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 “A throe upon the features”
The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “A throe upon the features” is exploring the mystery of death, presenting physical encasement departure as a passage to spiritual reunion and liberation.
Introduction and Text of “A throe upon the features”
In Emily Dickinson’s “A throe upon the features,” the speaker is contemplating the experience of death and the anguish that accompanies its consideration. Her speaker presents death as a dramatic departure from earthly existence, while suggesting that patience and spiritual understanding can transform the fear of separation into an opportunity for reunion with the Divine Reality.
The speaker initially describes the physical manifestations of death, including the contortions of the face and the hurried breath. However, she then introduces the intriguing expression “An ecstasy of parting.”
Such a notion does suggest that death involves something more than the cessation of physical life. The second stanza further develops this idea by introducing the prospect of rejoining a sacred reality that belongs to the soul’s essential nature.
A throe upon the features
A throe upon the features – A hurry in the breath – An ecstasy of parting Denominated “Death” –
An anguish at the mention Which when to patience grown, I’ve known permission given To rejoin its own.
Commentary on “A throe upon the features”
This Dickinson gem offers a fascinating view of death, presenting its outward physical manifestations alongside the event featuring an inward spiritual experience. The speaker gradually moves from physical anguish toward the inevitability of a more profound reunion.
First Stanza: The Physical Manifestations and Spiritual Possibility of Death
A throe upon the features – A hurry in the breath – An ecstasy of parting Denominated “Death” –
In the first stanza, the speaker begins by describing the physical appearance of an individual approaching death. The word “throe” suggests an intense spasm or pang, while “upon the features” directs attention to the visible contortions of the face.
The next line, “A hurry in the breath,” adds another physical manifestation of the dying process. Breathing becomes hurried and irregular, suggesting that the body’s ordinary functions are approaching their conclusion.
However, the speaker then introduces a surprising expression: “An ecstasy of parting.” Rather than describing death exclusively as an agonizing experience, she insists that departure from earthly existence involves an extraordinary release.
The word “ecstasy” introduces an entirely different dimension. It denotes an experience of intense spiritual joy, one that cannot be understood through ordinary physical sense perception.
The speaker then identifies this mysterious experience as “Death.” The capitalization emphasizes the importance of this event, while “Denominated” indicates that death is the name humanity assigns to an experience whose deeper significance remains largely mysterious.
Paramahansa Yogananda offers an intriguing parallel in his teachings about the soul’s departure from the physical body. In “Understanding Death and Loss,” the great guru explains that after the initial fear associated with death, “the soul feels a joyous sense of relief and freedom.”
That concept offers an interesting spiritual interpretation of the speaker’s “ecstasy of parting.” What appears to earthly observers as a painful departure, in fact, represents a liberation from physical limitations.
Second Stanza: Patience and Permission to Rejoin Its Own
An anguish at the mention Which when to patience grown, I’ve known permission given To rejoin its own.
The second stanza introduces the emotional consequences of contemplating death. The speaker acknowledges “An anguish at the mention,” revealing that merely discussing death can produce considerable distress.
The word “anguish” conveys a much deeper disturbance than ordinary sadness. The thought of separation, particularly from those whom one loves, can produce an almost unbearable emotional response.
However, the speaker introduces an important qualification: “Which when to patience grown.” This expression affirms that anguish need not remain in its original, distressing condition. As patience develops, the individual’s understanding of death cundergoes a transformation.
The next two lines present the most intriguing idea in the poem: “I’ve known permission given / To rejoin its own.” The speaker avers that something previously separated eventually receives permission to return to its rightful place.
The expression “its own” may seem mysterious. The speaker does not identify precisely what is being reunited or the nature of the reunion, but her deliberate vagueness can be interpreted as none other than the soul returning to its spiritual source.
To add the ideas that the speaker may also be referring to the restoration of a relationship that physical death temporarily interrupts is simply to misunderstand the gravity of the exact union to which the speaker is referring. Paramahansa Yogananda offers a closely related spiritual concept in his teachings about the immortality of the soul.
The great yogi-guru explains that the soul is not destroyed by departing the body and that death does not terminate the individual’s essential spiritual existence. His teachings therefore offer a meaningful perspective on the nature of reunion affirmed by Dickinson’s concluding lines.
In my earlier essays on Dickinson’s poems, I have discussed the speaker’s recognition that death cannot eliminate the deeper experiences of the soul. In “I measure every Grief I meet,” the speaker considers the persistence of suffering beyond physical death. That discussion offers an interesting contrast to the present poem, where the speaker introduces the act of release and reunion.
The word “permission” is particularly intriguing because it affirms that the reunion does not occur through human determination alone. Some greater authority (the Divine Reality or God) actually governs the circumstances under which separation ends.
Thus, the speaker moves from the anguish associated with contemplating death toward the reality of spiritual restoration. Patience seems to provide the necessary transformation in understanding, allowing the individual to contemplate departure without remaining imprisoned by fear.
The final expression, “To rejoin its own,” leaves readers with a tantalizing reality. The speaker does not need to explain the precise nature of the reunion: it is the soul that belongs to that spiritual realm and “its own” can only be the Blessèd Creator, the Divine, Reality, God, or Spirit..
