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M

ACBETH

5. She should have died hereafter.

There would have been a ti

m

e for such a word.

Tom

orrow, and tom

orrow, and tom

orrow

Creeps in this petty pace from

day to day

To the last syllable of recorded tim

e.

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no

m

ore. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

These words

are uttered by Macbeth after he hears of Lady Macbeth’s death, in Act 5, scene 5, lines

16

–

27. Given the great love between them

, his response is oddly

m

uted, but it segues quickly into a

speech of such pessim

ism

and despair

—

one of the m

ost fam

ous speeches in all of Shakespeare

—

that

the audience realizes how com

pletely his wife’s passing and the ruin of his power have undone Macbeth.

His speech insists that there is no m

eaning or purpose in life. Rather, life “is a tale / Told by an idiot, full

of sound an

d fury, / Signifying nothing.” One can easily understand how, with his wife dead and ar

m

ies

m

arching against hi

m

, Macbeth succum

bs to such pessim

ism

. Yet, there is also a defensive and

self-

justifying quality to his words. If everything is m

eaningless, the

n Macbeth’s aw

ful cri

m

es are

som

ehow m

ade less awful, because, like everything else, they too “signify nothing.”

Macbeth’s state

m

ent that “[l]ife’s but a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage” can

be read as Shakespeare’s som

ewhat def

lating rem

inder of the illusionary nature of the theater. After all,

Macbeth is only a “player” him

self, strutting on an Elizabethan stage. In any play, there is a conspiracy

of sorts between the audience and the actors, as both pretend to accept the play’s reality. Macbeth’s

comm

ent calls attention to this conspiracy and partially explodes it

—

his nihilism

em

braces not only his

own life but the entire play. If we take his words to heart, the play, too, can be seen as an event “full of

sound and fury, / Sign

ifying nothing.”

Hamlet’s soliloquy

The question is: is it better to be alive or dead? Is it nobler to put up with all the nasty things

that luck throws your way, or to fight against all those troubles by sim

ply putting an end to

them

once and for all? Dying, sleeping

—

that's all dying is

—

a sleep that ends all the heartache

and shocks that life on earth gives us

—

that's an achievem

ent to wish for. To die, to sleep

—

to

sleep, maybe to dream

. Ah, but there's the catch: in death's sleep who knows what kind of

dreams

might

com

e,

after

we've

put

the

noise

and

comm

otion

of

life

behind

us.

That's

certainly som

ething to worry about. That's the consideration that

m

akes us stretch out our

sufferings so long.

After all, who would put up with all life's hum

iliations

—

the abuse from

superiors, the insults of

arrogant men, the pangs of unrequited love, the inefficiency of the legal system

, the rudeness

of people in office, and

the

mistreatment

good people have to take from bad

—

when you

could

simply

take out your

knife

and

call

it

quits? Who

would choose

to

grunt

and

sweat

through an exhausting life, unless they were afraid of som

ething

dreadful

after

death,

the

undiscovered country from

which no visitor returns, which we wonder about without getting

any answers from

and which makes us stick to the evils we know rather than rush off to seek

the ones we don't? Fear of death m

akes us all cowards, and our natural boldness becom

es

weak with too m

uch thinking. Actions that should be carried out at once get misdirected, and

stop

being

actions

at

all.

But

shh,

here

com

es

the

beautiful

Ophelia.

Pretty

lady,

please

rem

ember m

e when you pray.

Sonnet 18

Shall I com

pare thee to a summ

er’s day?

Thou art m

ore lovely and m

ore tem

perate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And su

mmer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Som

etim

e too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold com

plexion dimm’d;

And every fair from

fair som

etime 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 tim

e thou growest:

So long as m

en can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Summary

The speaker opens the poem

with a question addressed to the beloved: “Shall I com

pare thee

to a summer’s day?” The next eleven lines are devoted to such a com

parison. In line 2, the

speaker stipulates what

m

ainly differentiates the young m

an from

the summ

er’s day: he is

“m

ore lovely and m

ore temperate.” Summer’s days tend toward extrem

es: they are shaken by

“rough winds”; in them, the sun (“the eye of heaven”) often shines “too hot,” or too dim. And

summer is fleeting: its date is too short, and it leads t

o the withering of autum

n, as “every fair

from

fair som

etim

e declines.” The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs

from the summ

er in that respect: his beauty will last forever (“Thy eternal summer shall not

fade...”) and never die. In

the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloved’s beauty will

accom

plish

this

feat,

and

not

perish

because

it

is

preserved

in

the

poem

,

which

will

last

forever; it will live “as long as m

en can breathe or eyes can see.”

