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The poem, one of the "songs" of The Princess, has been set to music a number of times. Edward Lear put the lyric to music in the 19th century, and Ralph Vaughan Williams ' pianistic setting of 1903 was described by The Times as "one of the most beautiful settings in existence of Tennyson's splendid lyric".
The poem uses a five-line stanza of tetrameter lines, with a rhyming scheme of ABCCB, [6] said to be a "variation on the long meter quatrain." [7] It has been described as a realisation of the traditional form of the ballad, chiefly because of its "unobtrusive" narrator, [8] as well as "an extreme example of the naive or rustic style in poetry."
The word within a word, unable to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness. James Longenbach argues that these lines show that Gerontion is unable to extract the spiritual meaning of the Biblical text because he is unable to understand words in a spiritual sense: "Gerontion's words have no metaphysical buttressing, and his language is studded with ...
"Lie here, without a record of thy worth," Poems of Sentiment and Reflection. 1807 To the Daisy (fourth poem) 1805 "Sweet Flower! belike one day to have" Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces. 1815 Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont: 1805 Manuscript title: "Verses suggested, etc,"
Longfellow wrote the poem shortly after completing lectures on German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and was heavily inspired by him. He was also inspired to write it by a heartfelt conversation he had with friend and fellow professor at Harvard University Cornelius Conway Felton; the two had spent an evening "talking of matters, which lie near one's soul:–and how to bear one's self ...
The final lines of the poem conclude that the poet must "lie down where all the ladders start," which leads Michael O'Neill to suggest that the use of the word "start" indicates a new beginning taking place as the poem ends. The "foul rag and bone shop of the heart," O'Neill contends, is the paper upon which the poem is written, and he argues ...
What [the] heart leaves behind is not a man, but only the likeness of a man, 'unswayed', under no sway, with no heart to govern it". [10] Edward Dowden provides this gloss of lines 11 and 12: "My heart ceases to govern me, and leaves me no better than the likeness of a man - a man without a heart - in order that it may become slave to thy proud ...
However, a man of mature age may also prosper in terms of his material wealth and friends, and achieve happiness. The poet explains that the distribution of man's fortunes and misfortunes is in God's hands, including that of one's skills and talents: martial dexterity (throwing and shooting), cunning at board-games, scholarly wisdom and the ...