In this little gem, Dickinson’s speaker demonstrates that death possesses a significance far beyond its outward physical manifestations. What appears to be an ending actually represents a return to the spiritual realm of existence that remains eternally one’s own.
Combating the Rain: A Suite of Five Fractured Poems
“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” —W. Somerset Maugham
I. They Dream Spring
They dream spring Under slow, gray clouds Where the lies They tell themselves Are as wet And transparent As the rain
Where all she knows About him Is hanging From the plants She kept alive While he Was away
Too bad he goes Before strawberry season Before planting Tomatoes, cucumbers And cabbages
II. Her Words
If her words could move like the wind, They would form his face in the clouds. They would hang in the tops of the trees, Gently hovering a nest Where a mother bird sits on eggs The color of his eyes.
III. Anticipation of the Vernal Equinox
Baby will not kick her walls again Empty womb forever In a house that will not rock And groan with the new born Empty breasts not needed No new tiny lips to suck out milk Two babies came made her body Made her house ready for babies Empty tubes cut & burned Baby she is ready for Comes each month As far as the scar
IV. The Break
The zipper at the back of her neck Catches hairs That break in sharp snaps— Like his words As he jumped over the couch spitting out: ‘it’s your fucking fault’—
She knows it’s her fucking fault. If his spit could put out The fire in her head Her eyes would spew him A smoky thanks And her excuses would fall at his feet Humble ashes.
V. Between Slices of Bread
His tongue cuts Slices of meat From the hearts And livers Of those Who would love him
From between his teeth He picks pieces of flesh That pours from each victim— A stuck hog
Our affection may bloom some future day For now we divert our eyes from what flowed Between our rough clods—it may find its way
We felt fires that fantasies cause to sway We watched their dying embers that still glowed Our affection may bloom some future day
I knew the spark that we could not betray We sensed an ache within the words we slowed Between our rough clods—it may find its way
Fairies may still come to lure fate away We will not blame what time has thus bestowed Our affection may bloom some future day
We talked of storms that erode hills of clay How ancient tides can carve the stones they load Between our rough clods—it may find its way
So we now go from what our hearts would say And allow love from past some new abode Our affection may bloom some future day Between our rough clods—it may find its way
They transcend flesh, your bones without a fire Pink’s deep blush stains beneath your skin’s decay Time’s grace will starve your marrow of desire
Fat-necked and dumb, you swagger and conspire Your spine bent twisted from the truth’s right stay They transcend flesh, your bones without a fire
Greed clicks your knuckles, limbs squinch up in ire Hips balloon and sway in worldly dismay Time’s grace will starve your marrow of desire
Your lies float like feathers whispering mire You seek black sand where you can stand and bray They transcend flesh, your bones without a fire
Your belly boasts its burden to the pyre Your brain sulks as old hungers try to play Time’s grace will starve your marrow of desire
You try to laugh but just grow thick and tire Your dreary ear turns heaven’s chimes away They transcend flesh, your bones without a fire Time’s grace will starve your marrow of desire
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s short poem “Days” has been the target of much critical attention, which focuses on the ambiguity in the employment of the term “hypocritic.”
Introduction and Text of “Days”
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Days” displays eleven lines, an American Innovative Near-Sonnet. Near-Sonnets, also known as “curtal sonnet,” as coined by Father Gerard Manley Hopkins, allow for more intensity than the traditional sonnet, as they continue to reveal the beauty of the traditional form.
Emerson’s “Days” has garnered its share of ink from critics and scholars, who opine about the use of the term “hypocritic” in the first line “Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days.”
Some argue that the term be thought of as “deceivers” while others assert that hypocritic interprets as”actors.” The extended literary device in the poem is personification; therefore, both “actors” and “deceivers” work meaningfully.
Days
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
Commentary on “Days”
Emerson’s short poem features a personification of “Days,” the common label for the time period of 24 hours. His speaker wishes to castigate himself and others for wasting their time on foolishness, when they could be employing their efforts in worthy causes.
First Movement: The Days Move On
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
The speaker is observing that the march of days looks like a long line of women, colorfully labeled “barefoot dervishes.” These colorful ladies are “marching single” endlessly as they bring various items and events to the humans, experiencing their allotment of time.
The speaker asserts that what the “Daughters of Time” fetch each individual depends upon the human mind that becomes a receiving container. For some, the daughters bring precious stones but to others they bring only bundles of sticks.
Second Movement: Various Gifts
To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
Time brings to each individual heart and mind only that which it needs or perhaps anticipates. The “sky,” meanwhile, holds all that exists, as each day fetches those various “gifts” to mankind.
Third Movement: Confusion of Guilt
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples
The speaker confesses that he too had merely been watching the passage of times/days, while not employing his allotment of time/days for the best purposes. He has permitted his garden to become entwined in vines and branches. He has become negligent of his “morning wishes.” He has also merely settled for taking a few pieces of fruit and “herbs.”
Fourth Movement: The Disdainful Day
and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
Because of the speaker’s complacent observance, the day has become a bit vexed because the speaker has not attempted to procure as much out of his valuable allotment of time/days as he should have done. The day as a “daughter of time” had thus become dismayed by the heedless human being who should have known better and thus behaved more enthusiastically.
