Edgar Lee Masters, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg

Edgar Lee Masters

"Elsa Wertman"
This poem tells an interesting story. A girl (also the speaker) was seduced by her married employer and births his child.  His wife was not angry with the girl  and said she:

"...would not make trouble for me,
And, being childless, would adopt it."


Mrs. Greene, the bosses wife, is kind to the speaker and creates the impression that she is with child herself.  The boy grows up presumably not knowing who his true mother is.  The people of the town do not know either.  The boy becomes an orator at pollitical rallies which his biological mother attends.   She cries and "sitters-by" think that she is crying;

 "At the eloquence of Hamiltion Greene - 
That was not it.
No! I wanted to say:
That's my son! That's my son!"


This poem speaks of small town culture.  One of secrets and scandal.  The poem is without rhymes and the language is simple and concise.  It is not filled with adjectives and simply tells the story of the speaker's plight.

"Hamilton Greene"

This poem is a companion to the previous poem, in a way.  The speaker is Hamilton Greene, as mentioned above.  He describes his parents as having been "Of valiant and honorable blood both."  He tells the audience that he has been "Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State" and that he served the people well.  As in "Elsa Wertman," the language is concise and matter-of-fact without much embellishment.  The poem is most interesting when read as a companion to "Elsa Wertman," for Hamiltion knows not that she is his biological mother.  He does not seem to know that his father has been less honorable than Hamilton might have believed and that Mrs. Greene is not his biological mother. One wonders what might happen to his political career if the small town secrets were ever revealed.

Edwin Arlington Robinson


"Reuben Bright"
This poem is very similar to those of Edgar Lee Masters.  It recounts a small town tragedy.  Unlike those of Masters, this poem is written in third person and has a rhyming scheme.  The scheme is unusual in the sense that it is somewhat irregular;
A
B
B
A
A
B
B
A

A
B
A
B
C
C
With regard to the content of the poem, many questions remain unanswered. The character Reuben Bright has lost his wife to death and has closed his butcher shop as a result.  The audience is not informed as to how his wife died or what he did with his life after her death.  Therefore, we must assume that Robinson omitted this information intentionally.  The point is that Reuben Bright has had to cope with great loss in his own way and within the prying view of onlookers.




Robert Frost

"Mending Wall"

In "Mending Wall," Frost questions the value and necessity of fences between neighbors.  He begins the poem by describing an incomprehensible force (perhaps nature itself) that does not care for walls and that places gaps in them through which we can pass through. He contrasts this with men, which he calls hunters. Frost goes on to detail the ways in which hunters hail from a different set of motives than nature.  Then he offers a personal anecdote.  He has a fence-loving neighbor and each year, the two retrace the property boundaries as a ritual or "another kind of outdoor game."  The speaker explains to the audience that;
"He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apples will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him."


Twice the speaker tells us that his neighbor prescribes to the old adage that;
"Good fences make good neighbors."
Robert Frost was deeply enamored of the natural world and I feel that this naturalism shows through in his writing style.  It is humble, straight-forward, romantic on the fringes, and "woody" for lack of a better adjective. "Mending Wall" is about isolation and the contrast between those who seek and enforce it and those who would prefer to live without fences. Frost implies that nature itself takes on the latter perspective.

"After Apple-Picking"

This poem is a reflection on the speaker's relationship to his task of picking apples.  He describes the great care required by the task in handling the apples into the bucket so that they do not hit the ground.

"For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, 
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth."


The poet speaks of dreaming and describes his day of apple-picking with an ethereal and dream-like quality.  In particular, he describes looking at the grass through a dripping-wet pane of glass and the experiences of his day are blended with his dream life so that it becomes difficult to distinguish between them.  The last ten lines are particularly telling as to the intention of the poet in speaking.  Following lines 32-36 (quoted above), the poet says:

"One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. 
Were he not gone, 
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, 
Or just some human sleep."


These final lines are cryptic.  One interpretation can be made by comparing the last lines of E.A. Poe's "A Dream Within a Dream," in which Poe says:

"And I hold within my hands
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! Yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep - while I weap!
O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?"


