Poetry Questions (ch. 9&10)

Loveliest of Trees (pg. 867)
1. The speaker knows he can't keep himself from aging, so he decides to enjoy the experiences that come with getting older.
2. The speaker is 20 years old. He assumes his life will be 70 years in length because that is the average length of life for people of his time. "Only" and "little" are surprising because they are applied to 50 years. Most people would think of that as a very large amount of time, but the speaker feels it isn't enough time to enjoy as fully as he wants.
3. The snow is figurative. The life of the cherry tree parallels the life of the speaker. In this case, the snow is actually the white blossoms on the tree. This represents the youth of the speaker and the warning that the actual snow will come before too long, so the tree should be ready.
The Indifferent (pg. 872)
1. indifferent: showing no care or concern
know: to have knowledge of
travail: the use of physical or mental energy
2. The speaker is a man who is talking to his lover. He is indifferent about whatever vices a woman might have. The only qualification he has for a lover is that she doesn't make him lover her and then push him away (line 16). He doesn't want to be hurt if he decides to commit to a woman.
3. Unfaithfulness. They differ from their mothers, who vices other than unfaithfulness. He thinks it's because the daughters got bored with the other vices so they had to turn to a new one.
4. Venus investigates because the love has lost its variety, which she feels is the best part of having love. She confirms the speaker's accusation. She punishes the unfaithful ones by cursing them to love and be faithful to the ones who are unfaithful to them.
How Annandale Went Out (pg. 876)
1. The speaker is the Annandale's friend the doctor. He is speaking to a colleague and trying to explain why he did what he did. He wants to have some closure for his actions.
2. He calls himself a liar and a hypocrite because doctors swear an oath to help heal people, but he didn't heal Annandale, he just ended his suffering. (Ln 4-5) The wreck that crippled Annandale wasn't all that horrible and he could have gone on living, but the doctor couldn't bear to see him suffer. (Ln 9) The doctor knew what comes from these types of accidents (people being crippled) as well as he knows his friend. He uses the words: him, Annandale, the man.
3. "I was there": the doctor feels guilt at being at the scene of the accident and not being able to help Annandale enough to make it so he could live and not be suffering. "On the spot": there was a lot of pressure on the doctor to do the right thing and he couldn't think of anything to do to help Annandale any more than to end his suffering.
4. "slight kind of engine": Annandale had a weakening heart from the accident. The doctor gestures with a slight jab to indicate how that was all he had to do to end Annandale's life. This is illegal, but it can be argued to be moral because he didn't let Annandale suffer. The doctor reveals what he has done in order to relieve the burden of his guilt. He needs to know if anyone would place blame on him.
5. His auditor approves of his action, but Robinson doesn't.
6. To the Mercy Killers: speaks of wanting to live. We don't know how Annandale felt in "How Annandale Went Out" when he was killed, whether he wanted to live or not. Both poems involve a poor quality of life and outsiders not being able to stand watching the suffering and not being able to do anything about it.
No worst, there is none (pg. 878)
1. fell: cause to fall as if by delivering a blow
2. Auditory: "wince" "shrieked" "cries heave" - these images reinforce the desperation and pain that is being felt by the speaker.
Visual: "no-man-fathomed" "mountains" "age-old" - these pictures show the reader how helpless the speaker feels when he is faced with such power and significance. He doesn't even feel helped out when he joins with others (they "huddle" together).
3. The failure to identify a cause is a way for the reader to create a deeper meaning by reading their own fears and pains and sufferings into the poem. The religious references suggest that the speaker feels like he has been abandoned by God. He feels like he has been left out of the joy that is felt in Jesus by others.
Apparently with no surprise (pg. 882)
1. The "blonde Assassin" is a little girl who picks the flower as she passes by and in doing so kills it.
2. It is ironic that a little girl would be called a murderer. The fact that this is viewed by an "Approving God" is also ironic because murder is supposed to be a sin. In this case, it makes it sound like it's okay to kill as long as it is for the purpose of bringing pleasure to the person killing.
Crossing the Bar (pg. 886)
1. bourne: a goal or destination
2. Tennyson uses the ideas of a sunset and a journey out to sea as metaphors for death. In each case, death takes place in stanza 3. The bel tolls the time of day when the sun has finally set beneath the horizon and now there is only darkness, and the man/soul begins his voyage into the deep sea (death).
3. Once the traveler leaves the harbor, the storm (death) can take him over and have the power to decide whether he continues on or not. The speaker hopes to die peacefully in his sleep because he doesn't want to know it is coming and have to suffer the pity of his loved ones. He doesn't want other people crying over his misfortune of being at the end of his life because he feels that this will cause him to fear death.
4. "that which drew from boundless deep" is the afterlife. It takes the ones who were deemed worthy by the deep and rewards them. "Boundless deep" is death. The deep is opposed to the boat that carries the person out into the sea and keeps it sheltered and free from death. Pilot is capitalized because it is meant to represent God.
