. Belinda’s reputation is lost for ever and the event of her rape is now known to everyone which implies that she was a woman of yielding and submissive nature who easily fell a prey to the charm of beaus but she frequently changed her favours from one to another and kept “Shifting and the moving toyshop of her heart”. She was not satisfied with one man and was always in search of the better. Thus the poem appears before us as a sex symbol.

Rape of the Lock - Supernatural Machinery

Pope explains that “machinery” is a term invented by the critics to signify the part which deities, angles, or demons play in a poem. He goes on to say that the machinery in this poem is based on the Rosicrucian doctrine of spirits in which the four elements are inhabited by sylphs, nymphs, gnomes and salamanders. The sylphs, whose habitation is in the air, are the best-conditioned creatures.

Pope tells us that beautiful women return, after their death, to the elements from which they were derived. Termagants or violent tempered women become salamanders or spirit of the fire. Women of gentle and pleasing disposition pass into nymphs or water-spirits. Prudish women become gnomes or earth spirits. Light-hearted coquettes are changed into sylphs or spirits of the air.

The first and the foremost activity of the sylphs is the protection of fair and chaste ladies who reject the male sex. They guard and save the chastity of maidens and save them from falling victims to the “treacherous friends”. The gnomes or earth spirits fill the minds of proud maidens with foolish ideas of being married to lords and peers. These gnomes teach young coquette to ogle and pretend blushing at the sight of fashionable young men. However, sylphs safely guide the maidens through all dangers. Whenever a maiden is about to yield to a particular young man, more attractive and tempting man appears on the scene and the fashionable maiden at once transfers to the new comer. This may be called levity or fickleness in women but it is all contrived by the sylphs.

In most of the famous epics, “machinery” consists in supernatural beings like gods and angles who play a vital role in the poems thus showing that the human world is not independent and that supernatural powers have an important bearing in this world. Pope thought that his mock epic would be incomplete withoutmachinery. The machinery of his poem comprises the sylphs led by Ariel. Pope described wittily the occupation and tasks of the sylphs in general.

Ariel and his followers were assigned humble but pleasant duty of serving fashionable young ladies. Their functions are described humorously including saving the powder from being blown off from the cheeks of ladies, preventing scents from evaporating, preparing cosmetics, teaching the ladies to blush and to put on enchanting airs, suggesting new ideas about dress.

The sylphs show a delightful downscaling of the epic machines. They are heroic standards but feel scared when a crisis approaches. They are Belinda's counselors. They explain the various anxieties that make up Belinda's day.

“The Rape of the Lock” may be described as a satirical comedy of manners. The sylphs in this poem are both in mirror and mock customs and conventions of the society of the time. Belinda is told in a dream about the danger of life.

Reassuring Belinda in this way, Ariel is in fact undermining her moral position. He explains how a woman’s defence is achieved. A maid would fall to Florio if Demon were not at hand to divert her attention. It is the sylphs who make her do that.

The machines are present at every crucial situation in the play. The sylphs are present during Belinda’s journey by boat to Hampton Court. They have been warned by Ariel to remain alert and vigilant. Fifty of them take charge of Belinda’s petticoat. They attend on her when she plays Ombre. They hover around her when she sips coffee and they withdraw only when Ariel sees “an earthly lover lurking at her heart”. A gnome, called Umbriel, goes to the cave of Spleen and brings a bag full of sighs, sobs, screams and outbursts of anger, and a phial filled with fainting fits, gentle sorrows, soft briefs, etc. all of which are released over Belinda. And then sylphs are present to witness the flight of Belinda’s lock of hair to the sky.

The sylphs were added to the poem not simply as shinning trinkets and three-penny bits to a Christmas pudding but to develop and flavour the whole. They improve the literary and human mockery. The machinery of sylphs is the principal symbol of the triviality of Belinda’s world. “The light militia of the lower sky” is a parody of both Homeric deities and Miltonic guardian angles. Like these they have an ambiguous status; they exist within and without the characters. The sylphs who protect Belinda are also her acceptance of the rules of social convention which presume that a coquette’s life is a pure game.

