My Last Duchess - Robert Browning

In his dramatic monologue 'My Last Duchess', written in 1842, Robert Browning gives us a glimpse into the world of Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, in the sixteenth century. Ferrara is a city in what is now northern Italy. Alfonso was a real person, but the situation described in this poem is fictional. The Duke is addressing an envoy from a Count and is showing him a portrait of his former wife.

In the opening line, the Duke states plainly that the painting is of his 'last Duchess'. His comment in the second line that she is 'looking as if she were alive' gives the impression that this is a masterpiece, but as we read on we realize that there is a more sinister meaning to this phrase. The artist referred to, Fra Pandolf, is a fictional one. The Duke explains that he is the only one who shows off the portrait by drawing back the curtains that normally cover it. Everyone who sees it comments on the 'depth and passion' in the facial expression of the Duchess, and wonders what the reason for it was. The Duke refers to her expression as a 'spot of joy', and we begin to understand his attitude as he tells the envoy that he was not the cause of it: the artist was. The Duke imagines the compliments that Fra Pandolf might have paid to the Duchess as he was painting: 'Paint/Must never hope to reproduce the faint/Half-flush that dies along her throat.' It is clear that the Duke disapproved of his wife's reactions to such remarks, as he says that she was 'too soon made glad'.

The Duke's comment that 'her looks went everywhere' (line 24) suggests that he could not tolerate the fact that the Duchess delighted in beauty and appreciated gifts from others. He recalls that she considered his 'favour at her breast' no more important than the setting of the sun or a present of cherries from the orchard. He admits that she was right to thank people for gifts, but resents the fact that she did not seem value his gift to her, his 'nine-hundred-years-old name' above anything else.

On two occasions the Duke mentions the idea of stooping to explain to his former wife what it was that displeased him about her (lines 34 and 42-43). This clearly shows that he considered himself to be far above her. His language is very direct when he tells the envoy that he might have said to her 'Just this/or that in you disgusts me'. Again, in lines 39-40, the Duke refers to how the Duchess might 'let/herself be lessoned', leaving us in no doubt as to his attitude towards her. She is seen as an inferior being that would need to be taught how to behave, almost like an unruly child. He admits that she smiled when she saw him, but comments that she did the same to everyone she saw. As this went on, the Duke could no longer bear her behavior and 'gave commands;/Then all smiles stopped together' (lines 45-46). It soon becomes obvious that the Duchess did not merely cease to smile, but ceased to live: the Duke's orders had been to kill her. Once more he says 'There she stands/As if alive', and we are in no doubt this time that she is no longer alive.

The Duke's comments on his former wife are over and he asks the envoy to come downstairs with him. Only at this point is the purpose of the envoy's visit made clear: the Duke wishes to marry the Count's daughter, and the dowry is being discussed. Before they leave the upstairs room, however, the Duke draws the envoy's attention to another painting. This one, again by a fictional artist (Claus of Innsbruck) depicts Neptune 'Taming a sea-horse'. There seems to be a clear parallel here with the concept of the Duke 'taming' his last Duchess.

Browning's use of the dramatic monologue is of course ideal for emphasizing the Duke's dominant role in this situation. His is the only voice we hear, and his view of his relationship with his former wife is the one we are given. Our impression of the Duke is one of arrogance, intolerance, jealousy and cruelty. Does a wife who has looked at others and been generous with her thanks deserve to die? We are told (line 31) that on some occasions she merely blushed on meeting people when she went out for a ride; this would seem to suggest shyness and modesty. She appears to have been a lady who felt it right to express gratitude or smile in a friendly way, and we are left with the feeling that the Duke was a proud and ruthless man who over-reacted to his wife's charming manner.

Browning has composed his poem in rhyming couplets with iambic pentameter (ten syllables to a line, with stressed and unstressed syllables alternating). The use of enjambement, where one line flows into the next without a period, gives a more natural, conversational feel to the poem. Without this, the use of rhyme might have seemed a little too contrived. The poem is virtually devoid of metaphors and similes: as the Duke tells the envoy, he has no 'skill in speech'. The dashes in particular give the impression that thoughts are occurring to the Duke spontaneously as he speaks.

The use of the word 'you' throughout the poem may make us feel that the Duke is addressing us personally as we read, since it does not become clear until the final few lines that he is talking to an envoy. We should remember that at this time 'you' was actually a polite form of address, as the familiar form 'thee or 'thou' was also in use.

