Linda's Literary Home

Tag: love

  • Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”

    Image a Matthew Arnold https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw114320/Matthew-Arnold National Portrait Gallery, London
    Image: Matthew Arnold National Portrait Gallery, London

    Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”

    Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” laments the loss of religious faith during a time of progress in science and industry.  He is sorrowful that this loss may not bode well for the future of humanity.

    Introduction with Text of “Dover Beach”

    Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach” displays in five riming stanzas. The stanzas are uneven; the rime scheme is complicated and would require a new essay to discuss its many and varied implications. 

    The speaker holds forth from a melancholy brought on by world events.  He hints at certain deficiencies that have occurred as humanity has been engaging in a materialism that may not be sustainable.  He thus offers a humble suggestion that he feels would improve the state of affairs and the lives of individuals.

    Dover Beach

    The sea is calm tonight.
    The tide is full, the moon lies fair
    Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
    Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
    Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
    Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! v

    Only, from the long line of spray
    Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
    Listen! you hear the grating roar
    Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
    At their return, up the high strand,
    Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
    With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
    The eternal note of sadness in. 

    Sophocles long ago
    Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
    Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
    Of human misery; we
    Find also in the sound a thought,
    Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 

    The Sea of Faith
    Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
    Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
    But now I only hear
    Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
    Retreating, to the breath
    Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
    And naked shingles of the world. 

    Ah, love, let us be true
    To one another! for the world, which seems
    To lie before us like a land of dreams,
    So various, so beautiful, so new,
    Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
    Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
    And we are here as on a darkling plain
    Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
    Where ignorant armies clash by night.

    Reading

    Commentary on “Dover Beach”

    The speaker in “Dover Beach” is lamenting the loss of religious faith during a time of progress in science and industry.  He suggests that this loss that has resulted in gross materialism is causing an interruption that may cost humanity its culture and even its very life.

    First Stanza: Musing on the Ocean

    The sea is calm tonight.
    The tide is full, the moon lies fair
    Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
    Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
    Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
    Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
    Only, from the long line of spray
    Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
    Listen! you hear the grating roar
    Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
    At their return, up the high strand,
    Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
    With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
    The eternal note of sadness in. 

    The speaker is standing at a window, musing and looking out at the ocean. He seems to be talking to a loved one, whom he invites to come and join him: “Come to the window, sweet is the night air!”

    Such an invitation could be a romantic gesture, offering the beloved the chance to share with him the lovely ocean view: “The sea is calm tonight / The tide is full, the moon lies fair.”  But that scene is not in the offing, and the reader soon finds a very different mood is being dramatized.

    Second Stanza:  The Drama of the Waves

    Only, from the long line of spray
    Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
    Listen! you hear the grating roar
    Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
    At their return, up the high strand,
    Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
    With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
    The eternal note of sadness in. 

    The second stanza features the speaker dramatizing the crashing of the waves upon the ocean shore; he reports that one can hear the pebbles as they are being cast about by the waves.

    He observes that the ocean waves can be heard as they begin, end, and then begin again.  While the waves continue to repeat their sounds, they cause one to experience a pang of sorrow.

    In place of enjoyment of the lovely, calm scene, this speaker’s thoughts have turned to the possibility of the universally shared brutality and sadness of the world with it inhumanity to man and its endless wars. 

    The crashing waves as they begin and end put him in a negative frame of mind. The process of beginning and ending reminds the speaker of the rounds of good and but also evil events that have been perpetrated upon humanity by humanity itself.

    Third Stanza:  Melancholy and Rumination

    Sophocles long ago
    Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
    Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
    Of human misery; we
    Find also in the sound a thought,
    Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 

    The speaker offers evidence for his melancholic musing as he alludes to Sophocles, who would have listened long ago to the “ebb and flow” of the Aegean Sea. The speaker further emphasizes the allusion by averring that one can receive a “thought” as one listens to the sound of the sea. 

    Similar to Sophocles’ own rumination regarding the ebb and flow of “human misery,” this modern day speaker, however, has further thoughts on the matter, and he will unfurl them as he continues his drama.

    Fourth Stanza:   The Protection of Faith 

    The Sea of Faith
    Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
    Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
    But now I only hear
    Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
    Retreating, to the breath
    Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
    And naked shingles of the world. 