The Use of Ambiguity
The resonating value of poetic language sometimes permits words to work with many layers of meaning. The word “hypocritic” resonates with two meanings: deceivers and actors.
The words are not opposites, and they are not mutually exclusive. Actors are essentially “deceivers” because they perform in rôles that represent persons or beings other than who the actors are. In Emerson’s “Days,” the impact of the poem depends greatly upon the experience of each reader.
A human mind has conceived of the personification of time as “daughters,” and, therefore, it is human perception that perceives the meaning of “deceiver” vs “actor.”
The poem’s speaker, offering his personal view after watching these “Daughters of Time,” has decided that these daughters are “hypocritic Days.” He thus demonstrates that he has discovered something valuable and profound from the “daughters”—these personified days.
Even though his learning experience may have lasted his entire lifetime, he is revealing that he now comprehends that each day is offering each individual human being what he needs or wants, all after “his own will.”
The speaker then reveals his understanding so that his fellow beings may benefit from his learning. He understands that those “days” serve as actors, and so he has placed them in a specific rôle as personified days, that is, “daughters.” They also behave as “barefoot dervishes,” while they march in that limitless parade.
In their rôles as actors, the daughter-days appear to play no part in hypocrisy, but then the human mind can reason that if the human being were to choose the valuable as easily as the valueless, then why did those days not influence one to move in the proper direction? Clearly, such a thought indicates that some deception might be part of the equation.
Therefore, the human mind can easily interpret the meaning of “hypocritic” to suggest that those “days” are behaving as both actor and deceiver. The human mind can perceive the actions of the “daughters of Time” and be able to decide their true identify as well as purpose of those “dervishes” who continue to march in that long parade.
As time flows by, the human mind that has become a keen observer becomes aware of itself as holding both ideas of acting and deceiving. It is obviously the human mind that has conceived of and named each action. It is, also, the human mind that has decided that it possesses the ability to share experiences, even as those deceiving “actors” continue to move on, one day at time.
The ExplicatorandESQDebate
In the November 1945 volume 4 issue 2 of The Explicator, the prestigious publication, dedicated only to short explications, the editors elucidated their reasons for interpreting the term “hypocritic” in the first line of Emerson’s “Days” as meaning “deceivers.”
Five months later, Joseph Jones, in the April 1946 issue of The Explicator, suggested that the term should be interpreted as “actors.” One year later in the April 1947 issue, Edward G. Fletcher brought the argument back to “deceivers. After almost two decades, James E. White had moved back to “actors” as he argued his ideas in the 1963 issue of the now defunct Emerson Society Quarterly.
Part of my article here Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Days” appeared in the Fall 1986 issue of The Explicator. I argued that the meaning of the term is ambiguous and can be interpreted to support both meanings —”actors” and deceivers.”
Image: Robert Graves – National Portrait Gallery, London
Robert Graves’ “Not Dead”
The speaker in Robert Graves’ elegy “Not Dead” remembers his son who died in war; his elegiac tribute resurrects the young man as a spiritual reality.
Introduction and Text of “Not Dead”
Actually, the speaker in Robert Graves’ “Not Dead” does more than just remember because in his act of dramatizing the son’s spiritual qualities, he renders the young man’s presence as something quite tangible.
The elegy plays out in a curtal sonnet, a form created by Father Gerard Manley Hopkins. The sonnet may be considered innovative because the rime-scheme—aabccb cbbdd—differs from the traditional abcabc dcbdc or abcabc dbcdc.
Not Dead
Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain, I know that David’s with me here again. All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. Caressingly I stroke Rough bark of the friendly oak. A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his. Turf burns with pleasant smoke; I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses. All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. Over the whole wood in a little while Breaks his slow smile.
Commentary on “Not Dead”
The speaker in Graves’ “Not Dead” is remembering his son who died in war, but this particular remembering also dramatizes the resurrection of the young man as a spiritual reality.
First Movement: Walking to Clear the Mind
Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain, I know that David’s with me here again. All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. Caressingly I stroke
In the opening line of Robert Graves’ “Not Dead,” the speaker locates himself in a wood, “Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain.” He has gone for a simple walk to clear his mind to allow himself to mourn his loss.
However, instead of mourning the loss of his son, he transforms that loss into a spiritual reality, asserting, “I know that David’s with me here again.” The spiritual presence of the son made itself known to the father, as the father walks through the woods. The calmness of the natural setting has rendered the speaker capable of sensing the spiritual level of being.
Instead of dramatizing the physical absence of his son, the speaker begins to muse on the spiritual reality of the son’s presence. The speaker avers that his son, David, influences the universe in a positive manner:”All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.”
He is insisting that David “is”—not “was,” as might be expected in remarking about the deceased. The importance of that line is so strong that it is later repeated intact. The speaker’s sense of his son’s essence remains with him.
Second Movement: The Ethereal Speaker
Rough bark of the friendly oak. A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his. Turf burns with pleasant smoke; I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses.
In a way of supporting his astounding claim that David is, indeed, with him again, and that David “is,” the speaker suggests that the qualities he finds in nature, in fact, resurrect the qualities of his son. The speaker lovingly touches the “[r]ough bark of the friendly oak.” The oak is “friendly,” suggesting the same familial and familiar relationship he enjoyed with his son.
