Songs of Experience

Nurse's Song

When the voices of children are heard on the green,

And whisperings are in the dale,

The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,

My face turns green and pale.

Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,

And the dews of night arise;

Your spring and your day are wasted in play,

And your winter and night in disguise.

1. Are there any significant differences between the rhythm, rhyme scheme and stanza form of this and the first poem?

2. What effect does the use of monosyllables create in the last line of the first stanza?

3. Is the narrator the same as in the first poem? Are there any differences in the way the scene is described?

4. Despite many similarities between the two poems there are also some important differences. Find examples and describe in your own words the difference in atmosphere between the two poems.

5. Why do you think the children have no voice in this poem?

6. Explain the reaction of the narrator in the last line of the first stanza.

7. What is the meaning of the last two lines? How does it contrast with what occurs in the first poem? What do you think Blake is suggesting?

JOHN KEATS

"ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER".

Although Keats knew no Greek, he loved Greek mythology. When he was about twenty-one, he borrowed a translation of Homer by George Chapman, an Elizabethan poet, and he and a lifelong friend, Charles C. Clarke, sat up till daylight reading it - " Keats shouting with delight as some passages of energy struck his imagination." The next morning his friend found this sonnet on his breakfast table.

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen:

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had 1 been told

That deep - browed Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He started at the Pacific - and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

1. What kinds of experiences are described in the first four lines? What is the imagery of the poem?

2. What is described as "realms of gold"? Why does the poet consider the area to be the domain of Apollo? Why Apollo?

3. Find the example of synecdoche and explain it.

4. Find the example of simile.

5. What is the central idea of the poem?

Дата добавления: 2015-08-13