    The speaker then lays out his lamentation regarding the status of humanity:  in an earlier time, humanity remained ensconced in a religious faith, which embraces humanity with layers of protection. That protection seems “bright” as well as comforting. 

    One should note that the speaker does not name any particular “faith,” nor does he directly attribute to that faith the idea that it protects.  And, of course, he does not mention “God” or any other name for the Deity.  The speaker merely names the mysterious quality, “faith,” as he metaphorically likens it to the sea that remains filled as it remains in contact with the “earth’s shore.”

    In his own day, however, things are different from that earlier, seemingly protected time, and now he hears only “[the sea’s] melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.” While the sea continues to roar, it, nevertheless, seems to be in retreat because of the “night wind.”

    “Faith,” therefore, is compared to a sea that possesses only the dour aspect of the roar as it is in retreat.  The speaker further denigrates the act by asserting that faith’s retreat flows “down the vast edges drear / And naked shingles of the world.” 

    Fifth Stanza:   The Protection of Love 

    Ah, love, let us be true
    To one another! for the world, which seems
    To lie before us like a land of dreams,
    So various, so beautiful, so new,
    Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
    Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
    And we are here as on a darkling plain
    Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
    Where ignorant armies clash by night.

    The speaker then appears to offer a lone cure for the abysmal loss of faith that is being suffered in his time.  Of course, the qualifying notion must be added—if there need be a cure at all. 

    The speaker then again appears to speak to his beloved, whom he had earlier beckoned to come join him at the window.   He seems to address his loved one thus: “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” 

    The speaker then makes quite an astute observation of the world:  that it may seem at times to be “so beautiful, so new,” but the reality is that the world, “Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.”  

    The speaker concludes his lamentation with an image of the greatest lamentation of all throughout human history:  Essentially, humanity exists on a “darkling plain,” and it is hurtled about by alarming “struggle and flight,” and on that dark plain there are always “ignorant armies” who “clash by night.” 

    Invitation to Humanity

    While the opening of the poem seems to have the speaker inviting a loved one to join him at the window, it more likely that he is inviting all of humanity to join in his musing on the status of the world. 

    If the speaker were inviting merely one person—a lover or a spouse, for example—to join him, he would have said in the final stanza, “let us be true / To each other!”  But he says, “to one another!” indicating that he is addressing more than one person.

    The speaker is concerned with a profound subject—the condition of all of humanity and how it lives in this material world.  Thus, it is much more likely that the speaker is addressing all of humanity in his momentous musing. 

    Let’s consider his appeal:  by addressing one’s spouse or beloved and asking that the speaker and that person be true to each other, he would not be suggesting much of an improvement in world events. 

    But by asking all of humanity to “be true to one another,” he is asking much, and taking seriously and thus granting that request would, in fact, offer a great improvement in humanity’s status in the world. By following such a request, the world could be restored to a virtue that the speaker can only imagine existed in an earlier time.

    Image b: Portrait of Matthew Arnold  https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw255781/Matthew-Arnold-Men-of-the-Day-No-36?LinkID=mp00139&role=sit&rNo=16  James Jacques Joseph Tissot - National Portrait Gallery, London
    Image: Portrait of Matthew Arnold  James Jacques Joseph Tissot – National Portrait Gallery, London

  • A Walk through the City after the Rain

    315a Image created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem
    Image created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem

    A Walk through the City after the Rain

    In a blaze of memory the streets flare up
    Between the concrete cells of my brain—
    Hard as night the rain has not loosened the fire
    That tears through the walls of my mad heart.

    You rise out of the demolition of buildings.
    With the axe of your words you hack through the cement—
    Sidewalks and down alleyways you gain speed
    Surefooted and safe from this mad stalker heart.

    My thoughts dangle at the end of a long line—
    A stranger assures me that many fish still swim
    In the oceans and time has a way with mad hearts—
    But she has not heard your boots on hardwood.

    And she has not watched you brush grass from her hair
    And she did not feel the thunder in your voice
    The night that lightning struck the house
    And put out the fire with your naked hands.