The speaker “caressingly” “strokes” the bark; the act of listening to and perhaps discussing ideas with his son is brought back to his mind by this simple natural act of touching the bark of a tree.
Then the speaker hears the “bubbling” of a brook and avers that that sound is David’s voice. He continues finding his son in the pleasant odor of the burning turf, in the sound of a bird melody and in the beauty of the primroses.
Third Movement: Summary of a Life
All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. Over the whole wood in a little while Breaks his slow smile.
Then the speaker repeats the important line that describes his son: “All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.” This line offers the summation of the life of the deceased, and it serves as a signifier for the speaker as he dramatizes David’s qualities in order to resurrect the spirit of his son.
The final two lines—”Over the whole wood in a little while / Breaks his slow smile—reveal the success of the speaker’s dramatic attempts to summon his son’s spirit from the physical grave.
The speaker can sense David’s smile in the “whole wood,” and the speaker’s mourning is transcended by the “simple, happy, strong” qualities that were and, more importantly, are the hallmark of his son as a soul.
The speaker will still miss the physical presence of his son, but the son’s soul qualities will live on in the resurrection and drama of this speaker/poet’s creation. The speaker comes to realize that the soul is permanent, even though the body is not.
Born in Wimbledon, a wealthy suburb of London, in 1895, Robert Graves [1] enjoyed a long career as a poet, biographer, novelist, translator, classical scholar, and mythographer, before dying in Majorca in 1985.
Robert Graves was twice married, producing four children in each marriage. The poem “Not Dead” grows out of the war death of his son, David. Between marriages, Graves lived with the American poet, Laura Riding (aka Laura Riding Jackson and Laura Riding Gottschalk, née Reichenthal), who is associated with the Fugitive Movement (See “The Fugitive-Agrarian Movement in Poetry.”
Graves’ dalliance with Riding provides his biography with an especially dramatic episode [2]. Riding took a fancy to the husband of one of their friends, and when she could not win him, she jumped out a three-story window, fracturing her pelvis in three places.
Graves had tried to stop Riding from jumping by jumping out the second-floor window himself. They both recovered from their traumatic injuries. Graves went on to marry his second wife; Riding went on the win the Nashville Poetry Prize in 1924 [3] and marry Schuyler Jackson in 1941.
Most noted for his poetry, Grave’s produced upwards of 150 works in his prolific career. It is thought that Graves quipped [4]: “There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.”
Former U. S. poet laureate, Rita Dove, offers a simple yet powerful tribute to one of America’s heroes, Rosa Parks, who through her act of defiance by simply continuing to occupy a bus seat, became known as the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.”
Introduction with Text of “Rosa”
An Alabama seamstress named Rosa Parks [1] became known the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.” It all started with a bus ride on December 1, 1955. Rosa had just completed her day’s work at a department store, she was tired, and she headed home.
After boarding a Montgomery city bus, as was her usual routine, she sat down in the front row section of seats in the black section of the bus. It is often misreported that she was asked to leave the front of the bus, but that is not accurate. She was following the laws of segregation and seated herself in the section allowed her race.
As the bus began to fill up, white passengers began seating themselves in the black section, which was, of course, within the law. A white man wanted Rosa’s seat, and so the bus driver commanded Rosa to leave her seat in the front row of the black section and move farther back.
Rosa refused. She was tired from her day’s work. And she was tired of the ridiculous Jim Crow/Black Codes that stifled the lives of black folks. Rosa was arrested for violating the Jim Crow/Black Codes laws. From that point on, the modern Civil Rights movement had begun.
Former poet laureate of the United States (1993-95), Rita Dove, has penned a powerful tribute to Rosa Parks. So simple, yet exquisitely profound, Dove’s elegy describes the quiet yet determined woman, whose uncomplicated act of resistance changed the country’s history in a way that led to a broader fulfillment of the Founding Father’s plan of freedom for all American citizens enshrined in the U. S. Constitution.
Rosa
How she sat there, the time right inside a place so wrong it was ready.
That trim name with its dream of a bench to rest on. Her sensible coat.
Doing nothing was the doing. The clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash.
How she stood up when they bent down to retrieve her purse. That courtesy.
Rita Dove explains the genesis of and reads “Rosa”:
In 60 words, this tribute to a genuine hero offers a heartfelt observation of courage and determination that changed a nation’s consciousness.
First Stanza: She Just Sat There
How she sat there, the time right inside a place so wrong it was ready.
The speaker is musing on the actions taken by the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement” on that fateful day only decades ago—December 1, 1955. The speaker effuses on “how” Rosa “sat there” because that just-sitting-there remains the heart of Parks’ resistance: she just sat there in defiance of a humiliating, immorally legislated mandate that had kept her a second class citizen for most of her life.
Parks was tired from her day’s work, but she was even more tired of mandates that insulted her humanity on a daily basis. She was already sitting in the “colored” section at the back of the bus, and then a white patron wanted her seat.
She would have to move farther back or even stand to accommodate the injustice being leveled against her and her fellow black citizens. But on this day, she just “sat there.” Because of all that had gone on before in terms of the Jim Crow/Black Codes South, it was time to stand up and say “enough.” All the wrong that had been done to black citizens was now “ready” to be righted. Rosa stood up by just sitting there.