The machinery of sylphs in this poem is vastly superior to the allegorical personages of respective mock-epics. It allows Pope to show his awareness of the absurdities which nevertheless is charming, delightful and filled with a real poetry. The myth also allows him to suggest that the charm, in past at least, springs from the very absurdity.



Machinery serves various purposes in the poem. It imparts splendour and wonder to the actors and the actions in the story. Like Homer’s gods, Pope’s sylphs move easily in and out of the lower world. What they really stand for – feminine honour, flirtation courtship, the necessary rivalry of man and woman – is seen in its essence, and is always beautiful.

These “light militia of the lower sky”, increase dramatic suspense and story depth. They help to universalize the whole action. They are in binding symbolism of the little drama.

The sylphan machinery is superb. Ariel offers a satanic substitute for Christianity. Addison advised Pope against adding the machinery of the sylphs to the poem but that Pope ignored the advice. Pope succeeded eminently in his design of introducing his element.

According to John Dennis, Pope’s machinery contradicts the doctrine of the Christian religion and all sound morality. They provide no instruction and make no impression upon a sensible reader. Instead of making the action wonderful and delightful, they render it absurd, and incredible. Dennis’ opinion is, however, not sound or convincing.

Rape of the Lock - Social Satire

As Shakespeare is the poet of man, Pope is a poet of society. “The Rape of the Lock” is a social document because it mirrors contemporary society and contains a social satire, too. Pope paints about England in 18th century.

The whole panorama of “The Rape of the Lock” revolves around the false standard of 18th century. Pope satirizes the young girls and boys, aristocratic women and men, their free time activities, nature of husbands and wives, the professional judges and politicians of the day.

Pope clearly depicts the absurdities and the frivolities of the fashionable circle of the 18th century England. The world of Belinda – the world of fashion is a trivial world. The whole life of Belinda is confined to sleeping, make-up, enjoyment and alluring the lords. There are no transcendental elements in her life. This life is marked by ill-nature, affection, mischievousness, coquetry, yielding and submissive nature, fierce and unruly nature, infidelity, cheapness, meanness, trivialities and frivolities etc. Belinda represents all the fashion struck women, busy in such stupidities.

The gallants of the time have not been spared by Pope. Baron not only represents Peter but also typifies the aristocratic gallants of the age.

Pope satirizes man’s nature that is always weak at beauty. Men sacrifice everything at the altar of beauty and even the most intelligent man behaves foolishly when he fall a victim to beauty.

In order to make his satire sharper and all the more effective, Pope introduces the aerialmachinery, which facilitates the satire. Through this weapon, the poet throws in contrast the weaknesses of the fashionablewomen of that age. He satirizes women who are interested in fashionable life and its pursuits and who go on ex ercising their evil influence even after their death. For the sake of worldly grandeur, they can bid farewell even to their chastity and honour. He satirizes women of fiery, coquettish mischievous and yielding nature and gives them different names. It also provides the poet with an opportunity to satirize the class consciousness of women.

All the women and beaus gather at the place where they exchange talks on trivial things e.g. visits, balls, films, motions, looks, eyes, etc. and “at every word, a reputation dies”.
“A beau and witling perished in the throng,
One died in metaphor, and one in song.”
Man’s favourite activity is to take suffered women to play with fan. There is singing, dancing, laughing, ogling, etc. and nothing else. Women are busy alluring the dukes and lords. The poet reflects the hollowness of men in the character of Sir Plume who is coward, foolish and senseless, lacking courage. Women are on the whole irresolute and they have made toyshops of their hearts. They have even illicit relations with the beaus. Women are meant only for the entertainment of men, who play toy with them.

Pope also satirizes of the husbands and wives of the day. Husbands always suspect their wives. They think that their wives have been merry making with their lovers.

