Module IV(Poems)All the World is a Stage, by Shakespeare

To Autumn, by Keats O! Captain, My Captain, Walt Whitman

Where the Mind is Without Fear, Rabindranath Tagore

Psalm of Life, H.W. Longfellow.

ALL THE WORLD A STAGE WILLAM SHAKESPEARE All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances,And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchelAnd shining morning face, creeping like snailUnwillingly to school. And then the lover,Sighing like furnace, with a woeful balladMade to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,In fair round belly with good capon lined,With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,Full of wise saws and modern instances;And so he plays his part. The sixth age shiftsInto the lean and slippered pantaloon,With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wideFor his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,Turning again toward childish treble, pipesAnd whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,That ends this strange eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion,Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William Shakespeare

All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare's As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques. The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play, and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life, sometimes referred to as the seven ages of man: Infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon, and second childhood, "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything". It is one of Shakespeare's most frequently-quoted passages.The man in the poem goes through these stages:• Infancy: In this stage he is a baby• Childhood: It is in this stage that he begins to go to school. He is reluctant to leave the protected environment of his home as he is still not confident enough to exercise his own discretion.• The lover: In this stage he is always remorseful due to some reason or other, especially the loss of love. He tries to express feelings through song or some other cultural activity.

• The soldier: It is in this age that he thinks less of himself and begins to think more of others. He is very easily aroused and is hot headed. He is always working towards making a reputation for himself and gaining recognition, however short-lived it may be, even at the cost of his own life.• The justice: In this stage he has acquired wisdom through the many experiences he has had in life. He has reached a stage where he has gained prosperity and social status. He becomes very attentive of his looks and begins to enjoy the finer things of life.• Old age: He begins to lose his charm — both physical and mental. He begins to become the brunt of others' jokes. He loses his firmness and assertiveness, and shrinks in stature and personality.• Mental dementia and death: He loses his status and he becomes a non-entity. He becomes dependent on others like a child and is in need of constant support before finally dying.

TO AUTUMN JOHN KEATS

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,         Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;     Conspiring with him how to load and bless         With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;     To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,         And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;             To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells     With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,         And still more, later flowers for the bees,         Until they think warm days will never cease,             For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

                                            2.     Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

        Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find     Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,         Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;     Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,         Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook        

    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:     And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep         Steady thy laden head across a brook;         Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,             Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

                                            3.     Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

        Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—     While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,         And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;     Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn         Among the river sallows, borne aloft             Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;     And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;         Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft         The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;            And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

 

In ‘To Autumn’, a superficial reading would suggest that John Keats writes about a typical day of this season, describing all kind of colourful and detailed images. But the poem is a beautiful ode that contains three stanzas, and each of these has eleven lines.

With regard to the meaning of the poem, , the poet makes an intense description of autumn at least at first sight. The first stanza begins showing this season as misty and fruitful, which, with the help of a ‘maturing sun’, ripens the fruit of the vines. Next, we can see clearly a hyperbole Keats writes that a tree has so many apples that it bends while the gourds swell and the hazel shells plumps. Finally, Keats suggests that the bees have a large amount of flowers. And these flowers did not bud in summer but now, in autumn. As a consequence, the bees are incessantly working and their honeycombs are overflowing since summer.

 

In the second stanza, there is an evident personification The poet starts asking a rhetoric question to autumn which now is not only a woman but a gleaner. However, this woman is apparently resting in a granary or in the landscape:

 Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies…’  As she is not working with her hook, some flowers, that

were going to be cut, remain untouchable . Also we can see an image of her hair gently moving. The stanza ends with autumn patiently watching the ‘last oozing’ of cider.

The third stanza continues again with rhetoric questions. In the first one Keats asks the woman where the sounds of the spring are. And the second one is just a repetition of the same question. However, the poet tells autumn that she has her own sounds, although some of them are sad:

 ‘Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn’  

On the contrary, the ‘full-grown lambs’ bleat loudly, the crickets sing, a red-breast whistles, and swallows warble in the sky. Keats also describes a day that is dying, ending, and, as a consequence, is getting rose.The last lines of this stanza consist of a combination of the autumn sounds, of the animal sounds as I said before few lines above.

To conclude, first impression is that John Keats is simply describing the main characteristics of autumn, and the human and animal activities related to it, a deeper reading could suggest that Keats talks about the process of life. Autumn symbolises maturity in human and animal lives. Some instances of this are the ‘full-grown lambs’, the sorrow of the gnats, the wind that lives and dies, and the day that is dying and getting dark. As all we know, the next season is winter, a part of the year that represents aging and death, in other words, the end of life. However, death does not have a negative connotation because Keats enjoys and accepts ‘autumn’ or maturity as part of life, though winter is coming.

 

O Captain My Captain  WALT WHITMAN

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done,The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;But O heart! heart! heart!O the bleeding drops of red,Where on the deck my Captain lies,Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;Rise up--for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills,For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!This arm beneath your head!It is some dream that on the deck,You've fallen cold and dead.My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;Exult O shores, and ring O bells!But I, with mournful tread,Walk the deck my Captain lies,Fallen cold and dead.