Second Stanza: A Sensible Woman
That trim name with its dream of a bench to rest on. Her sensible coat.
The speaker then muses on the simple name “Rosa,” who at the time just wanted a place to sit and rest from her labors. The plain, ordinary things in life should never be beyond the dreams of citizens who simply wish to exercise their civil rights, yet for Rosa and others of her skin tone, those rights had been abridged too long. Her dream was one worth purchasing with some jail time, and she her “trim name” was up to the task.
The speaker then makes the observation that Rosa was wearing a “sensible coat.” She was a sensible woman, an uncomplicated, intelligent, law-abiding woman, and now she needed to rest her weary body that had finished her day’s contribution to the work force.
Third Stanza: Doing Much by Doing Nothing
Doing nothing was the doing. The clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash.
The speaker then emphasizes the simplicity of Rosa’s action: she was doing a great service to humanity by “doing nothing.” By forcing the ludicrous law to take her to jail, she was showing how utterly bankrupt the laws had been.
The very description of what happened sounds utterly impossible: a woman arrested for failing to give up her seat on a bus and to a man— aren’t gentlemen supposed to give up their seats for ladies? In the Jim Crow South, however, black women were expected to give up their seats on the bus to both white men and women who demanded it.
With the law on their side, the authorities, including bus drivers, had for decades demanded compliance from both black men and women and had established the precedent that Rosa Parks, a black woman, would be jailed for non-compliance of that insane Jim Crow law.
The speaker of the poem has observed the calm demeanor of the photographs that began to appear in the news outlets of Rosa Parks as the cameras began to flash in her face.
The “clean flame of her gaze” burned through the lenses as they revealed her solemn yet determined demeanor as she was undergoing her ultimate humiliation at the hands of unjust legal maneuvering.
Fourth Stanza: An Act of Courtesy
How she stood up when they bent down to retrieve her purse. That courtesy.
The speaker then recalls how Rosa “stood up,” her purse falling to the floor and someone bending down to pick it up for her. That simple act of human kindness registers on the cosmos of time to show that people are simply people, face to face, and “courtesy” remains as natural as saying some simple greeting like “hello.”
After the elimination of the evil institution of slavery had been accomplished by the bloody Civil War of 1861-1865, a number of Civil Rights Acts had still not been efficacious in restoring full citizenship to America’s black population.
The Jim Crow/Black Codes South had continued to undermine the rights of its black citizens. The straightforward, uncomplicated act of defiance took place at a time when society was finally ready to right wrongs that it had lived with for a century.
Historical Significance of Dove’s Simple Tribute
Rosa Parks’ act of civil disobedience leading to her arrest led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott [2], which began after Jo Ann Robinson sent out 50,000 protest pamphlets, and E. D. Nixon, a labor leader called a meeting of black leaders.
At this meeting, those leaders formed an organization that they called the “Montgomery Improvement Association.” The MIA called for a bus boycott and began negotiation with the bus company to end the segregated sections on the buses.
Despite losing around 40,000 fares daily because of the boycott, the bus company stubbornly tried to keep its Jim Crow laws in effect. But then almost a year later, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled those segregation laws unconstitutional, and the bus company finally reluctantly relented and complied.
The boycott resulted in the rise of the modern Civil Right Movement with Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), as the charismatic and most effective leader.
The final result was the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965, which guaranteed the American black population would finally be recognized as true citizens of their country.
Dove’s uncomplicated, straightforward, 60-word poem, very appropriately offers a clear glimpse at the uncomplicated act of defiance of the woman, who by just sitting there, helped roll out the most significant and efficacious civil rights acts the United States of America had ever experienced. Such a tribute remains a remarkable achievement by the accomplished poet, Rita Dove.
Sources
[1] Editors. “Biography.” The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. Accessed October 13, 2026. [2] Curators. “Montgomery Bus Boycott.” U.S. Department of the Interior: National Park Service. Accessed October 13, 2026.
Video: Rita Dove, “On the Bus with Rosa Parks,” interview:
1 Madame Roulin’s pudgy body fills up the chair. She’s a short-waisted dump of a woman, her hair scraped back tight away from her eyes, her eyes peer two blanks downward, her mouth matches the empty look of the eyes but adds a sour touch with those pursed lips.
The happy flowers on the wallpapered background contrast with her face. Her cold countenance makes me shudder for the pauvr’enfant in her care, she rocks the cradle with a rope.
2 This is her moment to muse about those early days in the cafes, when the soldiers and their women preened and crowed, and the hookers with their painted faces stole tips from the waitresses and then her man took her for a virgin and after little Marie died, and after he cried and went back to sea, she settled down with a cradle and a rope to keep house for other people and is well fed.
Image: T. S. Eliot – National Portrait Gallery, London
Life Sketch of T. S. Eliotand Poem Commentaries
T. S. Eliot remains one of the twentieth century’s most influential poets and critics. Born in the USA, he later became a British citizen, and he influenced modernist literature through his poetic innovations, cultural critiques, and dedication to forms.
Early Life and Education
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prosperous and intellectually active family [1]. His father, Henry Ware Eliot, was a successful businessman, and his mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns Eliot, was a teacher and poet.