The Apparition (pg. 889)
1. feigned: not genuine
aspen: a type of tree with fragile leaves that flutter in the wind
quicksilver: heavy silvery toxic element
Aspen and quicksilver are used figuratively to reinforce the fragility of the woman and the toxic quality of the man's words of persuasion.
2. The man is a suitor to the woman. Solicitation is different from marriage beause it offers no form of commitment. It is only an offer for sex, where marriage is an offer for emotional unity.
3. The tone doesn't support that the man's love is spent. If it really was, he wouldn't be trying so hard to get her to sleep with him. His "love" probably won't be spent until she has lost all of her mystery when she has sex with him.
4. The speaker uses "feigned vestal" to insult the woman and make her want to prove him wrong. He is also showing her that she might have taken her virginity too far and will become old and no one will want her any more.
5. Murderess implies that she leads him on on purpose in order to make him suffer and potentially get rid of him.
6. The arms that the woman would find herself in would be worse than her current suitor's. The speaker is putting a curse on her so that when she finally does sleep with a man, he will always misunderstand what she wants. When she wants sex, he will ignore her offers. When she doesn't want sex, he will and he will force her.
7. The man doesn't really have an answer. He is just threatening her and also trying to make her curious enough to want to have sex with him.
8. The speaker wants the woman to repent from not sleeping with him. He argues that she would be free from the sin of murder since she is killing him by her refusal. What he doesn't mention is that she would lose her innocence.
The Flea (pg. 891)
1. Preceding the poem, the man and the woman are both bitten by the same flea. Between stanzas one and two, the woman says that they should get married before they sleep together. Between stanzas two and three, the woman kills the flea by squishing it with her finger. The woman doesn't agree with the view of the man and says that they aren't any weaker even though she killed what was supposedly both of them put together.
2. They are suitors and the man is always trying to get the woman to have sex with him. She killed him by rejecting his offer for sex so many times. She rejects his advances because she thinks they should be married and truely commited before she loses her virginity. The man is still alive because she keeps leading him on. The man's objective is to get her to sleep with him.
3. The speaker argues that they can mingle their blood now because it has already been done when the flea drank both of their blood. This serves to make it seem like less of a sin to "mingle blood."
4. The parents grudge that their daughter would associate with a man who is always trying to take her virginity. The woman is grudging that her suitor doesn't seem to take her own wishes into consideration but rather keeps asking her for sex. "Living walls of jet" is the flea's body. The woman commits three murders because she kills the flea, herself, and him when she squishes the bug. The three sins are the triple murder that she commits in killing the flea.
5. The woman triumphs by killing the flea and the man's argument for their sexual union. He argues that she has already sinned three times by killing the flea, so sinning again by having sex with him won't make a difference.
6. The man and the woman probably don't wind up doing what the man is trying to convince her to do.
7. The Flea is one of Donne's more witty poems about seduction. The Apparition is more forceful with its persuasion, and it evokes the idea of a curse.
Dover Beach (pg. 892)
1. strand: a shoreline
girdle: a piece of cloth used as a belt
darkling: occuring in the night; of darkness
2. The speaker is standing on the cliffs on the French coast in the middle of the night. He is calmly addressing someone that he is very fond of.
4. The speaker isn't a believer and he sees no possible cures for the horrors that exist in the world.
5. The "armies" are figurative. The speaker and his friend are standing on the cliffs, not a plain. But, this is what the speaker pictures when he thinks of the battle between the believers and the nonbelievers. He thinks that one or the other will make a surprise attack. Some of the "soldiers" are deserting their side to escape the battle. The imagery is meant to parallel the situation that the speaker finds himself in.
6. The tone of the speaker is very calm, but there is a note of regret. He wants to be one of the believers, but he can't seem to make himself faithful in something that he can't see with his own eyes.
Getting Out (pg. 896)
1. The poem doesn't assign blame to either of the people. Both were tightening their hearts so they both held responsibility for the end of their relationship and the way things turned out.
2. The couple's physical similarities make them think they should be more alike emotionally. This makes them feel confined. Neither one is very emotionally mature if they think that they have to conform to each others views in order to stay in love. The last line shows that they still love each other, but they aren't mature enough to deal with the emotional pressure they're putting on themselves.
3. The poem would be more aptly interpreted as a confinement to a mental institution because the people obviously love each other, but are driven apart by their own madness that makes them think they need to be restricted.
4. The tone shifts as the couple realizes the only way to save whatever feelings they may have left is to separate. Now they feel less confined in their emotions so they don't want to let go of each other. We know that they still love each other because of the evidence given to us in stanza three about them not wanting to let go of the other's hand. The only problem is that they have to separate in order to gain the maturity to make their love work.