Commentary

This sonnet is certain

ly the m

ost fam

ous in the sequence of Shakespeare’s sonnets; it m

ay be

the m

ost fam

ous lyric poem

in English. Am

ong Shakespeare’s works, only lines such as “To

be or not to be” and “Rom

eo, Rom

eo, wherefore art thou Rom

eo?” are better

-known. This is

not to say that it is at all the best or m

ost interesting or most beautiful of the sonnets; but the

simplicity and loveliness of its praise of the beloved has guaranteed its place.

On the surface, the poem

is sim

ply a statem

ent of praise about the beauty of the beloved;

summer tends to unpleasant extrem

es of windiness and heat, but the beloved is always m

ild

and

temperate.

Summer

is

incidentally

personified

as

the

“eye

of

heaven”

with

its

“gold

com

plexion”; the im

agery throughout is sim

ple and unaffected, with the

“darling buds of May”

giving way to the “eternal summ

er”, which the speaker prom

ises the beloved. The language,

too, is com

paratively unadorned for the sonnets; it is not heavy with alliteration or assonance,

and

nearly

every

line

is

its

own

self- contained

clause

—

alm

ost

every

line

ends

with

som

e

punctuation, which effects a pause.

Sonnet 18 is the first poem

in the sonnets not to explicitly encourage the young m

an to have

children.

The

“procreation”

sequence

of

the

first

17

sonnets

ended

with

the

speaker’s

realization that the young m

an might not need children to preserve his beauty; he could also

live, the speaker writes at the end of Sonnet 17, “in m

y rhym

e.” Sonnet 18, then, is the first

“rhym

e”—the

speaker’s

first

attempt

to

preserve

the young

m

an’s

bea

uty

for

all

tim

e.

An

im

portant theme of the sonnet (as it is an im

portant theme throughout m

uch of the sequence)

is the power of the speaker’s poem

to defy tim

e and last forever, carrying the beauty of the

beloved down to future generations. The beloved’s “eternal summer” shall not fade precisely

because it is em

bodied in the sonnet: “So long as m

en can breathe or eyes can see,” the

speaker writes in the couplet, “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

Of Studies

It is an essay written to inform

us of the benefits of studying. He tells us that natural abilities

are like natural plants that need pruning by study. Studying is applying the mind to learning

and understanding a subject, especially through reading, which is perhaps why by 'studying',

Sir Francis Bacon m

ostly refers to reading. He said read is not for discussion 'but to weigh. In

his short essay, he strives to persuade us to study, and tells us how to study if we are to m

ake

the best of what we read.

'Of Studies'

m

ain

point

is

to

be

ev

idence

for

the

benefits

of

studying.

Sir

Francis

Bacon

attempts to prove to us that

ent and for discourse

showing us how education is used and can be used in our lives.

He said som

e books are tasted read only in parts, som

e books are swallowed read but not

rem

arkably and som

e chewed and digested read wholly. If a m

an read he becom

es a full m

an,

if he talks becom

e a ready m

an, if he is writing he is exact m

an. He also said if a m

an writes

little he desire great

m

em

ory, if he discuss bit he desire sm

artness, and if he read little he

need m

uch cleverness.

A red red rose

The Poem, “A Red, Red Rose” is one of the m

ost fam

ous songs that Robert Burns wrote for

this project and first published in 1794 was “A Red, Red Rose.” Burns wrote it as a traditional

ballad, four verses of four lines each.

“A Red, Red Rose” begins with a quatrain containing two sim

iles. Burns compares his love

with a springtime bloom

ing rose and

then with a

sweet

melody. These are popular

poetic

im

ages and this is the stanza m

ost comm

only quoted from

the poem

.

The second and third stanzas becom

e increasingly complex, ending with the m

etaphor of the

“sands of life,” or hourglass. One the one hand we are given the im

age of his love lasting until

the seas run dry and the rocks m

elt with the sun, wonderfully poetic im

ages. On the other

hand Burns reminds us of the passage of time and the changes that result. That recalls the

first stanza and its image of a red rose, newly sprung in June, which we know from

experience

will change and decay with tim

e. These are com

plex and competing images, typical of the

m

ore m

ature Robert Burns.

The final stanza wraps up the poem

’s complexity with a farewell and a prom

ise of return.

“A Red, Red Rose” is written as a ballad

with four stanzas of four lines each. Each stanza

has alternating lines of four beats, or iambs, and three beats. The first and third lines have

four iambs, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, as in da-dah,

da-dah, da-dah, da-dah. The second and fourth lines consist of three iambs. This form

of

verse is well adapted for singing or recitation and originated in the days when poetry existed in

verbal rather than written form.

The Chimney Sweeper

William

Blake’s

poem

s

both

entitled

“The

Chim

ney

Sweeper”

address

a

political

issue

publicized during the tim

e he was writing. In Songs of Innocence, the boy in “The Chim

ney

Sweeper”

sees

his

situation

through

the

eyes

of

innocence

and

does

not

understand

the

social injustice. In Songs of Experience, the boy in the poem

sees the injustice and speaks

against the establishm

ents that left him

where he is. Different aspects of one poem

illuminate

opposing aspects of the other poem

.