Early in life Eliot was physically frail and exhibited introspective leanings. A hernia limited his childhood mobility; thus he was motivated to dive deeply into literature [2]. Early on, he developed a strong affection for classic and French literature, especially Dante and Baudelaire.
Eliot attended Smith Academy in St. Louis and later Milton Academy in Massachusetts. At Harvard University, he majored in philosophy and literature, [3] studying under major literary figures including Irving Babbitt and George Santayana. He earned his B.A. and M.A. at Harvard.
As Eliot’s interest in philosophy deepened, he began to study Sanskrit and Eastern philosophy; these studies helped to provide the spiritual atmosphere around his poetry. He also became acquainted with the works of F. H. Bradley, whose ideas on metaphysics impressed him strongly.
In 1910, Eliot traveled to Paris to study at the Sorbonne under Henri Bergson and others. He returned to Harvard for doctoral work but left before completing his dissertation on Bradley. His intellectual journey then led him to travel to England, where he settled permanently.
Eliot’s European education and philosophical bent became the foundation upon which he built his unique style and achievement [4]. His understanding of American pragmatism and European modernism afforded him the ability to compose a type of poetry that was intellectually rigorous, culturally resonant, and spiritually honest.
Accomplishments and Awards
T. S. Eliot became a British citizen in 1927 and was awarded the Order of Merit by King George VI in 1948 [5]. That same year, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was also awarded the Dante Prize from the Dante Society of America and received honorary doctorates from prestigious universities, including Oxford, Harvard, and the University of London [6].
Eliot’s powerful impact on literature and culture has continued to extend beyond prestigious awards. As an editor at Faber & Faber, he encouraged the careers of numerous writers, including W. H. Auden and Ted Hughes [7].
Eliot’s achievement in the field of drama is still recognized today. His plays, including Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party, have earned praise from critics as well as popular success, broadening his influence into theatrical literature.
Publications
Eliot’s first major poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” was published in 1915; the subject and style of that poem began to point to a new direction in modern poetry [8]. The poem’s fragmented, stream-of-consciousness structure and dour ironic tone surprised—even shocked and startled—many readers.
Published in 1922, his monumental poem, The Waste Land, cemented him as the primary voice of modern disillusionment with the approaching spiritual dryness [9]. Edited with the input from Ezra Pound, the poem mixes myth, earlier literary pieces, and clips from foreign languages in its depiction of the fragmentation of culture.
In “Ash Wednesday” (1930) and Four Quartets (1943), Eliot’s poetic vision put on display its maturity. These later works took on a spiritual tone, influenced by his conversion to Anglicanism in 1927 [10]. Four Quartets in particular reveals his meditative musings on time, historical progression, and soul redemption.
In addition to poetry, Eliot became a productive essayist. His work on criticism, The Sacred Wood (1920), introduced and elucidated his literary concept of the “objective correlative,” which continued to influence literary studies for decades [11].
Eliot also edited The Criterion, a ground-breaking literary journal that became a major source for modernist literature and critical thought between 1922 and 1939. His editorial prowess influenced literary conversations in Europe as well as in the USA.
Special Interests/Controversies
Eliot’s spiritual journey, resulting in his 1927 conversion to Anglo-Catholicism [12], shaped his personal life as well as his poetic perspective. He felt that Anglicanism was a stabilizing force amid decay and modern unruliness. Eliot’s social criticism, especially in Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), promoted tradition and Christian values [13].
An area of controversy [14] involves Eliot’s early poetic depictions of Jewish characters. Passages from “Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar” and other poems have led some scholars to accuse the poet of anti-Semitic sentiment.
Eliot later defended himself from such accusations, and his other defenders have argued that his work simply reflected the cultural climate of his time rather than any personal bigotry. Nevertheless, that distraction continues in certain academic enclaves, particularly those indoctrinated in political correctness and identity politics.
Another controversial issue surrounds Eliot’s difficult marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood. Their marriage was scarred by emotional instability and illness and ended with her being institutionalized in Northumberland House [15], where in 1947 she died. Although Eliot never divorced Vivienne, he did later confess that the marriage had been a disaster.
In 1957, Eliot married Valerie Fletcher, who had been his secretary. Unlike Eliot’s first marriage, his life with Valerie proved very happy, leading to a quiet contentment for the couple. After Eliot’s death in 1965, Valerie served as curator of his literary legacy. She edited his works and letters, helping to preserve his literary reputation [16].
She approved the adaptation of “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” into the musical “Cats,” which proved a financial success for the Eliot estate as well as all involved in that Broadway project.
Despite—or maybe even because of—such personal trials and tribulations, Eliot’s work continued to address questions of identity, morality, and spiritual awakening. While the depth of his intellectual capacity remained somewhat hidden, it seemed to be veiling his personal anguish, and critics have continued to explore that issue.
Illness and Death
In later years, Eliot’s health declined as he suffered from emphysema and other health complications [17]. He died in London on January 4, 1965, at the age of seventy-six. Eliot’s ashes are interred at St. Michael’s Church in East Coker [18], the Somerset village from which his ancestors had emigrated to the USA.
