英国文学赏析整理

Alexander Pope

An Essay on Man （know then thyself）

The poem is written in iambic tetrameter, every two line have the same thyme at the last word.

The poem is important in the sense that it embodies the 18th century concepts of the universe and man’s place in it, that is man is made in the shape of God, and occupies a middle position in the Great Chain of Being. As the poet says sometimes we have too much knowledge and feel suspect about everything, but sometimes we have too much weakness and can not be as pride as Stotic, sometimes we seem to have the power to rule all things but sometimes we seem prey to all. We are in the middle place and sometimes we are confused about whether to act or rest. The poet perfectly describes man’s feeling about ourselves and about the world.

Although Pope is never profound in thought but he is very adapt in voicing the idea of his contemporaries in a beautiful and clever way.

Robert Burns

A Red, Red, Rose

The metrical pattern of the poem is basically in the ballad form, i.e. each stanza consisting of four lines, with four stressed syllables in the odd-numbered lines and three stressed syllables in the even-numbered lines, and with rhymes occurring on the even-numbered lines.

The image of rose evokes traditional associations of beauty, love and romance. Its simple lyrics and straight form and expression of feeling make it a favorite choice for poetry anthologies and a most appreciated poem for readers. Incorporating various elements from folk songs, the poem is supposed to be a song sung by an Irish sailor to his sweet heart before his ship sailed off to sea, the exaggerated declaration of love “till the

seas are gone dry and till the rock melts” can remind us of a well known Chinese oath. There is no tearful parting. But determined hope of reunion: the sailor will come back to his sweet heart” though it were ten thousand miles.”

William Blake

The Lame

The poem is written in rhyming couplets with alternating iambic and anapestic feet. it’s one of the poems that collected in Songs of Innocence which express the poet’s delight in life, even in the face of sorrow and suffering.

The poem is a child song, in the form of a question and answer. The first stanza is rural and descriptive, while the second focuses on abstract spiritual matters and contains explanation and analogy. The child’s question is both na?ve and profound. “who made thee” is a simple question, but the child is also tapping into the deep and timeless questions that all human beings have, about their own origins and the nature of creation. The situation of a child talking to an animal is a believable one. Yet by answering his own question the child coverts it into a rhetorical one, thus counteraction the initial spontaneous sense of the poem, and also reveals his confidence in his simple Christian faith and his innocent acceptance of its teachings.

The lamb symbolizes Jesus, as Jesus has a traditional image as a lamb. The image of the child is also associated with Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special concern for children. This poem, like many of the poems in Songs of Innocence, accepts that Blake saw as the most positive aspects of conventional Christian belief.

William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud(四步抑扬)