Ozymandias by Percy Shelley

The poem in this post is Ozymandias by Percy Shelley. It was written in 1817.

This is a poem that appears to be about and ancient Egyptian pharaoh, but is actually a criticism of those in power in his own time (19th Century).

There is a great video about Shelley's life here: Percy Shelley

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Now you can watch my short video about the poem here:Ozymandias

As Imperceptibly As Grief by Emily Dickinson

For me, this has been the most challenging poem in the anthology. Not only have I had to think carefully about how to teach it, but I've had many different thoughts about the meaning.

I think it is a poem that is difficult to assign one meaning to and looking at other people's thoughts on the poem seems to confirm this idea.

However, there are two clear ideas in the poem.

1. Time passes and you don't always notice it.
2. Grief/ sadness gets easier to deal with and eventually ends.

There is an excellent look at her life and poems: Emily Dickinson's Life and Poems

As Imperceptibly as Grief

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away -
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy -
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon -
The Dusk drew earlier in -
The Morning foreign shone - 
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest who would be gone -
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

By Emily Dickinson

Now look at my brief video revising the poem: As Imperceptibly As Grief

To Autumn by John Keats

This is my favourite poem in our anthology. The poem has so many layers of meaning that I find it fascinating to study as well as seeing it as a work of genius.

Keats died very young - even by the standards of hid era - aged just 25. He wrote just three short books of poems, but they are some of the greatest works in English.

Watch this short biography of Keats' life. John Keats

Keats didn't just write the ode, 'To Autumn', in 1891, he wrote a series of other odes which are all worth reading as well.

Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode on Indolence
Ode on Melancholy
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode to Psyche

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

    Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

    With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

    And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

       To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

    With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

       For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

    Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

    Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

    Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

       Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

    Steady thy laden head across a brook;

    Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

       Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

 Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

    Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

    And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

    Among the river sallows, borne aloft

       Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

    Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

    The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

       And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Now watch my brief video to remind yourself about this poem. To Autumn

Living Space by Imtiaz Dharker

The poem for today is Living Space. This is the most optimistic poem in our anthology and is one of my favourites.

 This is one of those poems that looks relatively simple, but has so many layers of meaning that make it fascinating to read and to study.

Before you look at my video, watch this interview with Imtiaz Dharker - she is really interesting and quite inspirational. Imtiaz Dharker Interview

Living Space

There are just not enough
straight lines. That
is the problem.
Nothing is flat
or parallel. Beams
balance crookedly on supports
thrust off the vertical.
Nails clutch at open seams.
The whole structure leans dangerously
towards the miraculous.

Into this rough frame,
someone has squeezed
a living space

and even dared to place
these eggs in a wire basket,
fragile curves of white
hung out over the dark edge
of a slanted universe,
gathering the light
into themselves,
as if they were
the bright, thin walls of faith.

By Imtiaz Dharker


Now you can watch my short video here:Living Space

Excerpt from The Prelude by William Wordsworth

This poem is by one of the greatest of English poets - William Wordsworth.

There are few poets who were more influential than Wordsworth. He was one of the people who instigated the Romantic movement in Britain. In his youth, he had revolutionary ideas, although he changed his political views in later life.

Here is a brief documentary about his life, which contains some information about The Prelude: William Wordsworth

Excerpt from The Prelude

And in the frosty season, when the sun

Was set, and visible for many a mile

The cottage windows through the twilight blaz’d,,

I heeded not their summons:- happy time

It was, indeed, for all of us; to me

It was a time of rapture: clear and loud

The village clock toll’d six; I wheeled about,

Proud and exulting like an untir’d horse

That cares not for his home. - All shod with steel,

We hiss’d along the polished ice, in games

Confederate, imitative of the chace

And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn,

The pack loud bellowing, and the hunted hare.

So through the darkness and the cold we flew,

And not a voice was idle; with the din

Meanwhile, the precipices rang aloud;

The leafless trees, and every icy crag

Tinkled like iron, while the distant hills

Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars,

Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west

The orange sky of evening died away.

By William Wordsworth

My brief video about the poem is here: The Prelude by Mr M

Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney

Heaney published this poem in 1966 and, like many of his other poems, it was about the themes of nature and childhood.

Heaney went on to become one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

There is an amazing documentary about Heaney here: Seamus Heaney Documentary

Death of a Naturalist

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it. 

By Seamus Heaney

Now you can watch my short video about the poem here: Death of A Naturalist

London by William Blake

Blake's London was written in 1794. Blake is now generally considered as one of the Romantic poets as, like them, much of his writing is concerned with the injustices in society and the loss of personal freedom.

I find Blake's poetry incredibly powerful, especially knowing that Blake thought his writing could actually change the world for the better.

It seems tragic that over 220 years after Blake wrote this poem, there is still poverty and suffering on the streets of London. Maybe Blake still has a message for us to hear today.

There is a good documentary about Blake here: William Blake Biography

London

I wandered thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear:

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black’ning Church appals,
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace-walls.

But most, thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage-hearse.

By William Blake

Here is my brief video about the poem: London by William Blake