Legacy
T. S. Eliot’s influence is still felt in the literary genres of poetry, criticism, and the theater. His commingling of tradition with innovation redirected the orientation of English-language literature.
By integrating metaphysical speculation with poetic form, Eliot reconstituted modern poetry. His ability to describe cultural decay while at the same time suggest spiritual awakening affords his writings lasting importance.
His poetry continues to attract interest from scholars, critics, general readers, and other poets. In a century splattered by chaos, Eliot’s voice offered—and continue to offer—a rigorous response to the chaotic leanings of modernity and life in general. Eliot remains an essential figure for study in the area of twentieth-century literary studies.
Sources
Most of the sources, which I originally used in print form, are now conveniently offered at Internet Archive.
From 1922–1928, poet William Butler Yeats served in the senate of the newly formed Irish Free State. In “Among School Children,” the poet creates a speaker who dramatizes an event from the poet/senator’s official duties—visiting a classroom of children at an Irish school.
Introduction with Text of “Among School Children”
While William Butler Yeats is without a doubt a great poet, who delved deeply into truth and tried to understand historical events, he was not always successful in understanding certain principles.
He set out on a journey of study that led him to Eastern philosophical and religious thought, but he did not quite understand the Eastern concepts that he attempted to exploit in many of his poems.
Although not among his works that directly broach the Eastern philosophical concepts, “Among School Children” is one of Yeats’ most anthologized poems. It features numerous allusions to ancient Greek mythology and philosophy. Yeats was always a thinker, even if not always a clear thinking one.
Among School Children
I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and history, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way—the children’s eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
II I dream of a Ledaean body, bent Above a sinking fire, a tale that she Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event That changed some childish day to tragedy— Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent Into a sphere from youthful sympathy, Or else, to alter Plato’s parable, Into the yolk and white of the one shell.
III And thinking of that fit of grief or rage I look upon one child or t’other there And wonder if she stood so at that age— For even daughters of the swan can share Something of every paddler’s heritage— And had that colour upon cheek or hair, And thereupon my heart is driven wild: She stands before me as a living child.
IV Her present image floats into the mind— Did Quattrocento finger fashion it Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind And took a mess of shadows for its meat? And I though never of Ledaean kind Had pretty plumage once—enough of that, Better to smile on all that smile, and show There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.
V What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap Honey of generation had betrayed, And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape As recollection or the drug decide, Would think her son, did she but see that shape With sixty or more winters on its head, A compensation for the pang of his birth, Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?
VI Plato thought nature but a spume that plays Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; Solider Aristotle played the taws Upon the bottom of a king of kings; World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings What a star sang and careless Muses heard: Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
VII Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother’s reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose. And yet they too break hearts—O Presences That passion, piety or affection knows, And that all heavenly glory symbolise— O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;
VIII Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?
Reading
Commentary on “Among School Children”
William Butler Yeats served from 1922-1928 in the senate of the newly formed Irish Free State. His speaker in “Among School Children” is dramatizing what was likely an official, mandatory visit to a Catholic school.
First Stanza: An Old Man Visiting a School
I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and history, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way—the children’s eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
The speaker is visiting a Catholic school and “a kind old nun in a white hood” is escorting him through the “long schoolroom,” explaining the lessons that the pupils are studying.
They study math and music; they read and study history. They receive instruction in sewing, as they learn to be “neat in everything.” All this is accomplished in the “best modern way.”
The speaker then notices that the children are staring at him, who is a “sixty-year-old smiling public man.” Yeats was born is 1865; thus he would be 60 years old in 1925, which means that he is visiting this school in the third year of his service in the senate.
As a political man, he, of course, would be smiling, as he meets his public, even if they are only school age children.
Second Stanza: The Politics of Perversion
II I dream of a Ledaean body, bent Above a sinking fire, a tale that she Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event That changed some childish day to tragedy— Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent Into a sphere from youthful sympathy, Or else, to alter Plato’s parable, Into the yolk and white of the one shell.
The speaker has begun his narration in which he refers to himself as a “smiling public man.” As a political official his public must always see him smiling; thus, he keeps up the façade even as he meets with little children. He then veers off into a “dream” of a young girl whose copulation with the god Zeus has been considered a rape by some including the smiling man himself in his poem “Leda and the Swan.”
The speaker paints a drama of the event with the brush of a “body, bent / Above a sinking fire.” He adds into the mix the young girl telling “a tale” “of harsh reproof.” Or perhaps it was merely a “trivial event” but still it alters the child’s day from “childish” to “tragedy.”
He then implies a coupling by employing the images of “two natures blent” into which the swan’s semen and the girl’s ova blend into a version of “Plato’s parable” of “yolk and white of the one shell.”
Third Stanza: Rape Musing
III And thinking of that fit of grief or rage I look upon one child or t’other there And wonder if she stood so at that age— For even daughters of the swan can share Something of every paddler’s heritage— And had that colour upon cheek or hair, And thereupon my heart is driven wild: She stands before me as a living child.
The speaker then continues his musing about the rape of Leda by the Zeusian swan. While continuing to muse about that coupling, he is staring intently at “one child or t’other” as he wonders if this child’s countenance and behavior may resemble that of the young Leda. And as he thinks of this scenario, the speaker asserts that his “heart is driven wild,” observing this little girl standing in from of him “as a living child.”