 

"O Captain, My Captain" by Walt Whitman is an elegy, as it was written to honor the death of a person. The poem is a symbolism poem resembling president Abraham Lincoln after his assassination ‘O Captain! My Captain’ is a moving poem in which Whitman expresses his profound sense of grief at a tragic end of a leader of men is addressed to Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest presidents of the United States of America, who fought a war (the American Civil War) against the Southern States to give the Negro slaves freedom and human dignity. The war was won, the slaves were freed, but Lincoln, soon after his election as president for a second term, fell a victim to an assassin’s bullet.            The leader is being conceived as the brave captain of a ship who falls dead on the deck just when the journey is over and the victory is won. Whitman delivers the message to the captain and declares that their fearful and dangerous trip is done. Their ship had withstood every destructive encounter and their prized reward that they longed for is won.

Their weary ship is drawing near the sea-port, the church bells are ringing to celebrate a victory and the people are rejoicing. Yet in the midst the celebration, he sees that within the grim and the daring vessel, his heart would spill profusely with drops of blood of immeasurable sadness to see his captain lying cold and dead.              Whitman pleads desperately to the captain to get up from his bed and see that the people are flying the flag just for him. The people are blowing their trumpets and bugles and are waiting to present him with bunches of flowers and decorated garlands to honour him-the victor. The seashores are swaying with crowds of cheering people. All the faces of the people on the shore are eager to see the captain addressing them from the deck. Yet the captain, a father to all people of the nation slept still and cold with his arm beneath his head. It is like an unbelievable bad dream that the leader is dead at the moment of victory.      Yet the captain does not answer still. His lips are extremely pale and not moving. Whitman says that his father does not feel his arm, and has neither pulse nor movement. The ship has finally reached the shore. It has dropped its anchor safe and sound.

The long tiring voyage is closed and done. The triumph for the achievement is worth the effort. Whitman encourages the people on the shores to continue rejoicing and ring those bells as loud as possible.  For him he will walk the heavy steps with deep sadness to the deck where his captain lies absolutely cold and dead.

.

Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is freeWhere the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic wallsWhere words come out from the depth of truthWhere tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfectionWhere the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habitWhere the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and actionInto that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Tagore's poem,' Where the mind is without fear' is a prayer addressed to a father-figure, presumably God, for an awakening into a heaven of freedom where the mind will be fearless and the head held high, where men will get the freedom of knowledge, where all words issue out from the well of truth, where superstitious beliefs and dead old habits shall not impede the transparent flow of thought, where narrow parochial interests shall no longer separate nations or communities of people.

The poem was written when India was under the British rule and the Indians struggled for freedom. But, for Tagore, freedom was more than merely political; he dwelt on the theme of spritual freedom: freedom of mind, speech, thought, belief, practice & behaviour. Tagore's poem, "

Where the mind is without fear" is a pre-independence poem, where the poet earnestly prays to God to awake his countrymen (Indians) to the realization that they need to live in a free and united country. He wants his countrymen to enjoy being citizens of a free nation, where they can lead their lives with honour. He dreams of a nation where people would not be superstitious or believers of blind faith; rather they would be enlightened and knowledgeable. He wants the people to be honest and hard-working. Only then, the nation can hope of achieving success. Reason has to overpower blind faith. People must open-up themselves to accepting new thoughts and ideas and work upon them. Thus the nation would be successful.

A Psalm of LifeBy Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,    Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers,    And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!    And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest,    Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,    Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow    Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,    And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating    Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,    In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle!    Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!    Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,— act in the living Present!    Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us    We can make our lives sublime, , departing, leave behind us    Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps And another,    Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,    Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,    With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing,    Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow begins his poem "A Psalm of Life" with the same exuberance and enthusiasm that continues through most of the poem. He begs in the first stanza to be told "not in mournful numbers" about life. He states here that life doesn't abruptly end when one dies; rather, it extends into another after life. Longfellow values this dream of the afterlife immensely and seems to say that life can only be lived truly if one believes that the soul will continue to live long after the body dies. The second stanza continues with the same belief in afterlife that is present in the first.

Longfellow states this clearly when he writes, "And the grave is not its goal." Meaning that, life doesn't end for people simply because they die; there is always something more to be hopeful and optimistic for. Longfellow begins discussing how humans must live their lives in constant anticipation for the next day under the belief that it will be better than each day before it: "But to act that each to-morrow / Find us farther than to-day."

In the subsequent stanza, Longfellow asserts that there is never an infinite amount of time to live, but art that is created during one's life can be preserved indefinitely and live on long after its creator dies. In the following stanzas, Longfellow likens living in the world to fighting on a huge field of battle.He believes that people should lead heroic and courageous lives and not sit idle and remain ineffectual while the world rapidly changes around them: "Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!" His use of the word "strife" is especially interesting, since it clearly acknowledges that life is inherently difficult, is a constant struggle, and will never be easy. Longfellow then encourages everyone to have faith and trust the lord and not to rely on an unknown future to be stable and supportive. He advises people to seize the moments they have before them and act while thinking about their present situations. He continues his poem by citing the lives of great and important men who were able to lead incredible lives and leave their marks. He views these men as role models for people who have yet to live their lives; Longfellow encourages his readers to leave their own "footprints on the sands of time“.

The next stanza, the second to last in the poem, continues with this same point. It describes how successful people in the past have their lives copied, while those who failed serve as examples of ways of life to avoid. The final lines of the poem echo the beginning ones and offer perhaps the most important advice in a poem that is chocked full of it. Longfellow encourages all to work and try their hardest to make their lives great and accomplish as much as they can. Longfellow conveys his message the same way he did in the rest of the poem: by speaking directly to the reader and providing his reasoning for believing in something more, in something better. Longfellow ensures his followers that the rewards for what they achieve will come eventually-if not in this lifetime, then, certainly, in the next.