poetry questions

Response Question Three

Today’s readings include two formal poems and one free-verse.  “My Mistress Eyes” and “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day are two drastically different poems by William Shakespeare, but they have a common theme and structure.  They are also formal poetry, meaning they have a specific structure and meter.  I have the poems posted under the Poetry link.  I have also posted a video titled “A Study in Sonnet,” which will give you an overview of the sonnet form.  Please try to pick out the rhyme scheme of these two poems.  Hint:  Read your poetry terms list, which will give information regarding the sonnet.  Compare the way he approaches each poem.   Which do you prefer?  Which one is ironic? 

For “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” try to first determine the setting, but then look at the visual imagery he is creating and the figures of speech.   What diction does he use, meaning does he speak in colloquial (everyday) speech or elevated?  I will give you a hint to the poem’s meaning.  He is walking down a street to a party.  How do the images at the beginning of the poem compare to the images further into the poem?  Does J. Alfred Prufrock seem as if he is a confident man?  Does he convey a sense of insecurity that we’ve all felt at times when walking into a room where we do not exactly feel comfortable?  Why?  What parts of the poem can you use to support your answer?

In Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death,” how does she use familiar conventions or everyday things that we know to pave the way to a territory unfamiliar to us all: death?

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)

William Shakespeare , 1564 - 1616

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

Shall I compare thee to a summers day, Sonnet 18 by:  William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed. But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

T. S. ELIOT

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse


a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

questa amma staria senza più scosse.

Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo

non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,

senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.1

Let us go then, you and I,


When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;


Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

5 The muttering retreats


Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

10 To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .

Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’


Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.2

15 The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,


Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

20 Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time3

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street

25 Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time


To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days4 of hands

30 That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,


And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

35 In the room the women come and go T

alking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time


To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

40 With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—


(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)


My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—

(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)

45 Do I dare


Disturb the universe?


In a minute there is time


For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—

50 Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

55 And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that x you in a formulated phrase,


And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,


When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin


60 To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare


(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

65 Is it perfume from a dress


That makes me so digress?


Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

70 Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes


Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws


Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

•••••

75 And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,


Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,


Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

80 Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?


But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in

upon a platter,5


I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;


I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

85 And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,


After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,


Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

90 Would it have been worth while,


To have bitten off the matter with a smile,


To have squeezed the universe into a ball6


To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,7

95 Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’—

If one, settling a pillow by her head,

Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all.

That is not it, at all.’

And would it have been worth it, after all,

100 Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along

the floor—


And this, and so much more?—


It is impossible to say just what I mean!

105 But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a

screen:

Would it have been worth while


If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

‘That is not it at all,

110 That is not what I meant, at all.’

•••••

No! I am not Prince Hamlet,8 nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do


To swell a progress,9 start a scene or two,


Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

115 Deferential, glad to be of use,


Politic, cautious, and meticulous;


Full of high sentence,1 but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

120 I grow old . . . I grow old . . .


I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?

Do I dare to eat a peach?


I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

125 I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea


130 By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.