Thursday 29 September 2016
The Village Schoolmaster - Oliver Goldsmith
3.The
Village Schoolmaster
Beside yon straggling fence that skirts
the way
With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay,
There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to
rule,
The village master taught his little
school;
A man severe he was, and stern to view,
I knew him well, and every truant knew;
Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to
trace
The days disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laugh'd with
counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had
he:
Full well the busy whisper, circling
round,
Convey'd the dismal tidings when he
frown'd:
Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in
fault.
The village all declar'd how much he
knew;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher
too:
Lands he could measure, terms and tides
presage,
And e'en the story ran that he could
gauge.
In arguing too, the parson own'd his
skill,
For e'en though vanquish'd he could
argue still;
While words of learned length and
thund'ring sound
Amazed the gazing rustics rang'd around;
And still they gaz'd and still the
wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he
knew.
But past is all his fame. The very spot
Where many a time he triumph'd is
forgot.
Essay on "Spoken English and Broken
English"
- Oliver Goldsmith
About The Poet:
Oliver Goldsmith
was an Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The
Vicar of Wakefield, his pastoral poem The Deserted Village, and his plays The
Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer.
Born: November
10, 1728
Died: April 4,
1774, London, United Kingdom
Explanation of the
Poem:
The village Goldsmith
is writing about is called "Auburn": it is not real, but
an imaginary ideal one, possibly one of the villages he had observed as
a child and a young man in Ireland and England. Goldsmith, the poet, returns to
the village that he knew as vibrant and alive, and finds it deserted and
overgrown.
The setting of the
particular passage is described in the first three lines. Then Goldsmith
discusses the character of the schoolmaster himself. In his appearance, he is very severe and
stern. The reader would suppose him
humourless, except that he likes to tell jokes.
When Goldsmith says "the boding tremblers learn'd to trace/The days
disasters in his morning face," the reader comes to understand that the
schoolmaster does not mince his words. In the last two lines, he indicates that
the schoolmaster was no more. All of his
fame has gone and "the spot/Where many a time he triumph'd is forgot”
The schoolmaster
was a big presence in the village. In an age when literacy and numeracy were
powerful the people of the village, looked up to him. He seems a kind of god.
The children are fearful of him. They laugh at his jokes, even if they are not
funny. “Full well “(9-10)
The adults are equally impressed with the way
he can survey fields ("lands he could measure", 17) and work out
boundaries or the times of holy-days like Easter. He can even do more complex
calculations ("gauge", 18). This is all ironic: the school-teacher
appears knowledgeable to the "gazing rustics" (22).
The poem's jokes
are gentle. The tone of the poem is balanced
and gentleness and humour imply a frame of mind that Goldsmith sees as
important, as having a moral value in itself.
Goldsmith is
quietly mocking the schoolmaster: he is big fish in a small pond. He can
impress the villagers with his learning, just because he can read a bit of
Latin and knows how to do his sums. The parson, as the religious leader of the
village, is of course the most respected man, but the schoolmaster loves a good
argument and keeps arguing even when defeated(19-20). On the other hand, this
is a loving, endearing portrait. Here's a man who is modest and doing a good
job in a quiet and simple place: helping to spread a little literacy and
numeracy among the people of the village, helping them in doing calculations
about "terms". He is at the centre of a community - and Goldsmith is
mourning the passing away of that community, the passing away of the village
itself. That is why the lovely yellow flowers on the furze are
"unprofitably gay" (2) - there is now no-one about to enjoy their
beauty. The schoolmaster is gone long ago, with all the children of his school.
A fine community has been lost.
So, this is an
affectionate portrait of a community that is no more, and the school-house now
deserted. The affectionate portrait of the schoolmaster is a part of this world
that has passed away.
The Road not Taken - Robert Frost
The Road not Taken
-Robert Frost
Two roads diverged
in a yellow wood
And sorry I could
not travel both
And be one
traveler, long I stood
And looked down one
as far as I could
To where it bent in
the undergrowth; 5
Then took the
other, as just as fair
And having perhaps
the better claim,
Because it was
grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that,
the passing there
Had worn them
really about the same, 10
And both that
morning equally lay
In leaves no step
had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the
first for another day!
Yet knowing how way
leads on to way,
I doubted if I
should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling
this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and
ages hence:
Two roads diverged
in a wood and I—
I took the one less
traveled by,
And that has made
all the difference.
About the poet:
Robert Lee Frost
was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was
published in America. He is held in high regard for his realistic depictions of
rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. Frost was honored
frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He
was also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetical works.
Most importantly though, Frost was named Poet Laureate of Vermont on 22nd July
1961. Frost was 86 when he read his well-known poem “The Gift Outright” at the
inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on January 20, 1961. He died in
Boston two years later, on January 29, 1963, after complications arose from a
prostate surgery he had undergone recently.