Fourth Stanza: A Dream of Indulgence
IV Her present image floats into the mind— Did Quattrocento finger fashion it Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind And took a mess of shadows for its meat? And I though never of Ledaean kind Had pretty plumage once—enough of that, Better to smile on all that smile, and show There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.
The speaker then unveils an image of his own qualities, suggesting that they might change the little girl if she were impregnated with his spawn. He wonders how stately and beautiful such a creature would be if resulting from a grandiose Irish senator and little girl attending this Catholic school.
On the other hand, all these intrusive images might be resulting from nothing more than “a mess of shadows,” as he speculates. Then the speaker seems to be wrenched out of his dream as he claims he was “never of Ledaean kind,” though he once went about as a very handsome man indeed, with “pretty plumage”—akin to the Zeusian swan, no doubt!
But then “enough of that”—he must snap back into senator, public man persona, smile and show that he is still a “smiling public man” who resembles more a “comfortable kind of old scarecrow” than the dramatic features of the Ledaean scenario, including a Zeusian swan with fine feathers.
Fifth Stanza: Uncertain Future of Each Child
V What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap Honey of generation had betrayed, And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape As recollection or the drug decide, Would think her son, did she but see that shape With sixty or more winters on its head, A compensation for the pang of his birth, Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?
The speaker then instead of remaining that comfortable old scarecrow now continues to envision the result of copulation. He now imagines a “youthful mother” holding a baby.
He then wonders—through the gestation period and the difficulty of giving birth and then the reality of the child right there on her lap—if the young mother could possibly think of that child after it has lived for sixty or so years as a worthwhile accomplishment, that is, would the “pang of his birth” be worth it. After all, his future will always remain an “uncertainty.”
The speaker now is ruminating on his own uncertainty, as he has further delved dreamlike into the issue with these little girls—an issue that has inexplicably resulted in images of himself.
Sixth Stanza: The Prospect of Scaring a Bird
VI Plato thought nature but a spume that plays Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; Solider Aristotle played the taws Upon the bottom of a king of kings; World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings What a star sang and careless Muses heard: Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
Again the speaker inserts himself into the narrative, “old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird”—the scarecrow image again. He seems to be railing against his own aging and appearance. But he nevertheless cannot leave the notion that his own hidden nature has imposed unexpected, disturbing dreams including these innocent little girls.
Thus the disgruntled speaker then enlists “Plato” again to insert suggestive words that refer to his libido, for example, “nature but a spume,” and Aristotle playing the taws “upon the bottom of a king,” along with “golden-thighed Pythagoras,” and “fingered upon a fiddle-sick.” These terms have invaded the senator’s state of mind, rendering him contemplative of the nature of hidden drives that spring up unbidden in unlikely places and events.
Seventh Stanza: Images and Worship
VII Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother’s reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose. And yet they too break hearts—O Presences That passion, piety or affection knows, And that all heavenly glory symbolise— O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;
The speaker then draws a contrast between what a nun worships and what an ordinary mother worships. They both “worship images,” but those images are not the same. The nun worships images that are hard, harsh, and tinged with craven-spelled beings that break hearts.
Mothers, on the other hand, worship “Presences,” which inculcate passion along with piety and affection that dulls human awareness to the point that those who mock humankind are merely “self-born.”
The wisdom of the ages cannot penetrate a small school where little girls can become targets for aged men who cannot seem to control their hidden urges with which they are born and against which those mothers have no power to struggle.
Eighth Stanza: The Nature of Unity
VIII Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?
The eighth and final stanza of this poem does not rest comfortably with the first seven. It could, in fact, stand alone as its own full throated poem. It offers a melding of body and soul along with the yogic idea of the unity of knower-knowing-known.
The speaker is offering the notions that the soul need not require the body to suffer for it, that beauty need not come from despair, and that the acquisition of knowledge need not require burning the “midnight oil.”
He, thus, is implying that unity of creation is exemplified in the “chestnut tree” which features roots, leaves, blossoms, and boles, and it, therefore, remains impossible to know which part that “great rooted blossomer” actually is.
Also, when a dancer is dancing and swaying to music, and an observer looks with delight upon that dance, the rhetorical question in the final line, paradoxically asks, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” The obvious answer, of course, forces itself upon the mind that they are, in fact, united—they are the same entity as one cannot know one from the other.
Uniting the Final Stanza
While the final stanza seems to separate itself from the rest of this poem, the uniting element is that all thoughts and all events ultimately proceed out of the mind of one Creative Force.
The speaker has been visited dreamlike by mythological characters and events that he would likely never have deliberately thought to contemplate, especially as he is performing a civic duty in a public place. Thus the question: are the speaker and his thoughts the same or are they separate entities?
If they are separate then the speaker may be filled with guilt because of his thoughts about the “living” child who stood before him, causing his heart to race. One the other hand, if it is all of one fabric and all is related, his thoughts come as naturally as a dancer dancing or as a tree being the sum of its parts.
Thus readers could take away from the poem the notion that the final stanza works to place in perspective the speaker’s possible self-judgment. He can accept his thoughts as naturally occurring. Or he can self-flagellate and likely disrupt his own ability to continue doing the work he must do.