It is difficult to say exactly what the two poets wanted to save from the injustices of the cedar-apple bin and the "pitiless wave" respectively, but I believe it was the same impulse in both instances that the poets attempted to express; the inner conflict created by the human impulse towards preservation and meticulous care (order) contrasted with the natural forces of destruction and displacement (chaos).

"The Wood Pile"

"The Wood Pile" describes an experience the speaker had in the wintertime woods.  Frost describes the scene in his typical language; simple, humble, and subtly tinged with emotion.  As we read or hear the poem, the mind's eye follows the eyes of the poet in his memory as they move from the snow on the ground, to the woods, to a shy bird on a branch, to a wood pile, and finally to the clematis vines around the wood. As the speaker moves his focus through the sites of the wintered forest, he produces two main ideas which seem very separate and only akin in their contemporaneity; the paranoid shyness of the bird and the site of the gray wood pile which sat;
"To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the smokeless burning of decay."


As usual, Frost's language is languid and dream-like.  It is reminiscent of the experience it so often speaks of; the slow-paced reverie of absorbing and contemplating nature.

"Birches"

This poem is whimsical and somewhat faster in pace than Frost's poems covered thus far.  Frost begin by describing the frozen branches of birch trees and the effects of the ice on the trees and on the ground.  The entirety of the poem revolves around the fascination of the speaker with the ability of the branches to bend.  This type of fixation with the miraculous properties and sights of the natural world is easily understood by children and several times Frost says that he'd "like to think that some boy" is swinging, climbing, or bending down on the branches.  My interpretation of this particular poem is that it is in fact about the human fascination with the natural world and especially that of children.

"For Once, Then, Something"

In this poem, the speaker tells of peering down into a well and seeing his own reflection along with glimpses of:
"...a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths - and then I lost it."


The well keeps a secret and the poet leers deeper to see beyond his reflection and to ascertain the mystery but in vain. The well's hidden "something" remains a secret;
"What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something."

Yet again, the language is that of story-telling; without embellishment and dreamlike.

"Desert Places"

"Desert Places" consists of four stanzas of four lines each.  There is a rhyming scheme of:
A
A
B
A.
This scheme is consistent throughout.  Frost describes the lonely effect of beholding the winter wilderness covered in snow.  The animals are "smothered in their lairs."  This poem is not a reflection of the nature of loneliness but of a fear on the part of the speaker of a lack of feeling whatsoever.  This is evidenced in lines 7-8 as follows:

"I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares."
This theme is especially evident in the last stanza;
"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is. 
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places."

Being that the speaker describes himself as "absent-spirited" and fears his own "desert places" can be interpreted as indicating that isolation has not led the speaker to loneliness but has made him numb to it.

"Design"

Frost vividly describes a "dimpled spider, fat and white," as it perches on a flower while holding a dead moth.  His description is full of startling simile such as "dead wings carried like a paper kite."  He describes the spider, flower, and moth as a triad of "Assorted characters of death and blight,".
The second of the two stanzas is the poets interpretation of the sight.  What is implied therein is that these three entities came together as the result of a great design; the triad was meant to be.  This poem speaks of the perfection of natural beauty and its ability to confound human onlookers into awe and inspiration.  Events outside the human realm seem to function according to a cosmic scheme.

"Directive"

William Butler Yeats

“To the Rose upon the Rood of Time”

With this poem, Yeats presents a strongly sentimental ode to Ireland.  Throughout the poem are mythical references.  The two stanzas mirror each other in the sense that the first begins with a hail to the rose (highly revered by the Irish) and the second line speaks of singing and of the “ancient ways;” the second stanza ends with a repetition of these themes in reverse as follows:

First two lines:

“Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!

Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:”

Last two lines:

“Sing of old Eri and the ancient ways:

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!”

The feeling that one gets from this poem is a sense of melancholic nostalgia and a deep passion for one’s own ethnic heritage.

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

In this poem, Yeats depicts Innisfree and an envisioned life there which is peaceful and ideally solitary.  He is reminded of the waters of his homeland and explains:

“I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”

Yeat’s poetry is almost nationalistic in how it conveys the poet’s passionate familiarity and fondness for his birthplace. 