About the poem:
“The Road Not Taken” was published in the year 1916 as the first poem in the
collection of poetry by Robert Frost entitled Mountain Interval. Frost spent
the years 1912 to 1915 in England. At this time, he was very close with the
writer Edward Thomas. Thomas and Frost are said to have enjoyed taking many
walks together then. After Frost returned to New Hampshire in 1915, he sent
Thomas an advance copy of “The Road Not Taken” for his perusal. The poem was
meant to be read as a gentle mocking of indecision, particularly the indecision
that Thomas had shown while walking with Frost. Frost later expressed chagrin
that most audiences took the poem more seriously than he had intended. In fact,
Thomas himself took it seriously and personally, and it provided the last straw
in Thomas’ decision to enlist in World War I. Thomas was sadly killed the
Battle of Arras two years later.
Frost’s biographer
Lawrance Thompson has also said that the speaker of the poem is “one who
habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made: belatedly but wistfully
he sighs over the attractive alternative rejected.” A case could certainly be
made for the sigh being one of satisfaction, but given the critical support of
the ‘regret’ analysis, it seems fair to say that this poem is about the human
tendency to look back and attribute blame to minor events in one’s life, or to
attribute more meaning to things than they may deserve.
The Road Not Taken Summary by Robert Frost
The poem consists
of four stanzas. Each of these stanzas is again made up of five lines. Hence,
the entire poem consists of twenty lines in total. “The Road Not Taken” is
written in the first person. Hence, we can assume that the speaker of the poem
is Frost himself.
1st stanza:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could
not travel both
And be one
traveler, long I stood
And looked down one
as far as I could
To where it bent in
the undergrowth;
In this stanza, the
poet describes how he was walking along a trail through a forest where in the
leaves of all the trees had turned yellow, and how in the course of this walk,
he came across a junction where the trail divided into two paths. Being a
single and lone traveller, the poet could not possibly travel along both of
those paths, and had to choose one path to walk down instead. However, this was
not an easy choice for Frost to make. For a long time, he stood at the junction
and looked as far as his vision would reach down one of the two paths. His
field of vision only allowed the poet to see the length of that path to the
point at which it disappeared among a dense growth of shrubs and other plants
along its way.
2nd stanza:
Then took the
other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps
the better claim,
Because it was
grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that
the passing there
Had worn them
really about the same,
In this stanza, the
poet describes what he did after looking down one of the two paths at the
junction of a forest trail along which he was taking a walk. He says that the
other road was as justified a choice as the first one for the poet to walk
along, and so he chose the second one. Moreover, this second path was in fact a
better choice for him because he could see that it was filled with grass still,
unlike the other path that was almost barren. The poet concluded that every
person passing through either of the paths must have caused the grass beneath
his feet to fade to a similar extent, and therefore, since the second path had
more grass on it than the first one, it had been less often chosen by other
travellers like him who had been faced with the same choice before his arrival
at the junction of the forest trail.
3rd stanza:
And both that
morning equally lay
In leaves no step
had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first
for another day!
Yet knowing how way
leads on to way,
I doubted if I
should ever come back.
In this stanza, the poet says that after
all his calculations as to which path was more often taken, he saw that on the
same day as he was walking along that forest trail no other traveller had
reached that junction, and he was the first to do so. As a result of this, no
leaves on either of the paths bore any sign of being blackened by travellers’
footprints. Having chosen to walk along the second path, the poet thought he
would walk along the first one some other day in the future. However, this
resolution of his could not be made with any certainty. Frost knew that one
road leads to another, and another, and another so that he might never have the
chance to come to that junction again, and consequently, never be able to walk
along the first path that he had just rejected.
4th stanza:
I shall be telling
this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and
ages hence:
Two roads diverged
in a wood, and I—
I took the one less
traveled by,
And that has made
all the difference.
In this stanza, the poet says that having
made his choice of taking the second path from the junction in the forest
trail, he still cannot rest easy about his decision. He believes that after
many years, he will look back on the memory of that walk and think that by
choosing the path that less people had been on, he has forever eliminated the
first path from his travels. However, the last line of this stanza, and of the
poem as a whole, is a bit ambiguous. The poet could also be saying that his
choice of the second road has affected his life in a positive light, and
perhaps choosing the first one wouldn’t have had such an effect and instead
been a bane for him in his life. Read the next segment
here- The Road Not Taken Detailed Analysis
Where the mind is without Fear - Rabindranath Tagore Poem and summery.
UNIT-I POETRY
1.
Where the mind is without
Fear
Where
the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where
knowledge is free
Where
the world has not been broken up into fragments
By
narrow domestic walls
Where
words come out from the depth of truth
Where
tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where
the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into
the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where
the mind is led forward by thee
Into
ever-widening thought and action
Into
that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
Rabindranath
Tagore
1.1 INTRODUCTION
ABOUT AUTHOR
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
Ø Born
: 7 May 1861,Calcutta,
Bengal Presidency, British India
Ø Died: 7 August 1941
(aged 80) Calcutta
Ø Occupation: Writer, painter
Ø Language : Bengali,
English
Ø Nationality: Indian
Ø Ethnicity: Bengali
Ø Literary
movement: Contextual Modernism
Ø Notable
work(s): Gitanjali,
Ø Other works:
Gora, Ghare-Baire, Jana Gana
Mana, Rabindra Sangeet, Amar Shonar Bangla
Ø Notable
award(s): Nobel Prize in Literature
1913
Ø Spouse(s): Mrinalini Devi (m.