    315b Max Surreal Abstract Image by Grok inspired by the poem.jpg
    Image: Max Surreal Abstract Image by Grok inspired by the poem

  • Two November Poems

    Image created by Grok inspired by the poem
    Image created by Grok inspired by the poem

    Two November Poems

    Out Walking in Late November

      Farmington Addition –  Muncie, Indiana

    Did you ever notice when you’re out walking
    In late November how some leaves, 
    Caught by the wind, will kind of skip along beside you, 
    It’s like walking with dogs, they scamper here and there 
    And between your feet,

    While most of them don’t budge,
    They seem to be enjoying a vacation from making green 
    All summer; or maybe after fall has tumbled them 
    From the trees and turned them many shades of brown,
    They’re just plumb tuckered out.

    Driving Southwest in November

    Sunday evening we are driving from Muncie 
    to Indianapolis to fetch our granddaughter Samantha 
    back home—after a few miles but even before we get 
    to the Interstate you turn to me and remark about
    the fantastic colors of the sky:  gold-pink-orange-rose-lavender light that 

    stretches and marbles across the many hued blue.
    I say it seems that there has to be an ocean over there
    to make that sky so rowdy with those tones, and then
    I say there is.  You say how paintings like that look fake—
    but this is a gift. 

  • Seven Acts of Love 

    Image created by Grok inspired by the poem
    Image created by Grok inspired by the poem

    Seven Acts of Love 

    I
    you bore me through hard labor
    on the seventh cold day of the year. 
    you put the Greek in my blood.

    II
    you nudged me to question and to criticize
    and when I turned them on you, you lived up
    better than you could have dreamed.

    III
    you disguised yourself many times
    in lies, in sex, in false prophets
    and in false poets whose words sting then die.

    IV
    you wore a hat and smoked a pipe
    and taught me history and poetry.  
    you planted word-seeds.  this is a sprout.

    V 
    you petted puppies in my house
    ate my food and grew up
    before I could figure how to raise you.

    VI
    you level my mood; we have built a kingdom 
    where monarchs reign, where the tiger lies 
    down with the lamb.

    VII
    you fetched me treasures from the ancients: 
    under your pen fog translates into poetry.
    Catullus is grateful.

    With a different numbering system, this poem appears in my collection Turtle Woman & Other Poems

    Image created by Grok inspired by the poem
    Image created by Grok inspired by the poem

  • Chief Muncie 

    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem
    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem

    Chief Muncie 

    for Thomas — poet, mentor, friend, colleague

    You belong to that world of long braids, and pipesmoke 
    coats papers you pull out of your weathered bag 
    and hand me and riddle my brain. Your poetry is 
    what I think ancient ruins are made of.  Gold glimmering
    from the domes of exotic dreams. Riders on horseback
    come dragging in the dust of a Montana evening and you
    capture their essence, and the streets of this Indiana town
    shine in the rain as it blackens the tree trunks, 

    then the yard shines, smell that rain and remember
    when the lilacs first tempted you to spring.  
    Our lives sprawl out before us
    begging us to inspect them and spindle the corners
    and ransack the trunks for bits of our living. 
    You have an eye that gathers the corn
    and when I finally squeeze out a word

    about how cold the river was that May, even though 
    the tulips flooded the houses on Main Street, 
    you look so surprised that I remember,
    and I have to remind you that I have lived here a long time, 
    even longer than when I knew you, took summer classes, 
    drove a car without a license, but I didn’t mean to confess,
    and I know you

    wouldn’t let me confess any real sins,
    like the ones I committed 
    when I thought feminism had arrived
    to save the world,
    before I knew that each soul 
    has to save its own life,

    but you didn’t know me then, and I am always so glad,
    because that was not me, the person you see here
    and care to listen to; I have news and a flag, 
    and as we walk to the burial ground
    where the chief proclaimed this land sacred, 

    I know you feel the stream flowing under our feet 
    and you hear the call to come home.

  • Time’s Hands

    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem
    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem

    Time’s Hands

    Time’s hands unveil as morning’s glow fades,
    A silver face like pewter forward parades.
    In silence, like the dove on fence post still,
    The pewter visage moves with quiet will.

    The mind holds desires in a brimming cup,
    No calming stone of regret to lift up.
    As blood flushes cheeks in meandering flow,
    A vein in the brain bursts, letting life go.

    Skin stays unchanged through centuries long,
    Where invented wheels roll, heavy and strong.
    Unswayed by mourners’ destiny so grim,
    An endless route of minds, intruding, skims.

