INVICTUS

William Earnest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 

Analysis
Invictus, meaning "unconquerable" or "undefeated" in Latin, is a poem by William Ernest Henley. The poem was written while Henley was in the hospital being treated for tuberculosis of the bone, also known as Pott's disease. He had had the disease since he was very young, and his foot had been amputated shortly before he wrote the poem. This poem is about courage in the face of death, and holding on to one's own dignity despite the indignities life places before us. 


In the first stanza the poem's speaker prays in the dark to "whatever gods may be" a prayer of thanks for his "unconquerable soul." Several things are apparent from the outset: First, the speaker is in some sort of metaphorical darkness, perhaps the darkness of despair. Second, he does not pray for strength, but gives thanks for the strength that he already has. Third, he seems rather flippant about who he is or is not praying to; it is almost a prayer to himself at this point, but not quite. 

The seeming agnosticism of the first stanza continues in the second. He does not talk about God's will or even fate; instead he speaks of "the fell clutch of circumstance" and "the bludeonings of chance," and asserts that he has overcome these bravely and without complaint. 

The third stanza is about death and what a trifle it seems to the speaker of the poem. This "place of wrath and tears", this life, it seems, is not full enough of pain and horror to frighten the poem's speaker. And death, "the Horror of the shade," could not possibly worry him, being an end to "wrath and tears". Notice here that he is not concerned in any way about an afterlife. Death is merely an end to suffering for our speaker. Nothing of any concern seems to lie beyond for him until.... 

The one line of this poem that seems to give people the most trouble is this reference to a "strait gate". "It matters not how strait the gate" is either a reference to John Bunyan's tract The Strait Gate, or Great Difficulty of Going to Heaven (1676), or the the scripture Bunyan got his title from Matthew 7:13, 14. 


The poet William Ernest Henley would likely have been familiar with one or both of these sources. So we can read the stanza as an acceptance of whatever judgment or doom death may bring. He accepts no master but himself. He bows to no authority. He is his own god, guide and judge. He is the Captain.

(Henley was a lifelong atheist, and, with his missing leg and braggadocio, he was also the inspiration for the character of Long John Silver in Robert Louis Stephenson's Treasure Island, a Captain indeed.)

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_meaning_of_the_poem_Invictus#ixzz1elMpopkE

Ecclesiastes 3

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

New International Version (NIV)

Ecclesiastes 3

A Time for Everything

 ¹ There is a time for everything,
   and a season for every activity under the heavens: ² a time to be born and a time to die,
   a time to plant and a time to uproot,
 ³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
   a time to tear down and a time to build,
 ⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
   a time to mourn and a time to dance,
 ⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
   a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
 ⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
   a time to keep and a time to throw away,
 ⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
   a time to be silent and a time to speak,
 ⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
   a time for war and a time for peace.

The Rose

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
by E. E. Cummings
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands It is a common reaction by all readers of Cummings that to analyze his works is a sacrilege. But for academic reasons, I have attempted to break down this already-audible poem to better understand Cummings’ brilliant command for words and images. The first line, and also the title depicts the poet’s condition with regards to this particular poem and all the feelings that he aims to convey to his muse and to his readers. “Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience…” describes the poet’s inexperience with respect to his feelings towards his muse, as if he is in a place that he has never gone before. In this same stanza, Cummings describes how his muse affects him tremendously without much effort from her as seen in the third line of the first stanza. The last line of the same stanza however, describes the fragile situation they are in and perhaps this line reveals Cummings’ difficulty in expressing his love for his muse. By the use of several tools of imagery, Cummings was able to depict the power of the muse over the poet, how she could easily open and close the doors of his emotions. And even with Cummings’ futile resistance, the muse is able to skillfully open and close him without even trying. Cummings ultimately surrendered in the third stanza by stating that upon the wish of his muse he would stop and cease himself from expressing and finally disappear. The third stanza is the peak of Cummings’ declaration of unconditional love, despite the intensity of his love and despite his fear (compared to the rose’s fear of death), he was willing to sacrifice what he truly feels if that is his muse’s desire. Finally in the last stanza, Cummings considered his felling towards the muse as a mystery; in the same manner, that love for him is a mystery. That he could never explain the woman’s effect on him and that no matter how hard he tries to compare the woman, his feelings and the situation to the world’s mysteries and beauty… he knows that he still will not be able to define or more so explain it. The last and final line of this poem described with great precision, how the girl can penetrate his deepest feelings when he created a parallel contrast with the inability of the rain to sip through the core of a rose bud. In general, the flower or the rose that the poem speaks of is the poet himself or the feelings of the poet and how the muse has the power to open and close this symbolic rose upon her wishes. After reading Cummings through this particular poem, it is but natural to say that he is effective in employing his skills and mastery of imagery. It is a love poem but unlike many love poems, Cummings gently sprinkled his poem with images while the poem gently oozed with sentimentality and intense feelings. And not only did he utilize the present existing metaphors and imagery but he also invented his own images as seen in “your eyes have their silence” which is deviant of the traditional imagery, “your eyes speak…” or any depiction of the eyes as means to communicate. Also in third and fourth line of the third stanza, where Cummings described fear. It is an effective poem because Cummings was able to get his message across using a manner cognitive of beauty and literary esthetics. He was capable of describing the intensity as well as the fragility of love… its mysteries by inventing and reinventing metaphors, similes and personifications. Cummings once again led us into his world of images and allowed to us to explore the simplicity of his words and the complexities they represent through the most crucial and most sensitive of all metaphors; love and man.

