1300 - 1800 Poetry

Poems I've selected for A2 Exam

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The Mower To The Glow-Worms - Andrew Marvell (1)

" Studying all the summer night,

Her matchless songs does meditate;"

- Damon is being transfixed by nature and the night

- The creatures, sounds and atmosphere help him to meditate

- The music Juliana sings isn't as good as nature at night

- Pastoral feeling because Marvell is saying Damon finds nature more beautiful and interesting than Juliana

- Similar to The Garden by Marvell

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The Mower To The Glow-Worms - Andrew Marvell (2)

" Ye country comets, that portend

No war, nor prince's funeral"

- "Ye country comets" is a sign of ill omen yet glow-worms are not sinister

- "portend" is predicting the future

- Damon is ignoring the lights of the Glow-worms even though they're trying to show him the right path

- The sign of ill omen may be Juliana breaking his heart as seen in Damon The Mower

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The Mower To The Glow-Worms - Andrew Marvell (3)

" Since Juliana here is come,

For she my mind hath so displaced

That I shall never find my home."

- Damon has gone mad because of his love for Juliana

- Damon feels there is hope because she's come to see him yet she will continue to drive him crazy

- The Glow-worms are trying to look after nature and Damon but he ignores this because he loves Juliana

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Damon The Mower - Andrew Marvell (1)

" How happy might I still have mowed,

Had not Love here his thistles sowed! "

- Mowing used to be Damon's escape from Juliana and Love yet it is now with him everywhere

- " Had not Love here his thistles sowed! " = Metaphor for Juliana

- Marvell possibly making a comment that life was easier for Damon when he just had nature and no love i.e. humans are evil

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Damon The Mower - Andrew Marvell (2)

" Did into his own ankle glance;

And there among the grass fell down,

By his own scythe, the Mower mown."

- Damon cuts off his foot for love

- Cutting his ankle is a metaphor for Love being Damon's "Akiles heel"

- " His own scythe " Juliana played with his heart yet it was he who injured himself

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Damon the Mower - Andrew Marvell (3)

" 'these hurts are slight

To  those that die by love's despite.

With shepherd's-purse, and clown's all-heal,

The blood I staunch, and wound I seal."

- Damon is healing himself using nature: "shepherd's-purse" "Wound I seal"

- Marvell is likening the loss of love to the loss of life saying they are pretty much the same thing for Damon

- Love is personified: "Love's" Therefore love has killed Damon not Juliana or himself

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Paradise Lost - Book IX - John Milton - (1)

"Let us divide out Labours - thou where choice

Leads thee, or where most needs, whether to wind

The woodbine around this arbour"

- Eve is suggesting to Adam that they divide the jobs that need doing in Eden

- Ironic that Eve should want to keep God happy when she ends up disappointing him

- "Woodbine" = fast growing weed. "Arbour" = Arch

- Milton saying Paradise is only Paradise if you work to keep it that way.

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Paradise Lost - Book IX - John Milton (2)

" For not to irksome toil but to delight

He made us, and delight to reason joined.

These paths and bowers doubt not but our joint hands"

- Adam responding to Eve saying that they need to work together to keep Eden a paradise

- Saying that God created them to enjoy themselves and not to work hard

- "Bowers" = Shelter

- They need to be able to manage time between work and passion

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Paradise Lost - Book IX - John Milton (3)

" What Malicious foe,

Envying our happiness, and of his own

Despairing, seeks to work us woe and shame

By sly assault. "

- Adam saying that if he and Eve are apart he cannot protect her

- Dramatic irony as the audience knows the foe is the serpent 

- Controversial to modern audiences as it suggests Eve needs protecting by a man as women are shown as being weak

- The serpent was one of God's angels yet after being banished from heaven seeks revenge through Adam and Eve as he envies them

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Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard - Thomas Gra

"Let not Ambition mock their useful toil"

- They may have had ambition yet didn't have the means to succeed

- They may not have had high status in society but still made a big impact on society and the higher classes wouldn't have been able to cope without them

- The lower classes lived happy quiet lives

- The use of "Ambition" is abstract

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Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard - Thomas Gra

" All paths of glory lead but to the grave."

- Religious idea that you can't take your wealth with you to the grave

- Saying that all humans are the same in the fact that we will all die

- Death is inevitable

- No matter how much perceived glory you have in this life it can't save you from death nor can status or money

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Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard - Thomas Gra

" Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."

- In the churchyard there may be someone with the same talent as Milton that was unknown

- Criticizing Cromwell for his dictatorship of England in the 1650's

- Written 100 years after Oliver Cromwell was in charge of England

- The people here may not have achieved fame but it doesn't make them any less of a human being 

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Tintern Abbey - William Wordsworth (1)

"But oft in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din,

Of towns and cities ... passing into my purer mind,

With tranquil restoration."

- Remembering nature helps Wordsworth restor calm and peace when in the noisy town or city

- He finds urban areas lonely as there are so many people that don't notice him

- Nature is a place of tranquility and creates a sense of purity to him

- It cleanses his mind, spirit and soul.

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Tintern Abbey - William Wordsworth (2)

" The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being."

- Wordsworth has found God in nature

- Nature is always with him as a teacher

- He needs nature to show him the right path and to make the right choices

- Nature protects him and in some way owns him

- Religious idea about nature being the gateway to finding God

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Tintern Abbey - William Wordsworth (3)

"We stood together; and that I, so long

A worshipper of Nature"

- Worshipping nature religiously

- Directed to his sister Dorothy on her first visit to Tintern Abbey

- He hopes that she will respect nature the same as he has

- Showing Wordsworth's huge respect and religious ideals towards nature and how important this place is to him that he brings Dorothey there to marvel at the nature as he has in the past

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