Browning has, in 'My Last Duchess', skilfully portrayed a domineering character, full of his own self-importance, in the Duke. It is hard to read the poem without feeling compassion for the Duchess who died at his hand, apparently for having a warm, friendly and polite manner. I am left wondering how the next Duchess was to fare, and whether there was hope for a little more tolerance.

Cold Knap Lake - Gillian Clarke

Gillian Clarke's poem 'Cold Knap Lake' centres around a childhood memory of a girl almost drowning in a lake in Glamorgan (South Wales). The poet, with her parents, 'watched a crowd' of people pull the girl out of the water. It seemed at first that they were too late: the girl's lips were blue and she 'lay for dead'. The metaphor 'dressed in water's long green silk' tells us that she was covered in weeds from the lake.

In the second stanza, Clarke describes her mother as a 'heroine' as she knelt down to resuscitate the girl. The act of kneeling, 'her red head bowed', perhaps suggests a religious act. The mother seems to have been part of the whole rescue operation, 'her wartime cotton frock soaked'. The mention of her red hair is in sharp contrast to the girl's blue lips and gives a feeling of life. Clarke was obviously struck by the idea of her mother reviving 'a stranger's child' with 'her breath'. The crowd of onlookers dare not speak but are compelled to watch, as Clarke tells us in the alliterative phrase 'drawn by the dread of it'.

The third stanza tells us that the girl began breathing; 'bleating' suggests the idea of a baby animal calling for its mother. She is now 'rosy in my mother's hands', the color assuring that she is alive. The poet's father took the girl back to her home; we are told that she came from a poor family. Rather than expressing gratitude for the fact that she survived, her parents 'thrashed' her for having got herself into such danger.

The question 'Was I there?' that opens the fourth stanza signals a change in the poem. It stands out, as it is the shortest line in the entire poem and comes at the beginning of a stanza. It suggests that the poet, now of course an adult, is unsure as to whether she actually saw the girl being beaten or whether this is something her father told her about. The following five lines of the stanza form one long question that centres around an extended metaphor where the waters of the lake represent the memory. This second question refers to the 'troubled surface' of both the mind and the water. The imagery here is rich, from the alliteration of 'surface something else/shadowy' continuing with the personification of the 'dipped fingers of willows', which links back to the fingers of the child in the water. The 'satiny mud blooms' of line 18 are reminiscent of 'water's long green silk' in the first stanza. The 'cloudiness' of the muddy water is a symbol of the haziness of our memories. The assonance in the phrase 'treading heavy webs' in the following line creates a vivid image where it is the webbed feet of swans that are disturbing the water, just as certain events provoke unclear thoughts about the past in our minds. The stanza and the extended question close with the evocative sounds of the swans' wings that 'beat and whistle'.

The poem ends with a pair of rhyming couplets:

'All lost things lie under closing water

in that lake with the poor man's daughter.'

'Lost things' suggests memories that we can no longer recall, buried deep in our minds. The final line connects back to the initial focus of the poem, the girl who almost drowned. Alliteration of 'All lost things lie ... in that lake' serves to tie together the ideas of the memory and the drowning incident. 'Water' and 'daughter' are in fact the only rhyming words that appear in successive lines in the entire poem. In the first stanza, we could consider 'lake' and 'silk' (lines 3 and 4) as a half rhyme. Stanza two has 'earth' at the end of the opening line and 'breath' at the end of the fourth line, another half rhyme. The third stanza's first line ends with 'bleating' and its last line with 'drowning'. The fourth stanza does have two rhyming words, 'there' and 'air', one at the end of its first line and the other at the end of its last line, and each is the final word in a question.

The pattern of the stanzas is an interesting one, as the first and third stanzas have four lines each and the second and fourth six lines each, with the rhyming couplets standing out at the end of the poem. The lines vary in length, with the shortest one, 'Was I there?', drawing attention at the start of the fourth stanza.

In 'Cold Knap Lake', Gillian Clarke has created a fascinating poem that seems to focus on one particular dramatic event she witnessed in her childhood but develops into an expression of how our memories of the past are a part of us that may fade or play tricks on us with the passage of time.

On My First Sonne - Ben Johnson

This outpouring of a father's grief on the death of his young son, although written almost four hundred years ago, is so poignant that we can easily identify with the poet's experience.

The fact that the poem was written several hundred years ago means that the language is not always particularly easy to understand. We know from the title that the child that has died was the poet's first-born son, so losing him must have been an especially painful experience. The first line tells us that Johnson considered him to be the child of his 'right hand', signifying the importance of the role that the child would have played had he grown older. The second line reveals the idea that the poet had enormous hopes of his son. We begin to sense how religious a person Johnson was as he expresses the notion that having such great hopes was actually a sin.