Sonnets from Portuguese

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) wrote a series of 44 sonnets, in secret, about the intense love she felt for her husband-to-be, poet Robert Browning. She called this series Sonnets From the Portuguese, a title based on the pet name Robert gave her: "my little Portugee." "Sonnet 43" was the next-to-last sonnet in this series. In composing her sonnets, she had two types of sonnet formats from which to choose: the Italian model popularized by Petrarch (1304-1374) and the English model popularized by Shakespeare (1564-1616). She chose Petrarch's model. For an in-depth discussion and analysis of both sonnet models, click here. 

Sonnet 43
HOW DO I LOVE THEE?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

."Sonnet 43" expresses the poet’s intense love for her husband-to-be, Robert Browning. So intense is her love for him, she says, that it rises to the spiritual level (Lines 3 and 4). She loves him freely, without coercion; she loves him purely, without expectation of personal gain. She even loves him with an intensity of the suffering (passion: Line 9) resembling that of Christ on the cross, and she loves him in the way that she loved saints as a child. Moreover, she expects to continue to love him after death.

Introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The Sonnets are Shakespeare's most popular works, and a few of them, such as Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day), Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds), and Sonnet 73 (That time of year thou mayst in me behold), have become the most widely-read poems in all of English literature.

Composition Date of the Sonnets

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, likely composed over an extended period from 1592 to 1598, the year in which Francis Meres referred to Shakespeare's "sugred sonnets":

The witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous & honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared sonnets among his private friends, &c. (Palladis Tamia: Wit's Treasury)

In 1609 Thomas Thorpe published Shakespeare's sonnets, no doubt without the author's permission, in quarto format, along with Shakespeare's long poem, The Passionate Pilgrim. The sonnets were dedicated to a W. H., whose identity remains a mystery, although William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, is frequently suggested because Shakespeare's First Folio (1623) was also dedicated to him.

Narrative of the Sonnets
The majority of the sonnets (1-126) are addressed to a young man, with whom the poet has an intense romantic relationship. The poet spends the first seventeen sonnets trying to convince the young man to marry and have children; beautiful children that will look just like their father, ensuring his immortality. Many of the remaining sonnets in the young man sequence focus on the power of poetry and pure love to defeat death and "all oblivious enmity" (55.9).
The final sonnets (127-154) are addressed to a promiscuous and scheming woman known to modern readers as the dark lady. Both the poet and his young man have become obsessed with the raven-haired temptress in these sonnets, and the poet's whole being is at odds with his insatiable "sickly appetite" (147.4). The tone is distressing, with language of sensual feasting, uncontrollable urges, and sinful consumption.

• For a closer look at the negative aspects of the poet's relationship with the young man and his mistress, please seeSonnet 75 and Sonnet 147.
• For a celebration of the love between the young man and the poet, see Sonnet 18 and Sonnet 29.
• For the poet's views on the mortality of the young man, see Sonnet 73.
• For the poet’s description of his mistress, see Sonnet 130.

The question remains whether the poet is expressing Shakespeare's personal feelings. Since we know next to nothing about Shakespeare's personal life, we have little reason or right not to read the collected sonnets as a work of fiction, just as we would read his plays or long poems.

How to Analyze a Shakespearean Sonnet

1. Find the Theme
Although love is the overarching theme of the sonnets, there are three specific underlying themes: (1) the brevity of life, (2) the transience of beauty, and (3) the trappings of desire. The first two of these underlying themes are the focus of the early sonnets addressed to the young man (in particular Sonnets 1-17) where the poet argues that having children to carry on one's beauty is the only way to conquer the ravages of time. In the middle sonnets of the young man sequence the poet tries to immortalize the young man through his own poetry (the most famous examples being Sonnet 18 and Sonnet 55). In the late sonnets of the young man sequence there is a shift to pure love as the solution to mortality (as in Sonnet 116). When choosing a sonnet to analyze it is beneficial to explore the theme as it relates to the sonnets around it.



2. Examine the Literary Devices
Shakespeare likely did not write his sonnets with a conscious emphasis on literary devices, and early editors of the sonnets paid little attention to such devices (with the exception of metaphor and allusion). However, in the era of postmodern literary theory and close reading, much weight is given to the construction or deconstruction of the sonnets and Shakespeare's use of figures of speech such as alliteration, assonance, antithesis, enjambment, metonymy, synecdoche,oxymoron, personification, and internal rhyme. Much modern criticism¹ also places heavy emphasis on the sexual puns and double entendres in the sonnets (blood warm (2.14) being both blood and semen, etc). For more on this please see the commentary for Sonnet 75.



. Find a Copy of the Oxford English Dictionary
Researching the history of words Shakespeare used is a sure way to gain a greater understanding of the sonnets and will sometimes lead to new and fascinating commentary. Words that today have a specific meaning, such as hideous (seeSonnet 12) or gaudy (see Sonnet 1) often could have multiple meanings as the rapidly-changing language of the time was still heavily influenced by Old French and Middle and Old English. The OED is available online by subscription, as are a couple of free etymological dictionaries.

Sonnet 43 & Sonnet 14 and Sonnet 18 William Shakespeare

Sonnet 43 
When most I wink then do mine eyes best see

When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

SONNET 14

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.