Intro to literature 11

1. ElEvEnth MEEting – latEr 19ElEvEnth MEEting – latEr 19thth
cEnturycEntury
poEtspoEts
• Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830) and Poems (1833):
Here, Tennyson’s musical lyrics started to appear,
although they were not deep yet.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(known for his musical poems)
• The Lotos Easter: a rythmical poem on the
wanderings of Ulysses and his men.

2. • Morte D’Arthur: a blank verse poem version of Sir
Thomas Malory(Middle English writer)’s story.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• The Idylls of the King: a set of poems about King
Arthur’s story, including Morte D’Arthur, Enid, Vivien,
Elaine, Guinevere, and The Passing of Arthur.
• In Memoriam (1833-50): an elegy for Tennyson’s
friend Hallam, who died in Vienna at the age of 22.

3. • Ulysses (1842): expresses the famous lines of
Ulysses’ decision to: ‘sail beyond the sunset and the
baths of all the western stars until I die’.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• The Princess (1847 and 1853): contains fine lyrics:
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

4. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Becket (1884): his best play, about the quarrel of King
Henry II and Thomas Becket who was murdered in
Canterbury in 1170. (Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’
pilgrims went to Becket’s grave)
NOTE: Tennyson’s influence in his time was immense
but at the beginning of the 20th
century, his
popularity fell.

6. Robert Browning
(known for: his belief that intellect is more important
than music, and for his marriage to Elizabeth Barret.)
• Pauline (1833) : more than 1000 lines, is only a part
of a much longer poem he planned but not wrote.
• Sordello (1840) : his most difficult poem, about a
story of events in 1200 with complicated details.
• Pippa Passes (1841) : a dramatic poem about a girl,
Pippa, who wanders through the town singing, and her
song influences people who hear it.

7. Robert Browning
• Dramatic Lyrics (1842): the poems within are a great
advance on Browning’s drama.
• Dramatic Romances (1845): contains a narrative
poem which is well-known as children story entitled
The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
• Dramatis Personae (1864) : the poem within Rabbi
ben Ezra shows his difficult style as a result of his
knowledge of words and his bold sentence building.
‘Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-
crammed beast’

8. Meeting at Night
(Robert Browning)
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

9. Robert Browning
• The Ring and the Book (1868-9): a poem based on a
book that he found in Florence about a husband
commiting a murder to his wife.
Examples of Browning’s neat way of expressing
ideas:
That shall be tomorrow, not tonight.
I must bury sorrow, out of sight. (A Woman’s Last
Word)
Never the time and the place and the loved one all
together (Never the Time and the Place)

10. Matthew Arnold
• Rugby Chapel (1867): a poem on Rugby, the school
where his father became the headmaster.
• Thyrsis (1867): a lament for his friend, Clough.
• The Scholar Gipsy (1853): a narrative poem about an
Oxford man who wanders with a band of gipsies.
• Memorial Verses(1850): a lament for Wordsworth’s
death and for the deaths of other noteworthy poets.
• Empedocles on Etna: a highly praised poem, probably
because it is not altogether sad.

11. Arthur Hugh Clough
(Arnold’s friend)
• Easter Day, Naples (1849): a poem containing a
famous cry of encouragement: ‘Say not the struggle
naught availeth’.
• Amours de Voyage (1849): a poem with the taste of
modern poetry, written in conversational way.

12. Dante Gabriel Rosetti
(He is a musical poet and a painter. His poems was
criticized as the ‘Fleshly School’ poems.)
Below are some of his lines, try to find the significance
of underlined words:
• A Last Cofession: ‘She had a mouth made to bring
death to life’.
• Sudden Light: ‘But just when at the swallow’s soar,
your neck turn so’.
• Soul’s Beauty: ‘By flying hair and fluttering hem - the
beat, following her daily in thy heart and feet.

13. Elizabeth Barret Browning
(Robert Browning’s wife)
• Sonnets from the Portuguese(1850): contains much
of her best work.
She pretended that the sonnets were translated from
the Portuguese, but they were entirely original
expression of her love for her husband.
Note: Her marriage to Robert Browning is the subject
of Besier’s play, The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1930).

14. Algernon Charles Swinburne
• Poems and Ballads (1866): is much blamed for moral
reasons, so he redid it in 1878, giving less offence.
• Tristram of Lyonesse (1882): his best work, about the
famous story of Tristram and Iseult in his version.

15. Edward Fitzgerald
(One of the greatest poetic translators)
He translated:
• Six of Calderon’s plays (1853)
• Aeschylus’ Agememnon (1876)
• Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat (1859)
Meredith (a novelist)
• Juggling Jerry: a poem on a brave old man’s view of
the nearness of death.
• The Lark Ascending

16. Rudyard Kipling (a novelist)
• Mandalay: a poem describing the thought of British
soldier when he left the East and gone back to London.
• Hound of Heaven
Francis Thompson

17. See You next week!