“The Sorrow of Love”

This poem begins and ends with a nighttime scene of active sparrows, moonlight, and the sounds of the trees.  As in “To the Rose upon the Rood of Time,” the first and last stanzas mirror each other with regard to content and form.  The second stanza is addressed to someone.  Yeats does not disclose to whom it is he speaks.  He describes the person as having “red mournful lips” and says that he/she “came with the whole world’s tears.” 

The pangs of love lost seem to be a common theme for poets throughout history.  

“When You are Old”

“When You are Old” Is tender and touching.  It seems to be addressed to a widow for Yeats says:

“Murmur, a little sad, From us fled Love;

He paced upon the mountains far above,

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”

The last lines of the second stanza end thusly:

“But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”

This line is deeply sentimental, as is the poem as a whole. 

“[Who Goes with Fergus?]”

The meaning of the poem is somewhat ambiguous.  Yeats speaks of the much-loved Fergus, ancient king of Ireland and he addresses a young man and a young woman.  He implores them not to “brood Upon Love’s bitter mystery.”  Yeats goes on to explain that King Fergus rules the woods and sea.  The poem is deeply ethnic in the sense that it speaks of a cultural hero specific to the Irish.  I feel that there is an Irish way of understanding this type of poem that cannot be reached by outsiders.  

“The Hosting of the Sidhe”

Once again, the theme is Irish myth and legend.  In this poem, ethereal heroes with “burning hair” and fairy maidens beckon the reader to abandon his/her “mortal dreams” and to enter a mythical place.  Perhaps this is the Land of the Ever-Living.  The meter and structure of the poem give it a sing-song quality when read aloud. 

“The Song of Wandering Aengus”

This poem recounts a supernatural encounter with a shape-shifting, silver trout.  The trout, after having been captured from the stream with a makeshift fishing pole, transforms into a “glimmering girl” who calls the speaker by his name and then runs away.  In the last stanza, Yeats promises to find the girl and to live out his days with her.  One of the prominent symbols repeated in this poem is the apple.  The girl wears apple blossoms in her hair and the last two lines are:

“The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.”

The symbol of the apple as understood by Yeats would take some further research.  Clues are gained from the title “The Song of Wandering Aengus,” for Aengus is the old Irish god of youth, beauty and poetry.  Perhaps apples too, symbolize youth and beauty in the Irish mind.  

“He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”

“Cloths of Heaven” seems to represent the sky in its various states and shades,

“Of night and light and the half light,”

The speaker claims that if he had the “Cloths of Heaven” he would “spread them under your feet.”  He explains that because he is poor, all he has are his dreams and so he’ll spread those out instead to be tread upon.  One might presume that the speaker addresses someone very dear to him and for whom he is willing to sacrifice all in favor of that person’s comfort. 

“Adam’s Curse”

This poem is addressed to a woman and presumed lover of Yeats.  He recounts the experience of sitting with her and her "close friend" and talking of poetry.  Yeats describes "Adam's Curse" as being evident in the toiling labor of those who work. Yeats says that making poetry and siting with his love is laborious despite the claims of the establishment;

"Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

The martyrs call the world."

The last stanza is a bit ironic and contrasts the seeming happiness of true love with the weariness it brings and compares this to the rising and setting of the moon, which Yeats describes as being like a worn down shell. 

"The Fascination of What's Difficult"

In "The Fascination of What's Difficult," Yeats laments at the difficulties of everyday life.  He implies that one, like a horse, is broken in order to fulfill his duties in life.  With the last line, Yeats proclaims:

"I swear before the dawn comes around again

I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt."

 This line speaks of a longing for freedom and the audacity of one who is willing to pursue it and to set the horse free per-say.  

"A Coat"

This is a short poem and is heavy with metaphor.  The speaker has

"made his(my) song a coat

Covered with embroideries 

Out of old mythologies."

However, "fools" have taken the coat and have defiled it's beauty "in the world's eye."

Therefore, the speaker thinks it fitter to go about naked if he is to keep his dignity intact. My interpretation is that Yeats is down-trodden that worldly people have been unable to appreciate the beauty of the old myths and romantic themes so dear to Yeats. Nevertheless, they have used them for their personal gain and have devalued them by making them cheap and superficial.