Ideas

addressed in Innocence contrast the different

views of Experience, as Experience does for Innocence, em

phasizing the need for a balance

of the two. The fact that these poem

s can influence the reader’s interpretation of one another

confirms Blake’s notion that neither innocence nor experience is a correct vi

ew and that one

com

pletes the other.

The poem

“The Chim

ney Sweeper,” in both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience,

protests the living conditions, working conditions, and the overall treatment of young chim

ney

sweeps

in

the

cities of

England.

Martin

Nurm

i

discusses

the

plight

of

the

chim

ney

sweep

extensively in his essay “Fact and Sym

bol in ‘The Chim

ney Sweeper.’” In 1788, there was an

attempt

to

pass

an

act

to

im

prove

the

treatm

ent

and

working

conditions

of

these

young

children. This would have m

ade

many people, including Blake, aware of the lives that these

chim

ney sweeps would live. For instance, they slept in cellars on bags of the soot that they

had swept (Nurm

i 17), and they were poorly fed and clothed. They would sweep the chim

neys

naked so their m

asters would not have to replace clothing that would have been ruined in the

chim

neys, and they were rarely bathed. Those who were not killed by fires in chim

neys usually

died

early

anyway

of

either

respiratory

problem

s

or

cancer

of

the

scrotum.

Sweeping

chim

neys

also

left

children

with

ankles

and

spines

deformed

and

twisted

kneecaps

from

clim

bing

up

chimneys

that

were

about

nine

inches

in

diameter

(Nurm

i

16). Many

people

viewed them

as subhum

an creatures and not a part of hum

an society.

In Songs of Innocence

, Blake features in “The Chimney Sweeper” innocence represented by

the

speaker

(the

slightly

older

chim

ney

sweep),

Tom

,

and

all

the

other

sweeps.

This

innocence is exploited and

oppressed, and those who are being exploited are unaware of the oppression. The narrator

is a chim

ney sweep whose m

other died and was sold by his father at a very young age, as

im

plied by the lines “And m

y father sold m

e while m

y tongue / could scarcely cry ‘weep weep

weep weep!’” (2

-

3). The phrase “in soot I sleep” (4), refer

s to the living conditions of the

sweeps.

The poem

goes on to talk about Tom

Dacre and his dream, an important part of

the poem

. He dreams of the other chim

ney sweepers being locked in black coffins, symbolic

of the lives that the sweeps lived, being poor outcasts in society and having stained unwashed

skin and often disfigured bodies. The angel opening the coffins and freeing the sweeps shows

the freeing of Tom

and other sweeps from

the oppressive lifestyle. The reference to being

white

and

the

bags

being

left

behind

represents

a

com

plete

escape

from

this

oppression

including the soot stained skin and the bags of tools and soot which they carried by day and

on which they slept at night. One m

ay also interpret this dream

as the coffins representing

their literal deaths, and the chim

ney sweeps are not free from

the oppression until the afterlife.

When the angel tells Tom

that “if he’d be a good boy, / He’d have God for his father and never

want joy” (19

-20), he gives Tom

hope that if he is good and does his job, God will be his

father and bless him in the next life. The poem

concludes with the narrator and his firm belief

that if they are obedient and do their duty, all will be well. This last idea expressed em

phasizes

that he is in the state of innocence and is unaware that he is a victim

.

In Songs of Experience,

the child in “The Chim

ney Sweeper” understands that he is a victim

and tells the observer (m

ost likely the Bard in the “Introduction” to Experience) who sees the

“little black thing” (1) in the snow w

eeping. Unlike the boy in Innocence, both parents of this

child

are

living

and

have

gone

to

the

church

to

pray,

an overt

criticism

of

the

Church

of

England since chimney sweepers were not welcom

e in church (Nurm

i 18). The boy believes

that his pious parents sold him as a chimney sweeper because he was happy. Clothing him

“in the clothes of death” (7) refers to his life as a social outcast and his being destined to an

early

death

because

of

the

working

and

living

conditions

of

his

profession.

However,

his

pa

rents believe that they have done no harm

and have “gone to praise God and his priest and

king” (11). This is not only a criticism

of the parents who sell their children into this life but of

the Church of England and the governm

ent for condoning the ill treatm

ent of these chim

ney

sweeps. He also seem

s to be criticizing God himself, who seem

s so cruel for allowing those

who practice this treatment to go unpunished.

