Sunday 25th August 2024

'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'

LO: To read and analyse Keats's poem

What can you remember about My Last Duchess?

CHALLENGE:

A poet is always speaking as themselves, even when they pretend to be a character.

Do you agree with this statement?

Romantics & the Pre-Raphaelites

  • Courtly love
  • Doomed romance
  • Death & impermenance
  • The awesome beauty of the natural world

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
       Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
       And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
       So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
       And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
       With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
       Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
       Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
       And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
       And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
       And made sweet moan

I set her on my pacing steed,
       And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
       A faery’s song.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

She found me roots of relish sweet,
       And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
       ‘I love thee true’.

She took me to her Elfin grot,
       And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
       With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,
       And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
       On the cold hill side.


I saw pale kings and princes too,
       Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
       Thee hath in thrall!’

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
       With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
       On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
       Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
       And no birds sing.

Reflecting

It describes...

  • A knight, wandering in a wintery land
  • He tells a story about meeting a mysterious woman
  • He dreams of ghosts telling him to beware the 'Beautiful Woman Without Mercy'

It's about (themes)...

  • Temptation & desire
  • Appearances, the danger of beauty
  • Death and decay
  • Loss & abandonment
  • Infatuation, vulnerability

Key words/phrases...

It links to...

  • My Last Duchess
  • Romantic & pre-Raphaelite movements
  • Sonnet 116
Sunday 25th August 2024

War Photographer

LO: To consider how Carol Ann Duffy presents ideas around mass media in the poem.

Why do people watch/read the News? For what purpose?

CHALLENGE: What does voyeuristic mean? How might it apply to news media?

Civilians civilians walking through Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War

A photographer developing pictures in a darkroom 

In his dark room he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands, which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black and white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.
Sunday 25th August 2024

'Remember'

by Christina Rossetti



How would you describe the mood or attitude of Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night?

How does the knowledge that Dylan Thomas died prematurely affect your perception of the poem?

'Proserpine'

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1874)

  • Depiction of goddess Persephone: a woman doomed to spend half her life trapped in the underworld, abducted by the god of death.
  • One of the great pre-Raphaelite portraits

Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey
That chills me: and afar how far away,
The nights that shall become the days that were.

Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,
         Gone far away into the silent land;
         When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day
         You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
         Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while
         And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
         For if the darkness and corruption leave
         A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile
         Than that you should remember and be sad.
  • Opens with a command, imperative
  • Rooted in first person, but directed out to second person
  • ABBA rhyme scheme (for most of the poem!)
  • Shift or volta at "Yet if..."
  • Inversion of opening clause in final lines ("better by far you should forget...")
Sunday 25th August 2024

Comparing poems

LO: To consider how we approach Question 2, comparing two poems from the Anthology.

Re-read Do Not Go Gentle... and Poem at 39

Select three key quotations

Who is more bitter? How do you know?

Sunday 25th August 2024

Reading the Question

Q2) Compare how the poets present feelings about fathers in Poem at 39 and Do Not Go Gentle?

Start by noting down what the feelings are! This can be as simple as a single adjective for each poet.

Q2) Compare how the poets present feelings about fathers in Poem at 39 and Do Not Go Gentle? (pt1)

INTRODUCTION: Walker feels sorrow about her father. By contrast, Thomas feels a sense of anger. However, both poets are united in the fact that they are using their poems to process the loss of their fathers, and the impact that it has on them as offspring.

1st Paragraph, STRUCTURE: We see this difference in feelings most clearly in the different structural approaches of the two poems. 'Poem at 39' follows a loose and free verse structure, with lines of varying length and inconsistent rhyme. This suggests to the reader that the poet's own internal sense of organisation and structure has been damaged by the loss of her father. By contrast, 'Do Not Go Gentle...' is far more rigid in its structure, with regular rhythm and rhyme. This could suggest how the speaker is facing the death of his father with determination and certainty, rather than allowing it to affect him.

Q2) Compare how the poets present feelings about fathers in Poem at 39 and Do Not Go Gentle? (pt2)

2nd paragraph: LANGUAGE & WORD CHOICE: A similar disparity can be seen in the language and word choices of the poems. Walker chooses to use much more positive vocabulary, such as "dancing": a present tense verb that has connotations of joy and celebration, which deliberately contrasts with the theme of death and mourning. This suggest the poet wishes to retain happy and positive feelings about her father, rather than mourning. Dylan's use of much more aggressive vocabulary - such as "rage", "curse", "fierce", and "burn" - could suggest hellish imagery, linking to fears about life after death. "Burn" also suggests that the poet is being consumed by his angry feelings about his father, and that he is not in control or is processing things in the same positive way as Walker.

Q2) Compare how the poets present feelings about fathers in Poem at 39 and Do Not Go Gentle? (pt3)

3rd paragraph: COMMONALITY: Ultimately, both poems emphasise the deeply personal nature of poetic explorations of fathers. Whilst 'Poem at 39' is obviously personal from the outset, with repeated use of "I" and other fist person pronouns, 'Do Not Go Gentle' begins from a more declarative, imperative position, speaking directly at the reader. However, by the final stanza, Thomas too has shifted to using personal pronouns - "My father... bless me". It could be argued, then, that it is impossible for a poet to speak in generic, idealised terms about fathers: even those who set out to do so initially will find themselves reflecting on and addressing their own feelings towards their own fathers.