"To Helen"
is the first of two poems to carry that name written by Edgar Allan Poe. The 15-line poem was written in honor of Jane Stanard, the mother of
a childhood friend. It was first published in 1831 collection Poems
of Edgar A. Poe. It was then reprinted in 1836 in the Southern Literary Messenger.
Full poem
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Original
1831 version
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfum'd sea, The weary way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the beauty of fair Greece, And the grandeur of old Rome. Lo ! in that little window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand! The folded scroll within thy hand — A Psyche from the regions which Are Holy land !
Revised 1845
version
Helen, thy beauty is
to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The
agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!
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Analysis
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In "To Helen," Poe is celebrating the nurturing power of woman.
Poe was inspired in part by Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, particularly in the second line ("Like
those Nicean barks of yore") which resembles a line in Coleridge's "Youth and Age" Poe
revised the poem in 1845, making several improvements, most notably changing "the beauty
of fair Greece, and the grandeur of old Rome" to "the glory
that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." Poe
biographer Jeffrey Meyers referred to these as "two of Poe's finest and most famous lines".
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He was a major influence on Emerson and American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder, which had not been defined during his lifetime. He was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories,
particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely
regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American
literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners
of the short story. Poe is
generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited
with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first
well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone,
resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
Poe and his works
influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in
specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in
literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are
dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of
America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work
in the mystery genre.
Much of
Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan
inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic Movement and,
more specifically, Dark
romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his
works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His
published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his college
friend Franklin Pierce.
Writings
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Literary style and themes
Hawthorne's
works belong to romanticism
or, more specifically, dark romanticism, cautionary tales that
suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of
humanity.] Many of his works are inspired by Puritan New England,
combining historical romance loaded with symbolism and deep psychological
themes, bordering on surrealism. His depictions of the past are a version of
historical fiction used only as a vehicle to express common themes of
ancestral sin, guilt and retribution. His later writings also reflect his
negative view of the Transcendentalism movement.
Criticism
The style of
Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful,
and in full accordance with his themes ... We look upon him as one of
the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth.
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The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is an
1850 work of fiction in a historical setting, written by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. The book
is considered to be his "masterwork". Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, during the years
1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through
an affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the book,
Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.
Theme
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Elmer
Kennedy-Andrews remarks that Hawthorne in "The Custom-house" sets the context
for his story and "tells
us about 'romance', which is his preferred generic term to describe The Scarlet
Letter, as his subtitle for the
book – 'A
Romance' – would indicate." In this introduction,
Hawthorne describes a space between materialism and "dreaminess" that he calls
"a neutral territory,
somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the
Imaginary may meet, and each imbues itself with nature of the other".
This combination of "dreaminess" and realism gave the author space to
explore major themes.
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Allusions
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Onomatopoeia
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1.
The formation of a word, as cuckoo,
meow, honk, or boom, by imitation of a sound made by or associated with
its referent.
2.
A word so formed.
3.
The use of imitative and naturally suggestive words for rhetorical, dramatic, or poetic effect.
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Tyger
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Tyger
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"The Tyger" is a poem by the English
poet William
Blake published in 1794 as part of the Songs of Experience collection. Literary critic Alfred Kazin calls
it "the most famous
of his poems," and The Cambridge Companion to William Blake
says it is "the most anthologized poem in English."
It is one of Blake's most reinterpreted and arranged works.
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Background
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The
Songs of Experience was
published in 1794 as a follow up to Blake's 1789 Songs of Innocence. The two books were published
together under the merged title Songs of Innocence and Experience, showing
the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul: the author and printer, W. Blake featuring 54 plates.
The illustrations are arranged differently in some copies, while a number of
poems were moved from Songs of Innocence to Songs of Experience. Blake
continued to print the work throughout his life. Of the copies of the
original collection, only 28 published during his life are known to exist,
with an additional 16 published posthumously. Only 5 of the poems from Songs
of Experience appeared individually before 1839.[
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Poem
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Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
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William Blake (28
November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his
lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic works
have been said to form "what
is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English
language". His visual artistry led one
contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever
produced".
Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries
for his idiosyncratic
views, he is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness
and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his
work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic Movement
and as "Pre-Romantic". Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England,
Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions. Though later
he rejected many of these political beliefs, he maintained an amiable
relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine;
he was also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known
influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify.
The 19th-century scholar William Rossetti characterised him as a "glorious luminary",and
"a man not forestalled by
predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by
known or readily surmisable successors".
John Donne
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John
Donne (22 January 1573[1] – 31 March 1631)[2] was an English poet and cleric
in the Church of England.
He
is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are
noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious
poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its
vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially
compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and
various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along
with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and
his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of
conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European
baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that
bore immense knowledge of English society and he met that knowledge with
sharp criticism. Another important theme in Donne's poetry is the idea of
true religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which
he often theorized. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems.
He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits.
Despite
his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in poverty for several
years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. He spent much of the money he
inherited during and after his education on womanising, literature, pastimes,
and travel. In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, with whom he had
twelve children.[4] In 1615, he became an Anglican priest,
although he did not want to take Anglican orders.
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Holy
Sonnets: Death, be not proud
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Death, be not proud, though some have
called thee
Mighty
and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For
those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death,
nor yet canst thou kill me.
From
rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much
pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And
soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest
of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou
art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And
dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And
poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And
better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One
short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no
more; Death, thou shalt die.
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Wit (心靈病房)
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The
film is about an anti-cancer female warrior, how to
learn from their cancer start to face the reflection of life, and experience the true meaning
of life, all the way to come hard, experience many pains, the last brave
death
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Valediction forbidding mourning
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"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"
is a metaphysical
poem by John Donne. Written in 1611 or 1612 for his wife
Anne before he left on a trip to Continental Europe, "A Valediction" is a 36-line love poem
that was first published in the 1633 collection Songs and Sonnets, two years after Donne's death. Based on the
theme of two lovers about to part for an extended time, the poem is notable
for its use of conceits and ingenious analogies to describe the couple's
relationship; critics have thematically linked it to several of his other
works, including "A Valediction: of
my Name, in the Window", Meditation III from the Holy Sonnets.
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AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No." [1]
So let us melt, and make no
noise,
5
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 ; 10 But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit Of absence, 'cause it doth remove 15 The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is, Inter-assurèd of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. 20
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two
so
25
As stiff twin compasses are two ; Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam, 30 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, 35 And makes me end where I begun. |
The flea
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The
Flea is an erotic metaphysical poem (first published posthumously
in 1633) by John
Donne (1572–1631). The exact date of its composition is unknown.
The
poem uses the conceit of a flea, which has sucked blood from the male speaker and his female lover, to serve
as an extended metaphr
for the relationship between them. The speaker tries to convince a lady to sleep with him, arguing that
if their blood mingling in the flea is innocent, then sexual mingling would
also be innocent. His argument hinges on the belief that blood mixes during
sexual intercourse.
This
poem evokes the concept of carpe diem, which is "seize the day" in Latin. Donne
encourages the lady to focus on the present day and time versus saving
herself for the afterlife.
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MARK but this flea, and
mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ; It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ; Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ; And this, alas ! is more than we would do. O stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, yea, more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. Though parents grudge, and you, we're met, And cloister'd in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee? Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now. 'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ; Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee. |
No man is an island
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No Man is an Island
No man is an island, entire of itself
every
man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if
a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as
well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any
man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it
tolls for thee.
--
John Donne
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Divine Comedy
The Divine
Comedy is a poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed 1320,
a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of
Italian
literature and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature.
The poem's imaginative
vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed
in the Western Church by the 14th
century. It helped establish the Tuscan language,
in which it is written, as the standardized
Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
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