Introduction of the Poem: “Two Tramps in Mud Time” is one of the best – known poems of “A Further Range”, a volume of poems, first published in 1936. What strikes us about the poem is that the poem is a radiant evidence of Frost’s visual imagination coupled with psychological insight into human beings. The … Read more
Introduction of the Poem: “Hawk Roosting” is one of the Hughes’ simplest poems. It has been written in the form of monologue. It was first published in Lupercal in 1960. This poem is written in the first person i.e., the hawk is itself narrating something from its own mouth. It is a predatory bird … Read more
We shall have to look back a little and trace the intellectual history of Shelley before we can understand why he is a revolutionary. Rationalism of the eighteenth century was an important factor. The eighteenth century was an age of prose, social – mindedness and reason—the age of Voltaire, Newton, Adam Smith, Swift, Fielding, Lessing, … Read more
Shelley believed in a Soul of the Universe, a Spirit in which all things live and move and have their being which, as one feels in the Prometheus, is unable, inconceivable even to man, for “the deep truth is imageless.” His most passionate desire was not, as was Browning’s, for an increased and ennobled individuality, … Read more
Shelley does not commit himself to definite pantheism anywhere. But there are passages which seem to come near to pantheism. He often conceives of a Spirit diffused through, and permeating the universe — a Spirit that seems also to impel human thoughts. Shelley pays homage to such a Spirit in his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. … Read more
A Wonderful Lover of Nature: G. M. Hopkins like the great romantic poets of the early nineteenth century is a wonderful lover of Nature. His poem “A Vision of the Mermaids” reminds us of the sensuous love of Keats’ poetry where the latter has given sensuous pictures of Nature. In this poem there are the … Read more
Elegiac Note in Tennyson’s Verse: W.H. Auden, commenting on Tennyson, said: “There was little about melancholia that he (Tennyson) did not know; there was little else that he did.” While the second part of this comment is an unkind cut, the first part emphasizes an essential truth about the poetry of Tennyson. T.S. Eliot called … Read more
Tennyson’s Scepticism: Tennyson represents’ the Victorian Age in the same way as Pope represents the early 18th century. The Victorian Age was marked throughout by the spirit of enquiry and criticism, by scepticism and religious uncertainty, by spiritual struggle and unrest and by the analytical and critical habit of mind. The popularity of Darwin’s theory … Read more
A Gifted Poet with Unrivalled Powers: Tennyson was a great pictorial artist. He was gifted with unrivalled powers of picturing a scene, a landscape, a person in words marked with clarity and vividness. This art of pictorial painting was learnt by the poet quite early in his life by keeping Keats’s pictorial paintings as his … Read more
Tennyson’s Originality and Uniqueness: Love has always been the theme of poetry; love has inspired some of the greatest poetry of the world. In the English language, Shakespeare, Donne, Shelley, Byron, Browning, etc., are some of the greatest of love-poets. Tennyson is also a great love-poet, and his treatment of love is unique in many … Read more