Download A selection of Renaissance poems and questions

A selection of renaissance poetry, with questions
A
Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
5
10
1
This is a Shakespearean sonnet. How many lines?
2
How many syllables in each line?
3
The English sonnet has the simplest and most flexible pattern of all sonnets, consisting of
three quatrains of alternating rhyme and a couplet:
abab
cdcd
efef
gg
Mark the three quatrains and couplet by underlining. Add in the rhyme schemes at
the end of each line.
4
Characterize the speaker. What sort of person is the speaker? What evidence
supports your view?
5
Mark scansion for a few lines. We will practice this collectively.
B
Sonnet 116, by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
5
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
10
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
1
Do the same as questions 1, 2, and 3 for Sonnet 18, above.
2
Mark scansion for a few lines.
3
Characterize the speaker. What sort of person is the speaker? What evidence
supports your view?
4
Explain the metaphor in lines 6 and 7
5
Explain the contrasts in lines 10, 11, and 12
C
Edmund Spenser - Sonnet 75
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quod I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where, when as Death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.
5
10
1
This is a Spenserian sonnet. How is it both like and unlike a Shakespearean sonnet?
2
Mark scansion, end rhyme, and quatrains.
3
Characterize the speaker. What does the speaker hope to achieve? Find evidence.
4
Identify and explain the reply of the object of the speaker’s affection. What is this
person’s tone? Find evidence.
5
Identify personification.
6
Identify and explain archaic (ancient-sounding) words.
7
Summarize the last six lines.
8
Evaluate this poem. Is it good? Justify.
D
Sonnet 30 (Fire And Ice) by Edmund Spenser
My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire,
but harder grows, the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
is not delayed by her heart frozen cold,
but that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
and feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
that fire, which all thing melts, should harden ice:
and ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the pow'r of love in gentle mind
that it can alter all the course of kind.
5
10
Some links to start us off ~
I Care, by Beyonce
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtRlI0X-QrI
I Got my Mojo Working, by Muddy Waters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuwbKakPRRI
Paradox
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-paradox.html
Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Baby ~ Barry White
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0I6mhZ5wMw
1
Basically, what is this poem about?
2
Characterize the speaker. What does the speaker hope to achieve? Find evidence.
3
Characterize the object of the speaker’s affection.
4
What advice would you give to the speaker of this poem were he or she a friend of
yours?
E
"Whoso List To Hunt" by Sir Thomas Wyatt
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, hélas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.







5
10
Whoso list: whoever wishes
hind: female deer
hélas: alas
vain travail: futile labor
deer: playing on the word "dear"
Sithens: since
Noli me tangere: "touch me not"
1
What is the basic story here?
2
Identify and explain archaic words
3
Identify and explain the allusion in line 13
4
Identify and explain the metaphors. Who might the hind be?
5
What do we know of the speaker and how he feels about the chase?
6
What advice does the speaker offer others of his kind?
7
Identify the rhyme scheme. What is different in this rhyme scheme than the
previous sonnets?
F “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love,”
by Christopher Marlowe
G “The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd,”
by Sir Walter Raleigh
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or sleepy mountain yields.
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
5
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complain of cares to come.
And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
10
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle:
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
15
With buckles of the purest gold:
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love. 20
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
next page
1
These are proposition and response poems. In Passionate, what does the speaker urge
his love to do? Characterize the speaker. Find specific evidence to support your
propositions.
2
In Nymph, characterize the speaker. Find specific evidence to support your
propositions.
3
Find more examples of imagery and explain how these work. Why so much nature
imagery?
4
Mark scansion and rhyme scheme.
5
Evaluate. Who has the better arguments? Justify your answers.