Wives are also not virtuous at all. They love their lap-dogs more than their husbands. And the death of husbands is not more shocking than the death of a lap dog or the breakage of a china vessel.

So through the medium of satire, Pope paints a picture of 18th century English society. His satire is didactic and impersonal. It is not inflicted against any person or individual, rather against the society and that, too, owing to some moral faults. He is dissatisfied with the society around which he wants to reform. The society he pictured is the aristocratic group of 18th century fashionable English society. But thee are several allied subjects, too, on which he inflicts his satire. For example, he satirized the judged who make hasty decisions.
“The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine”
He also satirized those friends whose friendship is but lust, those politicians who do not have a deeper insight and cannot see beyond the shows and take steps just for their own interests and ends etc.

To sum up, the poem is a reflection of this artificial and hollow life, painted with a humorous and delicate satire. Pope’s satire is intellectual and full of wit and epigram. Is picture of Addison as Atticus though unjust and prompted by malice, is a brilliant piece of satire.
“As an intellectual observer and describer of personal weakness, Pope stands by himself in English verse.”

Rape of the Lock - A Comic Epic

An epic, according to Aristotle, is the tragedy of a conspicuous person, who is involved in adventurous events and meets a tragic fall on account of some error of judgment i.e. hamartia which throws him from prosperity into adversity,however, his death is not essential. So, the subject matter of an epic is grand and that’s why it is written in bombastic language and heroic couplet. Its style, too, is grand.

A mock-epic is a satire of an epic. It shows us that even a trivial subject can also be treated on epical scale. The subject of “The Rape of the Lock” is trivial – a love dispute between a lady ad a gentleman. Lord Byron proposes Belinda who rejects his proposal. Baron cuts one of her beautiful looks. This trivial theme has been given epical treatment as if it were some grave event of paramount importance.

The style of the poet is mock-heroic. He employs bombastic and showy diction for thoughts and ideas which are not really grand – pompous expression for low action – for example, the game of Ombre had been described as a war of nerves, the table has been termed as the battlefield, the dispersed cards have been dubbed as routed army etc.

Similarly, the process of Belinda’s make –up has been termed s adoration and the sacred rites of priced. Belinda is called ‘inferior priestess’ and her toilet an ‘alter’ etc.

The poet has employed the epical method to heighten the effect i.e. the great has been made look small and vice versa. The introduction of the aerial machinery is used for heightening of effect. Belinda is an ordinary fashionable girl, but she has been shown being protected by thousands of spirits. The trivial game of Ombre has been compared with a grave war of nerves. The ordinary flight between the supports of Belinda and those of Peter has been compared with the fatal war between gods and goddesses and their hair pins, fans, etc. with which they fought have been termed as ‘deadly weapons’, spears, etc. The grief of Belinda at the loss of the lock has been compared with the shock at the death of a husband or a lapdog or at the breakage of a China vessel. Thus the poet raises a lapdog to the level of a husband or reduces a husband to the level of a lapdog.

The poet has also employed epical and heroic images, which is one of the prerequisites of a mock-epic. For example, Belinda has been named as ‘the fairest of mortals’, the ‘bright fair’. The cards have been called ‘parti-coloured troops’. The pair of scissors has been termed as a two-edged ‘weapon’, ‘little engine’, ‘forfex’, ‘fatal engine’, etc.

Belinda’s dreams have been called mystic vision. The air-pins have been compared with ‘deadly weapons’ and ‘deadly spears’ etc. Belinda’s eyes have been dubbed as ‘fair suns’.

Humour is one of the prerequisites of a mock-epic and the poem is full of humour and its humour is pleasing as compared to Swift’s humour.

Moral is an essential part of a mock-epic. This poem is full of morals from the beginning till the end. However, the speeches of Belinda and Clarissa are especially soaked in moral. Belinda repents that she would have been ten times happier if she had indulged herself in the pursuits of the fashionable circle. So, the more a woman exposes herself and her beauty, the more her chastity is in danger.