1883–1902)
Ø Children: five children, two of whom died in
childhood
Rabindranath Tagore - Biographical
Rabindranath Tagore
(1861-1941) was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo
Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal and which
attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of Hinduism as laid down in
the Upanishads. He was educated at home; and although at seventeen he was sent
to England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there. In his
mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the
family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with common
humanity and increased his interest in social reforms. He also started an
experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideals of
education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist
movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the
political father of modern India, was his devoted friend. Tagore was knighted
by the ruling British Government in 1915, but within a few years he resigned
the honour as a protest against British policies in India.
Tagore had early
success as a writer in his native Bengal. With his translations of some of his
poems he became rapidly known in the West. In fact his fame attained a luminous
height, taking him across continents on lecture tours and tours of friendship.
For the world he became the voice of India's spiritual heritage; and for India,
especially for Bengal, he became a great living institution.
Although Tagore
wrote successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. Among
his fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari
(1894) [The Golden Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914)
[Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes]. The English
renderings of his poetry, which include The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering
(1916), and The Fugitive (1921), do not generally correspond to particular
volumes in the original Bengali; and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: Song
Offerings (1912), the most acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works
besides its namesake. Tagore's major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the
Dark Chamber], Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The
Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi (1926) [Red
Oleanders]. He is the author of several volumes of short stories and a number
of novels, among them Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World],
and Yogayog (1929) [Crosscurrents]. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas,
dance dramas, essays of all types, travel diaries, and two autobiographies, one
in his middle years and the other shortly before his death in 1941. Tagore also
left numerous drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music
himself.
WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR
This poem in this
selection has been taken from his English ‘Gitanjali’. Tagore had deep
religious roots and his work reflects profound humanism. He was both a patriot
and a global citizen. In the poem, ‘Where the Mind Is without Fear’, Tagore
sketches a moving picture of the nation he would like India to be.
A nation where
everyone within the fold of the brotherhood is free to hold up one’s head high
and one’s voice can be heard without having any apprehension or fear of
oppression or forced compulsion.
He talks about a
nation where the knowledge is not restricted by narrow ideas and loyalties! The
British rule had robbed India of its pride and dignity by reducing it to a
ruined nation. The India of Tagore’s dream is a country where her people hold
their heads high with their pride in knowledge and strength born of that
knowledge where all countrymen must come out of the age-old philosophy of
constricted loyalties of caste, creed and religion. Prejudice and superstitious
which narrow the mind and divide people should be a thing of the past.
It should be a
nation where the words of truth come out from the depths of the heart and are
spoken out courageously in the open for the world to hear. People should work
for perfection in the clear light of reason leaving aside all superstitious
rituals, beliefs and narrow-mindedness.
It should be a nation where everyone is free
to toil and work hard for anything they desire either for their own or for the
good of the nation. Everyone is encouraged to strive tirelessly till they
attain full satisfaction in reaching their goals and perfection.
It should be a
nation where blind superstitious habits of thought and action have not put out
the light of reason. Where people’s mind should not dwell in the mistakes of
the past nor be possessed by it. On the other hand they should be led by the
power of reasoning to be focused on the future by applying logical thought and
action. Tagore’s only prayer to the Supreme Ultimate is leading the nation to
such an ideal state of heaven. It is only by the universality of outlook and an
abiding passion for the realization of great human ideals that India will
achieve her true freedom. This way alone she will realize her destiny.
EXPLANATION WITH REFERENCE TO THE CONTEXT
Where the mind is
without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is
free;
Where the world has
not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come
out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless
striving stretches its arms towards perfection.
Word meanings
1. Fragments-
pieces
2. Head is held
high- self respect
3. Domestic- pertaining
to family.
4. Striving – try
hard, motivated.
5. Tireless -
without getting tired
The poet draws a
picture of free India. He dreamt of a country with no boundaries. Tagore prays
for the welfare of the country. The poet prays to God that there should be an
atmosphere of fearlessness.
Knowledge should be
free for all. The country should not be divided into creed and caste. People
should speak the truth and be fearless and God blessed to have a perfect life.
They should not get tired of working.
Where the clear
stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead
habit;
Where the mind is
led forward by thee into ever- widening thought and action..
Into the heaven of
freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Word Meanings
Stream: river
Dreary: dull
Reason: intellect
Dead habit: old
customs
Desert – dry area
of land
Awake- to get up
from sleep
Explanation:
The poet prays to
God that Indians should be logical & progressive in thoughts & actions.
They should have the power to reason out the bad and useless customs by guiding
people. God should make India and the world a paradise.
Central Idea
This poem is a
reflection of the poet’s good and ideal nature. He has utmost faith in God. He
prays to God with all his heart that He should guide the countrymen to work
hard, speak the truth and take the country forward with a logical approach.
Rabindranath Tagore aspires to see the country and his people to be in peace
and prosper. He loves his country a lot and wishes for its welfare and growth
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