    The turtle’s dark lips part in silent speech,
    Each soul burns star-like, beyond earthly reach.
    Over rocks of intrigue and fury they soar,
    As mapping songs on breezes gently pour.

    Stone wise, the world remains a place so hard,
    Brute gales and pestilence, hidden, stand guard.
    Tempting the margins with blasts of sin’s might,
    The devil plays judge, spinning games of spite.

  • Original Short Literary Fiction: “Transformation through the Ages: Two Letters to Myself”

    Image-Created by ChatGPT inspired by the text
    Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by the text

    Speculative Literary Fiction Alert!
    This text is speculative literary fiction.
    It does not depict any real person or actual event.

    Original Short Literary Fiction: “Transformation through the Ages: Two Letters to Myself“

    The process of aging asks us to move from one version of ourselves into another—slowly learning how to carry memory, change, loss, wisdom, and time within the same person.

    Dear Older Me,

    I’m writing to you from age twenty, which feels impossibly young and impossibly certain all at once, right on the edge of adulthood. Everyone keeps telling me that life will change me, but I still wake up every morning believing I will somehow remain recognizable to myself forever. I wonder if you remember feeling that way.

    Lately I’ve been thinking about aging—not in the dramatic sense of illness or endings, but in the quieter sense of becoming someone new over time. I look at photographs from just a few years ago and already feel strange about them. 

    The girl in those pictures is me, but also not entirely me anymore. Her worries were smaller. Her body was different, plumper, rosier, full of some kind of strange awareness.  But her understanding of herself was unfinished.

    I wonder what it’s like for you now, at nearly ninety, carrying six plus decades of former selves inside you.

    Do you still feel connected to me? Or do I seem like a distant relative you remember fondly but imperfectly?

    People talk so much about youth as though it’s the truest version of a person, and aging as though it’s some slow departure from that truth. But I’m beginning to suspect that every age is temporary, and every version of ourselves eventually becomes a kind of memory.

    That thought frightens me sometimes.

    I notice already how language changes around age. Adults speak of young people with nostalgia, impatience, envy, and tenderness all at once. And young people speak about aging as though it’s something abstract—something happening to other people. Yet every day we are all moving quietly toward another stage of ourselves.

    I wonder what it feels like to look into the mirror at eighty plus. Do you still recognize your expressions even if the face has changed? Do you still feel young somewhere underneath everything time has altered?

    I’ve also been thinking about photographs and memories. Right now, my room is full of snapshots from childhood, school dances, birthdays, awkward haircuts, and vacations that already feel far away. I can’t imagine ever wanting to hide those versions of myself, even the embarrassing ones. But I wonder if, by your age, those images begin to feel less like evidence and more like archaeology.

    Do old photographs comfort you, or do they ache?  I hope you’ve kept them all anyway.

    I hope you understand that the younger versions of yourself were not mistakes. I hope you speak kindly about us—the insecure teenager, the reckless twenty-year-old, the exhausted middle-aged woman trying to hold everything together. I hope you see all of them not as separate people, but as chapters in the same long story.  Most of all, I hope you haven’t become embarrassed by change itself.

    Right now, growing older seems terrifying because everything around me celebrates beginnings and quietly fears decline. But perhaps aging is not a process of disappearing. Maybe it’s a process of accumulation. Maybe the older face simply carries more life within it.  If you could tell me anything from where you are now, I think I’d want reassurance that becoming older does not mean becoming less.

    I hope you still laugh easily.  I hope you still feel wonder.  I hope you still believe your life mattered.  And I hope, somehow, that you are grateful for me too—for this young girl standing at the beginning, trying so hard to understand time before she has truly lived it.

    Love,
    Your Former Self

    Dear Former Self,

    Your letter arrived like a voice carried across water—young, searching, and achingly sincere. I read it slowly, not because age has made me slower, though perhaps it has, but because your words reopened rooms in my memory I had not visited in years.

    Yes, I remember you.  More importantly, I remember being you.

    At twenty, you believe identity is something you must discover once and then defend forever. What age eventually teaches is that the self is not a monument. It is weather. It shifts continuously—sometimes gently, sometimes violently—and survives through adaptation rather than permanence.