The following line continues the religious theme, as Johnson considers that his son was actually lent to him by God: 'Seven yeeres tho'wert lent to me,' and we now know that the child died at the age of seven. Johnson thus believes that all life is a gift from God, and that he had to give his child back to God at this tender age. In line 5 Johnson pours out his grief in the phrase 'O, could I loose all father', wishing that he did not have to take on the role of a father who loves his son so dearly, because it is so painful to mourn a child. However, the poet then goes on to say 'For why / Will man lament the state he should envie?' meaning that it is strange to grieve over death, as death is something to be envied, something to look forward to. He explains this feeling in line 7 when he says that death is an escape from 'worlds, and fleshes rage', an escape from the turmoil and anger that we encounter throughout our lives. Then in line 8 Johnson says that even if there are no problems in life, death is at least an escape from age, in other words old age.

'Rest in soft peace' is a gentler version of the usual 'Rest in peace' that is inscribed on tombstones, expressing very tender feelings for a young child. Johnson goes on to say that if anyone were to ask who was buried in that grave, the answer should be that it is Ben Johnson's 'best piece of poetrie': the best thing that he ever created, better in actual fact than any of his poems. Johnson concludes his poem by making a vow that whatever or whoever he loves he will not become too attached to in future: 'may never like too much', meaning that he would not find it so painful to lose another person if he remained more detached from them. At that time in history of course infant deaths were far more common than they are now, and Johnson must have feared that if he were to have more children they too might not reach adulthood.

This is a concise twelve-line poem with six pairs of rhyming couplets. The middle section, from line 5, is the most emotional one, but Johnson tries to be philosophical about his grief, seeing death as an escape from a troubled world. A calmer atmosphere pervades in the last four lines, where the poet is in positive mood, seeing his son as his finest creation. We know from the final line that he never wishes to feel such intense pain again if another family member were to die. Here is the full text of the poem:

On my first Sonne

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;

My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy;

Seven yeeres tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

Oh, I could loose all father, now. For why

Will man lament the state he should envie?

To have so soone scap'd worlds, and fleshes rage.

And, if no other miserie, yet age?

Rest in soft peace, and ask'd, say here doth lye

Ben. Johnson his best piece of poetrie.

For whose sake, hence-forth, all his vowes be such,

As what he loves may never like too much.

Ben Johnson

1616

Song of the Old Mother - W. B. Yeats

In his brief and compact ten-line poem, 'Song of the Old Mother', Yeats takes on the persona of an elderly woman who contrasts her harsh, unrelenting daily routine with that of carefree young people.

In the first four lines, the old mother tells us that she has to get up at sunrise and work until it gets dark. The word 'and' is used seven times in these initial four lines, emphasising the fact that the woman has a string of household chores to carry out, one after the other. The fact that she says 'I must scrub and bake and sweep' gives the impression that she has no choice in the matter, and probably does not enjoy these endless chores. In the fourth line the stars are personified: they 'blink and peep', perhaps to give the old woman a hint that her day's work is finally over.

Over the course of the next four lines, the old mother comments on the life of the young people around her, which is in stark contrast to her own. They have no work to do, but spend their lives in 'idleness'. They don't have to get up early like she does, staying in bed as long as they wish. All they have to worry about is whether the ribbons for their hair and their clothes match each other. It bothers these young girls if the wind merely blows a lock of hair (tress) out of place.

In the final two lines of the poem, the old mother returns to thoughts of how she has to spend her days: she repeats the word 'must', again leaving us in no doubt that her work is forced upon her. The very last line repeats the phrase 'seed of the fire' from line two, but here it appears to be used metaphorically. The fire is said to be growing weak and cold, but this in fact symbolises what is happening to the woman as her life nears its end.

There is no outpouring of emotion here, yet we can sense that the old mother feels a degree of injustice. Her own life is so hard whilst that of the young women, who surely have more energy than her, is so carefree.

Yeats uses rhyming couplets in this poem, which has a strong, regular rhythm. The repetitive routine of the old mother's day-to-day life is reflected in the regularity of the poem's rhyme and rhythm. It is a straightforward poem whose message, in the first person, comes over clearly with the use of contrast between the life of an old woman and that of the young girls she sees around her.

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow

Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;

And then I must scrub and bake and sweep

Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;

And the young lie long and dream in their bed

Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,

And their day goes over in idleness,

And they sigh if the wind lift but a tress:

While I must work because I am old,

And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

William Butler Yeats

1899