The following poems have strong and visible structures. Think first about the life-situation out of which each emerges, and then begin to explore the way in which the life-situation has been imagined and arranged. “Lord Randal,” for instance, is structured by the stages of its narrative, as is George Herbert’s “Love.”
Given that every plot has a beginning and an end, the writer has the most free play in composing the middle. At the beginning of Herbert’s poem, the sinful soul has arrived, after death, at the gate of heaven; at the end of the poem, the soul sits down and participates in the heavenly banquet.
John Donne’s poem doesn’t reach the beginning of its story about a husband’s departure on a journey — “I must go” — until it has traversed a long comparison of the way virtuous men die and the way virtuous spouses part. How does Donne end his plot?
Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, and Robert Frost, on the other hand, use contrastive structures to explore two different states: Shakespeare contrasts depression and elation; Herrick presents a woman clothed and the same woman naked; Frost contrasts the life lived and the life unlived. Rather than contrast, Walt Whitman uses analogy: he explains his own actions through those of a spider.
Thomas Hardy’s poem about the collision of an iceberg and the Titanic begins in the present, with the sunken ship.
The most tightly structured of all these poems is probably “Tichborne’s Elegy.” Each of its three stanzas is constructed on roughly the same plan, but with variations.
Marilyn Nelson chooses an unexpected arrangement for a poem about animals at the zoo when she puts her poem into the form of a sonnet (fourteen five-beat lines, consisting of two quatrains and two tercets, with fairly regular rhymes). Look to see what animals inhabit the first quatrain, the second, the third, the couplet. Which animals are most specifically represented? Which have had names given to them? Nelson’s choice of form is partly explained by her quotation from a sonnet by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke concerning Orpheus, the legendary Thracian poet; according to Greek mythology, when Orpheus sang, animals listened and trees danced.
1
“O where ha’ you been, Lord Randal, my son?
And where ha’ you been, my handsome young man?”
“I ha’ been at the greenwood; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m wearied wi’ huntin’, and fain wad lie down.”
2
“And wha met ye there, Lord Randal, my son?
And wha met you there, my handsome young man?”
“O I met wi’ my true-love; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m wearied wi’ huntin’, and fain wad lie down.”
3
“And what did she give you, Lord Randal, my son?
And what did she give you, my handsome young man?”
“Eels fried in a pan; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m wearied wi’ huntin’, and fain wad lie down.”
4
“And wha gat your leavin’s, Lord Randal, my son?
And wha gat your leavin’s, my handsome young man?”
“My hawks and my hounds; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m wearied wi’ huntin’, and fain wad lie down.”
5
“And what becam of them, Lord Randal, my son?
And what becam of them, my handsome young man?”
“They stretched their legs out and died; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m wearied wi’ huntin’, and fain wad lie down.”
6
“O I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal, my son!
I fear you are poisoned, my handsome young man!”
“O yes, I am poisoned; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”
7
“What d’ ye leave to your mother, Lord Randal, my son?
What d’ ye leave to your mother, my handsome young man?”
“Four and twenty milk kye;° mother, mak my bed soon,cattle
For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”
8
“What d’ ye leave to your sister, Lord Randal, my son?
What d’ ye leave to your sister, my handsome young man?”
“My gold and my silver; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”
9
“What d’ ye leave to your brother, Lord Randal, my son?
What d’ ye leave to your brother, my handsome young man?”
“My houses and my lands; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”
10
“What d’ ye leave to your true-love, Lord Randal, my son?
What d’ ye leave to your true-love, my handsome young man?”
“I leave her hell and fire; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”
When in disgrace° with fortune and men’s eyes, disfavor
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless° cries, futile
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Written with his own hand in the Tower before his execution
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass° is full, and now my glass is run, hourglass
And now I live, and now my life is done.
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No;
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
’Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary° lovers’ love earthly
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see
That brave vibration each way free,
O, how that glittering taketh me!
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.
“A guest,” I answered, “worthy to be here”:
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
“Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
Lines on the loss of the Titanic
1
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
2
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid,° and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres. thread
3
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
4
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
5
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?”
6
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
7
Prepared a sinister mate
For her — so gaily great —
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
8
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
9
Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,
10
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
11
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said “Now!” And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Kubie sobbed when a nearby jazz band stopped playing.
— CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 8/27/96
A tree grew. Oh, remembering gorillas!
O Orpheus singt! 1 Oh, Africa in the ear!
The recluse, Vip, came out. Gigi sat still
and wide-eyed, black face pressed against the bars.
Kubie lay on his back, as he usually does,
vacantly staring. Then he turned over, hairy chin
on one huge leather palm; with his other hand
he scratched his head, contemplatively picked his nose.
The zebras’ ears twirled. Behind their fancy fences,
the silenced animals listened to something new.
Suddenly their calls, even the lion’s roar,
shrank in their hearts, as they knew something more.
And where there had been, at most, a nest of boughs
to receive it, music built a cathedral in their senses.