 "The Wild Swans at Coole"

This poem is an ode to the mysterious beauty of the swans at Coole upon the nineteenth visit of the speaker.  Yeats speaks of the natural features and especially of the swans with great sentimental fondness.  Coming to this old place makes the speaker nostalgic when he notices how things have changed.  He fears that someday the swans will not be there at all.  One wonders if the swans still visit Coole today.  

 

"Easter, 1916"

To be properly understood, this poem requires that the reader take on some extraneous information about the characters mentioned therein and about the events of and leading up to Easter, 1916.  On that day, Irish nationalists staged a revolt against the British government and were captured and mostly executed in firing squads.  Many of the individuals involved were intimately known by Yeats.  The poem is a lament in honor of those who died to proclaim Ireland a republic, but in vain.  

"The Second Coming"

The poem was written at the onset of World War I and during the throes of tremendous upheaval and violence in Europe.  Yeats interprets these events as heralding in the apocalypse of the Bible and the coming of a new world age.  The tone of the poem is heavy and dark.  Yeats explains that;

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity."

This was the zeitgeist or spirit of the time and seems to continue on into today.  Yeats describes a sphinx stalking through the desert towards Bethlehem to be born; the great iconic god of the next world age.  Are we to assume that nearly a hundred years later, the beast still makes his way towards his coronation and to usher in the end of an age and the dawn of the next?

Section I of "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen"

As with many of Yeat's poems, one must have some background information to fully appreciate this one.  The year 1919 marks the beginning of the Anglo-Irish war between the IRA and British government forces.  The main theme of this section of the six-part poem is sadness at the lost of great and beautiful things and the atrocities of war. What is suggested is that war and violence only serve to destroy beauty and to facilitate atrocities such as the "mother, murdered at her door."

"Leda and the Swan"

Once again, Yeats alludes to myth and legend.  Leda was a mortal woman raped by Zeus who appeared to her in the form of a large swan.  This myth has inspired generations of painters and poets.  Leda birthed four children from her unwanted assault, two of which were the fabled Castor and Pollux.  The myth was said to represent the dawning of a new age and this is another theme of which Yeats seems to have favored for writing.   The poem is viscerally descriptive and all at once sensual and violent.  The poem ends thusly;

"Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?"

This ending suggests that perhaps Leda is the powerful victor in the end despite Zeus's violent violation.  For Leda, being a woman, gave birth and through the birthing and fostering of human lives, great nations rise and fall.

"Sailing to Byzantium"

Yeats speaks of Byzantium as an ideal paradise; a place similar to the heaven described by the Bible, with golden streets and trees, a place of eternal youth.  Yeats speaks of age as a vice to be overcome and implies that youth is a state of mind with the following lines from the second stanza;

"An aged man is a paltry thing, 

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing..."

Byzantium is a happy mental escape for the speaker who imagines himself there in any form other than his present one;

"Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling..."

To equate being in Byzantium with being "out of nature" is to call Byzantium a supernatural place.

Hardy, Housman, and Thomas.

Thomas Hardy


"Hap"
In "Hap," Hardy proposes that IF all of life's sorrows were unavoidably bestowed upon him by a malicious higher power, he would have no choice but to bear them and await death. In the last stanza he admits this to be untrue and then asks the reader about the nature of sorrow. In my interpretation of the text, he seems to suggest that like beauty, joy and sorrow are in the "eye of the beholder" and that life is therefore what we make of it.  Referring to Time and Casualty (the temporal nature of reality and the unpredictability) as the great villains of life, Hardy says
 "These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain."
That is to say that events which might have been experienced as sorrowful, could have easily been construed as joyous events.
The structure of the piece is simple with three stanzas and a gentle rhyming meter, the specific style of which I have yet to learn. The pattern chosen in the first two stanzas is interrupted and expanded in the final stanza as if to evoke a cumulative sense of climax or catharsis interrupting the routine.

"Neutral Tones"
"Neutral Tones" seems to refer to a story of love grown cold. Hardy sets a sublimely bleak scenario in which he and another casually converse outside on a winter day.  The scene is painted in neutral tones such as white and gray.  Hardy describes the eyes and smile of the other person in such a way as to indicate that the mood of the encounter matched the neutral winter tones of fallen grey leaves. He describes the sun as having been
"...white, as though chidden of God,"
This condemned sun is in contrast to the happy, life-giving properties usually attributed to sunshine. The second stanza, describing the gaze of the other as it moves upon the speaker, implies a long history between the two with the line
"Over tedious riddles of years ago;"
and the word "tedious" adds to the sense that love has grown cold. This is further expounded by the startling description of the smile of the other upon the speaker which was

"the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing..."