    You ask whether I still feel connected to you. I do, though not in the simple way you imagine. You are not buried beneath the years; you are woven through them. I still recognize your idealism, your sensitivity, your fear of being forgotten or diminished by time. Those things remain, though softened now by experience.

    And yes, there are moments when I look into the mirror and feel startled. Aging happens so gradually that you scarcely notice it while living through it, and then suddenly you catch sight of your mother’s face in your own reflection, or your grandmother’s hands resting in your lap.

    The body changes first in obvious ways. The knees complain. The spine stiffens. Sleep becomes lighter. Faces hollow and soften simultaneously. But the deeper transformation  is stranger: the realization that inside the aging body, consciousness remains largely untouched by chronology.

    I am eighty-nine, yet some mornings I still feel eighteen until I stand up.  That is one of the great hidden truths of aging: the young self never fully leaves. She simply becomes surrounded by additional selves gathered over a lifetime.

    You asked whether old photographs comfort or ache. The answer is both.  Photographs become less about appearance and more about vanished worlds. You stop focusing on how pretty you once were and begin noticing who is no longer standing beside you. An old picture can break your heart because time is visible there in a way it never feels while you are living it.

    But keep the photographs anyway.  Keep all of them.  One day you will treasure the evidence that ordinary afternoons once existed at all.

    You fear that aging may mean becoming less. I understand that fear because our culture speaks of aging almost entirely in the language of loss. Loss of beauty. Loss of relevance. Loss of strength. Loss of possibility.

    And yes, there are losses. I will not lie to you about that.  You will lose people you cannot imagine living without.  You will lose certain ambitions.  You will lose versions of your body that once felt effortless.  But aging is not merely subtraction.  It is also refinement.

    At twenty, you experience life intensely because everything is new. At ninety, you experience life intensely because you finally understand how temporary everything always was. A simple morning light across the kitchen table can move you to tears. An ordinary conversation can feel sacred.  Youth burns brightly, but age glows.

    You asked whether I still laugh easily. I do—more easily, in fact. Young people often believe seriousness gives life meaning, but age teaches the opposite. Much of survival depends upon learning when to laugh at yourself gently.

    And wonder? Yes, wonder remains too. Perhaps even more so. The older you become, the more miraculous existence itself begins to feel. Not because life becomes easier, but because you finally understand how improbable it always was.

    As for whether your life mattered: meaning does not arrive as a grand declaration. It accumulates quietly through small acts of love, attention, endurance, forgiveness, and presence. A meaningful life rarely feels monumental from the inside.

    You hoped I would be grateful for you.  I am.

    I am grateful for your impatience, your hunger for understanding, your belief that life must contain something beautiful and true. You carried us forward. Without your courage to begin, I would never have arrived here with so much tenderness intact.

    So let me leave you with this:

    Do not spend your youth mourning age in advance. Become fully each version of yourself when it arrives.

    The frightened girl, the ambitious woman, the joyful grandmother—they all belong to you. None of them are failures of the others. They are simply the many forms a human life must take in order to become complete.

    Love and blessings,
    Myself Now

  • The True Love of My Life

    Image:Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem
    Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem

    The True Love of My Life

    —after “Thou Art My Life”

    O Divine Belovèd, Thou art the true love of my life,
    The sweetness that lets me taste joy.

    Thy name on my tongue is sweeter
    Than a thousand well-filled honeycombs.

    Let them know Thee.
    Let them all know Thee.

    In the haven of love, I seek Thee
    Again and again, and repeat
    Again and again:  Thou art the true Love of my life,
    The sweetness that lets me taste joy.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “If those I loved were lost”

    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “If those I loved were lost”

    The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “If those I loved were lost” is emphasizing the value she places on her loved ones.  She likens their importance to significant events from the community level to the world stage, where bells ring to announce important happenings.

    Introduction and Text of “If those I loved were lost” 

    Emily Dickinson’s “If those I loved were lost” features two stanzas, each with two movements.  The speaker’s musing targets how the speaker would react to both losing and finding loved ones.  Her emotions and behaviors signal the importance of those loved ones to her.  The value she places on these individuals can only be suggested and not directly stated.

    If those I loved were lost 

    If those I loved were lost
    The Crier’s voice would tell me –
    If those I loved were found
    The bells of Ghent would ring –

    Did those I loved repose
    The Daisy would impel me.
    Philip – when bewildered
    Bore his riddle in!

