My Last Duchess

Robert Browning's My Last Duchess is a dramatic monologue. This genre is typified by a poem in which a single character is speaking at a critical moment to a person or persons whose presence we strongly feel, yet who have no voice. This poem is set in Renaissance Italy, the speaker is one Duke of Ferrara, satisfying the first requirement of the genre. Also, lines such as "That's my last duchess . . . I call/ that piece a wonder . . . Will't you please sit and look at her?/I said . . . ", further reinforce this view of being set in the first person.

The Duke addresses throughout the poem an emissary from the court of the Count, whose daughter the Duke has been eyeing. "We'll meet/ The company below, then. I repeat/ The Count your master's known munificence . . . Of mine for dowry will be disallowed." The dramatic situation then appears to be taking place in the Duke's waiting room, where he addresses the Count's emissary before descending the stairs to see the Count's daughter, and perhaps ask for her hand in marriage.

This poem bears many resemblances to the dramatic soliloquy, both are spoken by a single person, that character also usually not representing the author, and both provide a monologue with a story behind it. This poem has rich storytelling aspects and strong connotative associations.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Lyrical Odes are typically long poems in stanzas of varying length, meter and form. They usually deal with an exalted or respected facet of the arts or nature, and are therefore mainly serious. Ode on a Grecian Urn is a splendid example of these standards in this literary genre. It is a high and mighty sounding poem, incorporating words loaded with respectability and sagacity: unravished, Sylvan historian, deities and mortals, Tempe and Arcady, men and gods, maidens and wild ecstasy, all within the first stanza. The greatest line from this poem is undoubtedly "Beauty is truth, truth beauty", possibly no other line can say as much for the ode as this one, it implies unreachable wisdom and a melding of things material and spiritual. This ode is a celebration of times long past, of the wonderment of polytheism, the stately art and perceived demeanor of the Greeks of old.

Although the ode as a genre has no set rhyme or rhythm scheme, Keats has used an interesting rhyme pattern in Ode on a Grecian Urn. He utilizes the pattern a b a b c d e d c e throughout the piece, which gives it an air of storytelling. He has also sought to make each line ten syllables long, with a changing meter that lends an air of imperativeness to the poem, compelling you to listen and partake in the beauty of the urn.

QUESTION 2

Putting in the Seed

Putting in the Seed by Robert Frost is a Shakespearean sonnet, consisting of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. This is a heavily symbolic work, Frost using his acute perception of nature as a metaphor for the perfect relationship between two people. In The Figure a Poem Makes, Frost says "It should be the pleasure of a poem to tell itself how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place.". In Putting in the Seed, Frost has developed his metaphor one step further. This essay will separate the sonnet into the first nine lines, and the last five, in order to highlight two different yet intertwined ideas.

Although Frost's diction remains largely natural sounding and informal, the first nine lines of the poem weave an extremely complex rhythmic pattern, incorporating an aside in parentheses halfway through. The speaker appears to be a man farming or working his land, "burying the white/ soft petals..." possibly his work is turning over the soil in order to plant the spring crops. Frost's imagery in the first nine lines is extremely rich and descriptive. He conjures an image of wholesome and earthy feelings with his frequent allusions to his love of nature, "... Soft petals ... smooth bean and wrinkled pea ... springtime passion for the earth.". Within this structure of the first sentence, Frost is tracing the emotional coming together of two people at the same time as he is speaking of nature. This is evident in lines such as: "... and we'll see/ If I can leave off ... /And go along with you ere you lose sight/ Of what you came for.". He also manages in the two line aside, "(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,/ Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea)," to provide us with a useful guide to the deeper meaning within the piece. Through the image of soft petals mingling with the pea and the bean, he is illustrating his belief in sympathetic relationships. The petals seem to the farmer "less barren" when amongst the bean and pea, parallelling the farmer's work being transformed by shared insight and affection.

The last five lines are contained in a separate, sustained rhythmic unit. They convey the climax and theme of the sonnet. As Octavio Paz wrote in The Other Voice,

" The poetic process conceives of language as an animated universe traversed by a dual current of attraction and repulsion. In language, the unions and the divisions, the love affairs and the separations of stars, cells, atoms and men are reproduced. Each poem, whatever it's subject and form and the ideas that shape it, is first and foremost a miniature animated cosmos. The poem unites the "ten thousand things that make up the universe," as the ancient Chinese put it.". Frost's final pentet indeed reveals his mastery at combining dual elements that on the surface seem to be exclusive, and in the process unites many other levels of connotations. For example, it seems odd that Frost chooses to say "When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,"(Italics added). In contrast to the seeming passion the farmer feels towards the spring, he says they tarnish the earth. Is this because the weeds tend to crowd his precious seedlings? One may perhaps look upon the weeds as metaphors for possible seeds of discontent within his own springtime passions.

In conclusion, Frost's ever present motif of nature and springtime renewal and rebirth is recycled once more. The allusions he makes to this particular part of the cycle of the seasons would seem to suggest hope for new love between the farmer and his wife, and all humans for that matter. This poem is a momentary stay against confusion. Frost seems to be using the general metaphor of farming or planting as one for the cultivation of burgeoning love. Given this reading, the line "Slave to a springtime passion for the earth." could easily be read as "Slave to a springtime passion for each other.", a rather lewd and lascivious statement not dispelled by the imagery of the closing lines of the poem.