In the last stanza, Hardy explains that his memory of the event near the pond on that winter day is associated with
"lessons that love deceives,"

There is a disillusioned bitterness in the emphatic tone of the last stanza in which the sun is once again claimed to be cursed by God.
The rhyming takes on a pattern of
A
B
B
A
and so on throughout the four stanzas.

"Darkling Thrush"
In the "Darkling Thrush," Hardy yet again paints a picture which is cold and gray, desolate and depressing. He describes looking out at a coppice (thicket) from behind a gate and all that he surveys is dead and gray.  His grim reverie is interrupted by the call of a thrush who bursts into the scene with startling joy and celebration. Hardy explains that whatever joy the thrush speaks of, he (Hardy) is unaware. For
"So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,"

I am beginning to think of Thomas Hardy as having been a brilliant but highly depressed person. This gives me impetus to read the autobiographical information included in the preface to his selected poems.

"New Year's Eve"
For me, "New Year's Eve" is reminiscent of "Hap" wherein Hardy questions higher powers in seeking to understand the source of sorrow and the point of life despite its hardships.   God has finished another year
"In grey, green, white, and brown;"

and has tended to the upkeep and routine of natural processes. The colors chosen here are earthly but cold.  In the second stanza, Hardy asks God
"And what's the good of it?"
He explains that

"If ever a joy be found herein,
Such joy no man had wished to win
If he had ever known!"

At this point, one feels sympathy for Hardy and wonders how it is he lived 88 years without committing suicide.  The rest of the poem describes the character God in less than flattering light as a being acting without logic and unweeting (unknowing).  One can assume that referencing god in a such a way would have seemed blasphemous to many.  Hardy pokes fun at God in "New Year's Eve" as a man who seemingly felt that life itself was a cruel joke.

"Chanel Firing"
"Chanel Firing" describes "gunnery practice out at sea."  One assumes this practice is done by military men because Hardy goes on to speak of war.  The firing of guns causes a stir and disturbs the people and creatures who are calmly resting or attending their affairs. The disturbance is so great as to illicit thoughts of "judgement day." Hardy condemns men of war saying that

"That this is not the judgement-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening..."

As in "Hap" and "New Year's Eve," Hardy once again scoffs at things religious and divine.

"The Convergence of the Twain"

This poem was written in memory of the famed Titanic, lost at sea in April of 1912.  Despite the great loss of human life that took place, very little mention is made of the deaths of those on board.  Instead, Hardy presents an ode to the majesty of the vessel alongside the majesty of the mysterious depths where
"Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query:  'What does this vaingloriousness down here?'..."


The poem is organized in eleven numbered stanzas, each containing three lines with a rhyming scheme of
A
B
A

Hardy chose to end the poem thusly;
"Till the Spinner of the Years
Said 'Now!' And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres."


As mentioned above, the main concern of the poem is in describing the peculiar union of something majestic and man-maid with something majestic, alien, and of nature. The "Spinner of the Years" is the only intelligent living being mentioned in this poem, aside from the slimy creatures of the sea.  The "Spinner of the Years" references the event of the sinking of the Titanic as having been caused by an unseen force.  As usual, Hardy has attributed the tragedies of life to a malicious, god-like force beyond apprehension.

"The Voice"

This poem is an ode to a presumed ex-lover, as evidenced by the line
"When you had changed from the one who was all to me,"

Hardy addresses the poem to the woman and tells her that he hears her calling to him, or was it just the breeze?  The lost love has left the speaker despotic and nostalgic.  He speaks of fair days of yore and describes himself in his current state as
"...faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward
And the woman calling."

The oozing wind is a particularly clever description. It is counter-intuitive and therefore novel.  Being a  novel and innovative way of thinking about the wind, it lends itself well to a clarity of expression with regard to the intense emotions of the speaker.