English Verse: Voice and Movement from Wyatt to Yeats, Volume 2Cambridge U.P., 1967 - 324 pages Every poet has a characteristic tone of voice, and his own rhythm. The author's chief interest is this 'sound poems make in the head', and his particular gift is to help us to hear what is going on in the individual poem, and to catch the poet's individuality. We also hear how each poet develops the forms his predecessors have used. In this way, we move from a consideration of single voices to the development of particular forms (like the couplet or blank verse) and the characteristics of whole periods. This book, then, has several uses. While verse as sound is its main concern, it can be read as an introductory history of English verse from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Since the author quotes generously, he also provides as he goes along an unhackneyed anthology in chronological order. In addition, he comments in detail on many of the poems, so that the book is a demonstration of the methods and uses of practical criticism. |
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Page 24
... play is done . Thus march we , playing , to our latest rest , Only we die in earnest , that's no jest . A few notes on the puns may be useful . Division was a technical term in music , meaning a scale passage or run : our laughter is ...
... play is done . Thus march we , playing , to our latest rest , Only we die in earnest , that's no jest . A few notes on the puns may be useful . Division was a technical term in music , meaning a scale passage or run : our laughter is ...
Page 82
... player is telling the audience what the poet bade him say , and the passage expresses Jonson's seriousness of purpose , his insistent appeal to the intelligence ... play for ill , Because you mark it not , and sit not still 82 ENGLISH VERSE.
... player is telling the audience what the poet bade him say , and the passage expresses Jonson's seriousness of purpose , his insistent appeal to the intelligence ... play for ill , Because you mark it not , and sit not still 82 ENGLISH VERSE.
Page 225
... play With insects strangers to the moiling day Creeping about each rush and grassy stem And often wishes it was one ... play but she disdains His little wounds and smiles when he complains And as he stoops adown in trouble sore She sees ...
... play With insects strangers to the moiling day Creeping about each rush and grassy stem And often wishes it was one ... play but she disdains His little wounds and smiles when he complains And as he stoops adown in trouble sore She sees ...
Contents
Blank Verse | 25 |
The Seventeenth Century | 58 |
The Eighteenth Century | 117 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
A. E. Housman alliteration Balaam beauty Blake blank verse Boston Evening Transcript breath called Comus couplet dark dead death Donne Donne's doth dramatic dream Dryden earth eternal eyes fall feel flowers Gorboduc GUIDERIUS hath hear heart heaven Henry Purcell heroic couplet Hopkins human imagination inscape Keats kind King lady lines living look Lord lyric man's meaning melody Milton mind Muses nature nature's never night o'er passage play pleasure poem poet poet's poetic poetry Pre-Raphaelite Prufrock quotation reader rhetoric rhyme rhythm romantic Samian wine sense Shakespeare sing sleep smile song sonnet sort soul sound speech Spenser spirit spring sprung rhythm stanza stresses sweet syllables symbol T. S. Eliot taste thee theme thine things thou thought trees truth tune turn verb voice wind words Wordsworth writing Yeats