For these poem

s, an understanding of the ideas of one poem

, as well as the ideas that it

lacks, illum

inates the other poem

. This gives the reader a different interpretation of the poem

than if one of these “The

Chim

ney Sweeper” poem

s would be read alone. For instance, in Songs of Innocence, the

chim

ney sweeps are offered hope by the outcom

e of To

m

Dacre’s dream. The narrator offers

comfort

that

no

harm

or

punishm

ent

will

com

e

to

those

who obey.

Also,

Tom

is

used

to

illustrate

another

point.

He

is

originally

frightened

but

later

feels

“happy

and

warm”

(23),

showing that one can experience a certain degree of happiness in the even in the worst of

circum

stances. These ideas of hope and happiness place further emphasis on the bitterness

of the chim

ney sweep in Songs of Experience. He understands his circum

stances and sees

no hope

of

freedom

from

his

oppression.

Instead

of

believing

that obedience

will

prevent

punishm

ent, he perceives his current circumstance as a punishm

ent for being happy with his

childhood. Also, he does not seem

to endorse the Christian idea of having joy in the m

idst of

adversity; he sees little if any reason to be happy in his m

iserable predicam

ent. In fact, the

God that his parents praise seem

s as cruel as others who allow children to be mistreated in

such a way. These exam

ples illustrate how an understanding of the them

es of “The

Chim

ney

Sweeper” in Songs of Innocence can further illuminate the som

e of

the ideas in Songs of

Experience.

However, in Songs of Experience, m

any of the ideas are m

ore realistic in som

e ways. The

chim

ney sweeper understands that he has been placed in a situation where he is isolated from

society

and

will

alm

ost

certainly

die young

because of

the

hazards

of

his

profession.

He

mentions established institutions such as the Church of England and the governm

ent in the

sam

e line with his m

other and father, who think they have done no harm

. These institutions

could have used their power to improve life for the chim

ney sweeps, but they have m

ade little

if any effort to do so. The understanding that this particular sweep possess emphasizes the

naivete of the speaker

in “The Chim

ney Sweeper” of Innocence, who believes that everything

will be fine if he is obedient even though his obedience will eventually cost him

his own life.

The naive child is

m

ore accepting of his circum

stances, and the narrator himself does not

seem

to see anyone as being at fault but whose faith in God is a constant source of hope.

This

exam

ple

of

the

“Chim

ney

Sweeper”

poems

in

Songs

of

Innocence

and

Songs

of

Experience illustrates William

Blake’s view that neither naive innocence nor bitter exper

ience is

com

pletely accurate. There is a higher state of understanding that includes both innocence

and experience. Both are need to com

plete one another to form

the m

ore accurate view. In

this case, it is an expression on the poet’s view of the political

issue dealing with chim

ney

sweeps that dom

inates

both poem

s.

Although the viewpoints of each poem

are

different,

both show plight of the m

ajority of the chim

ney sweepers in the cities of England, and while

one endorses hope and the other bitterness, the reader

m

ust acknowledge that som

ething

needs to be done to improve life for these children.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

William

Wordsworth (1770-1850) - He was born on 7th April in Cockerm

oth, Cum

berland in

the

Lake

District.

The

beauty of

the

region

and

stunning

landscape

provided

him

with

the

perfect setting and inspiration to write

poems about nature. In 1804, he wrote the poem

also known as

portant part in his life and she

also influenced him

with her love of nature. The inspiration to write this poem

cam

e while he

was out walking with Dorothy near Lake Ullswater in Grasm

ere and they cam

e upon som

e

daffodils growing near the river. The poem

was later revised in 1815.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils,

Beside the lake, beneath the trees

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

The poem is rich with imagery, and in the first stanza, Wordsworth describes the scene as he

wanders

the valleys and the hills and then he sees a

trees and beside a lake and are

soft and

gentle and it is

alm

ost as if there is silent

m

usic in the background to which the

daffodils

are

dancing.

He

is

admiring

the

beauty

around

him

and

capturing

a

beautiful

snatched m

om

ent in time that nature has presented to him

. It is as if the daffodils have com

e

alive just for him

and they have an alm

ost hum

an like quality in the way they are behaving.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the m

argin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance

In the second stanza, he com

pares the daffodils to the shining stars that twinkle in the Milky

Way as the number of daffodils lined near the river seems to be thousands in num

ber. He

com

pares

the

quantity

of

the

flowers

to

the

continuity

of

the

stars

using

words

like

dancing while they

toss their heads in a

ost funny aspect to the flowers as they

eone on a stage.

The waves beside them

danced, but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay

In such a jocund com

pany:

I gazed -and gazed -but little thought

What wealth the show to m

e had brought

In the third stanza, though he can see the waves of the river m

ove as if in a dance it is no

com

parison

to

the

performance

the

daffodils

are

providing

just

for

him.

They

outdo

the

as he looks at the scene and the

com

pany he is in. He cannot help but feel

and his choice

of words like

stanza is his indirect thanks to nature for providing him

with

this.