    Commentary on “If those I loved were lost” 

    This highly allusive poem takes readers from life in a small village to the world stage, on which famous bells herald momentous events.  The allusions emphasize the significance the speaker places on those to whom she refers. 

    First Movement:   An Important Announcement 

    If those I loved were lost
    The Crier’s voice would tell me –

    The speaker is speculating about her emotions and behaviors after having lost a loved one, and then she adds a speculative note about those emotions and behavior as she suddenly has found a beloved. 

    The first movement finds the speaker claiming that the loss of a loved one would herald a “Crier” to announce the event.  In earlier times, a “town crier” was employed to spread local news events on the streets of small villages.   

    The town crier’s position was noticeable because of his manner and elaborate dress:  such a crier might be adorned in bright colors, a coat of red and gold with white pants, a three-cornered hat (tricon), and black boots.  He usually carried a bell that he would ring to attract attention of the citizens.  He often would begin his announcement with the cry, “Oyez!  Oyez!  Oyez!” 

    By making this simple claim that a “crier” would be letting her know about the loss of a loved one, the speaker is elevating the importance of everyone she loves to the status of a noted official or famous name in the community.  

    Second Movement:  The Significance of Loss 

    If those I loved were found
    The bells of Ghent would ring – 

    The speaker then alludes to the famous Ghent Belfry, whose construction began in 1313 with ringing bells to announce religious events, later employed to signal other important occurrences.    

    The inscription on the belfry tower indicates the historical and legendary important of the construction:   “My name is Roland. When I toll there is fire. /  When I ring there is victory in the land.” 

    Dickinson was likely aware of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s lines, “Till the bell of Ghent responded o’er lagoon and dike of sand, I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!”   

    Because the famous bells ring to herald important events, the speaker assigns great importance to the fact that she has found a loved one.  Thus the speaker has molded her losing and finding those she loves into great and momentous events. 

    Third Movement:  Daisy and Death 

    Did those I loved repose
    The Daisy would impel me.

    The speaker then speculates about her reaction to the death of her loved ones.  She refers to the flower, the “Daisy,” stating that it would “impel her.”  The employment of the Daisy is likely prompted by the flower’s association with growing on graves as in Keats’ reference in the following excerpt from one of his letter to a friend:  

    I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave – thank God for the quiet grave – O! I can feel the cold earth upon me – the daisies growing over me – O for this quiet – it will be my first. 

    And, too, there is the old expression, “pushing up daisies,” of which Dickinson was, no doubt, aware.  The flower would drive her to some of kind reaction which she fails to describe but only hints at.  Although she simply suggests her reaction, she leaves a significant clue in the next movement, as she alludes again to Ghent, this time the leader named Philip.

    Fourth Movement:  The Riddle of Loss

    Philip – when bewildered
    Bore his riddle in!

    The speaker is then alluding to Philip van Artevelde (1340–82), who was a popular Flemish leader. He led a successful battle against the count of Flanders, but later met defeat and death.  The Dickinson household library contained a book with a play that featured Philip’s last words before dying, “What have I done?  Why such a death?  Why thus?”

    Thus the speaker makes it known that she would have many questions as she struggles with the death of a loved one.  She would, like Philip, be overcome, having to bear such a “riddle.” 

    The speaker has shown how important and necessary her loved ones are to her, and she has also demonstrated that their loss would be devastating, and she has done all this through suggestions and hints, without any direct statement of pain and anguish.  All of the sorrow is merely suggested by the high level of importance she is assigning to her loved ones.  

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 36 “When we met first and loved, I did not build”

    Image: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning – 1852. Portraits painted by Thomas Buchanan Read

    Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 36 “When we met first and loved, I did not build”

    In sonnet 36 “When we met first and loved,” the speaker reveals her inability to fully accept the love relationship that is growing with her belovèd suitor.  She is constantly trying to prevent her heart from being broken, in case the relationship fails to reach it full potential.

    Introduction and Text of Sonnet 36 “When we met first and loved, I did not build”

    Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet 36 “When we met first and loved, I did not build”  from Sonnets from the Portuguese reveals the speaker’s apprehension that the first moments of a new love might prove to be illusive; thus, she refuses to believe unwaveringly in the possibility that love had arrived.

    This speaker always remains aware that she must protect her heart from disaster.  And at this point in their relationship, she knows that she could suffer a terrible broken heart if the relationship fails to flourish.

    Sonnet 36 “When we met first and loved, I did not build”

    When we met first and loved, I did not build
    Upon the event with marble. Could it mean
    To last, a love set pendulous between
    Sorrow and sorrow? Nay, I rather thrilled,
    Distrusting every light that seemed to gild
    The onward path, and feared to overlean
    A finger even. And, though I have grown serene
    And strong since then, I think that God has willed
    A still renewable fear … O love, O troth …
    Lest these enclaspèd hands should never hold,
    This mutual kiss drop down between us both
    As an unowned thing, once the lips being cold.
    And Love, be false! if he, to keep one oath,
    Must lose one joy, by his life’s star foretold.

    Commentary on Sonnet 36 “When we met first and loved, I did not build”

    The speaker again is demonstrating her inability to fully accept the love relationship that is growing with her belovèd suitor.  The speaker must protect her poor heart, which could so easily be shattered if the love relationship should end.

    First Quatrain:  Love between Sorrow

    When we met first and loved, I did not build
    Upon the event with marble. Could it mean
    To last, a love set pendulous between
    Sorrow and sorrow? Nay, I rather thrilled,

    The speaker says that when she and her belovèd first met and love began to flower, she did not readily accept that the feelings were genuine; she refused to imagine that such a relationship could become solid.  She must continue to guard her heart by holding in abeyance only the possibility of a lasting love relationship.

    She questions whether love could endure for her because of the many sorrows she has experienced.  She, instead, continued to think of only the potential of love, existing between one sorrow after the next sorrow.  She felt more confident that sorrow would remain in the offing than that love would come to rescue her out of her melancholy.

    The reader is by now quite familiar with the sadness, pain, and grief this speaker has suffered in her life and that she continues to suffer these maladies.   For this melancholy speaker to accept the balm of love remains very difficult. Her doubts and fears continue to remain more real to her than these new, most cherished feelings of love and affection.

    Second Quatrain:   Continuing Fear

    Distrusting every light that seemed to gild
    The onward path, and feared to overlean
    A finger even. And, though I have grown serene
    And strong since then, I think that God has willed

    Answering her own question in the negative, the speaker asserts that she preferred to remain skeptical of the hints that seemed to suggest a progression toward the loving relationship.   

    The speaker’s fears continue to prompt her  to hold back her heart because she continued to remains afraid that if she gave way at even a “finger[’s]” length, she would regret the loss so much that she would suffer even more than she already had done.

    Quite uncharacteristically, the speaker admits that since that early time at the very beginning of this love relationship, she has, indeed, “grown serene / And strong.”   Such an admission is difficult for the  personality of this troubled speaker, but she does remain aware that she must somehow come to terms with her evolving growth.

    First Tercet:   Skepticism for Protection

    A still renewable fear … O love, O troth …
    Lest these enclaspèd hands should never hold,
    This mutual kiss drop down between us both

    Still, even though this wary speaker is cognizant of her growth in terms of serenity and strength, she believes that God has instilled in her the ability to remain somewhat skeptical in order to protect herself from certain torture at having been wrong about the relationship.

    This speaker knows that if, “these enclaspèd hands should never hold,” she would be devastated if she had not protected her heart by retaining those doubts.   If the “mutual kiss” should “drop between us both,” this ever-thinking speaker is sure her life would be filled with even more grief and sorrow.

    Second Tercet:  Wrenching Feeling

    As an unowned thing, once the lips being cold.
    And Love, be false! if he, to keep one oath,
    Must lose one joy, by his life’s star foretold.

    The speaker then spreads across the border of the tercets the wrenching feeling that her words are causing her.   This melancholy speaker feels that she must give utterance to these thoughts, but she knows that they will cause pain, even to her belovèd. But if, “Love, be false,” then she simply must acknowledge that possibility for both their sakes.

    The speaker anticipates the likelihood that she might have to “lose one joy” which may already be written in her stars, and not knowing which joy that might be, she must remain watchful that it might be the very love she is striving so mightily to protect.