A PSALM OF LIFE (SUMMERY)BY H.W.LONGFELLOW

 PSALM OF LIFE

'A psalm of life ' is beautiful didactic poem by H.W. Longfellow , A modern American poet .
                                                                  
                                                                         Longfellow is known as a poet of the lost generation he spent some of the years in America and after that he went back to England .He spent a number of poems both shorter and longer to his credit .They are Hiawatha, Cymbleline ,voice in the night ,Ballads and other poems, Tales of way side inn , The courtship of miles standish and the Belfry of Burges .His poems were very popular in England .He was the best friend of Alfred Tennyson .His poem became the common property of English men everywhere from the British  Asles  to Antipodes .In his poems there are elements of Romanticism .His poems are also marked by simplicity and love of the common place .He was so popular in America that his 75th birthday y was celebrated in every school in the united state .
"A PSALM OF LIFE" is a beautiful didactic poem by H.W. Longfellow .Its subtitle is what the Heart Of The Youngman said to the psalmist .Here the poet tells us about his optimistic views on life . The poem was 1st published in October 1838 .The poet rejects the views of pessimists regarding life .He is an optimist so he is not ready to believe that life is as unreal or hollow as a dream .He is not ready to believe that the soul dies with the body and thing are not so as they appear from outside .To him life is a serious affair .It is real and the soul is imperishable while the body is perishable .neither enjoyment nor sorrow is the end of life .The main purpose of life is to work so that each new day should be different from the last day .Knowledge is vast or unlimited while time is limited .It is therefore our duty to acquire  unlimited knowledge in limited time .physically we are sound but our heart that is like a covered drum is leading us to the last syllable of the recorded time .The world is a field of battle and we are soldiers .We have to face the problems of life like brave soldiers that we are .We have not to behave like dumb animals .We have not to trust in the future because who has seen the future .We cannot bring the past back so the only time before us is the present .We have to work in that present with god as our guide .We can learn a lot from the lives of great men .Like them we have to leave our  footprint symbolic of noble deeds behind us .By following them we can make our life great .These footprint will help those who have lost hope in life .They will take courage by seeing these footprints to move forward .So the advise of the poet is to be very active .always doing new work .This is how we can achieve something great .
                                       The  poem is remarkable in the sense that it gives us a massage to work .Every line of the poem is meaningful and the diction used by the poet is also suitable for the massage he wants to give the reader .The poet has used simile ,Metaphor ,Personification ,alliteration and Repetition ,figures of speech  to beautify the poem .There is parallelism in the lines 'not enjoyment nor sorrow is our destined ' and 'art is long time is flitting '. The imagery used by the poet is also meaningful .This would has been compared to a field of battle .Life is a temporary tent  and our heart is like a covered drum beating every second and leading us to the last syllable of the recorded time .Again the journey of life has been compared to a voyage in the sea .The ups and downs of life are like the tide in the sea .All the lines are iambic tetrameter . 

 

 

 

Amoretti Sonnet 57 and 67 by Edmund Spenser

 

CHAPTER: AMORETTI SONNET (67)

                                              ( By : Edmund Spenser)

 

 

Amoretti sonnet no. 67 by Edmund Spenser is well known for its new images and novelty of thought. Here the poet likens himself to a hunter and his beloved to a dear. The hunter is chasing the dear both are tiered while running  .The hunter comes to a place where there is shade of trees .he rests himself their  for something .The dear when it finds the hunter resting also rests for sometime. Instead of running away it comes back to the hunter . The hunter looks at the deer everted eye. He feels to understand why deer has come to him .The deer is also amazed why the hunter is not trying to catch it .Both look at each other with everted eyes .Both are in a mood of  surrender but who will surrender first is not known .This image of hunter and deer has been  presented with newness .The hunter is Edmund Spenser himself and deer is Elizabeth Boyle .The poet feels that he has become extremely  tiered in making Elizabeth Boyle love him .she fails to understand why the poet is showing so much love to her .The poet recalls all his attempts to win the lady he has not given up any hope of union with his beloved .He is waiting for the chance when she will  be his at her sweet will.

The sonnet is beautiful it has freshness of address no where to be found by any poet .Before Edmund Spenser .Thomas Wyatt tried his hand with the same  image of hunter and deer but the freshness which we get in this sonnet is definitely enchanting .The image are  new and the poet has left no stone unturned to make it interesting .In this rhyming scheme it is like the sonnet of Shakespeare with a difference in the second quatrain the problem which has been analyse until the second tercet .There is also freshness in the word and diction of the sonnet .Most of the words are homely so very easy to understand .every line of the sonnet shows the poets struggles to gain the love of his beloved.

Chapter : amoretti sonnet (57)

                                  (by : Edmund Spenser )

 

 The sonnet  number 57 is sweet warrior is one of the best known sonnet from amoretti by Edmund Spenser.

Amoretti sonnet are 89 in numbers and were published in 1595 just after Spenser returned from Ireland .these sonnets have been addressed to Elizabeth Boyle the lady whom Spenser loved much .He expressed his love for her by writing 88 sonnet and at last 89^th sonnet united them.

                In previous sonnets the lady is very weak and the lover is very strong .He is a hunter and she is the hunt .but here she is the strongest and he the weakest .Here she is the warrior and he is the slave or a humble man .But the warrior unlike any conventional warrior of battle is sweet .A conventional warrior is brave and is cruel to his enemies .He makes attack on them causing the deeper wounds .here the warrior is also attacking the poet not with spear or swords but with the arrows from her eyes .The poet makes it clear that a cold war       is going on between him and his beloved .he is tiered of this cold war and wants to make peace with his beloved .he has made several attempt to put end to this war but his attempts have proved futile .She has shot so many arrows from her eyes that he has become wounded at heart .Here neither the arrows are visible nor the wounds of heart is visible .But the lovers are enough to tell us that he has been rendered all helpless and weak .He is craving for peace or compromise with her .He thinks that the beloved is not just justified in attacking him for he is now a weak person and he has surrendered himself at her feet .It is no use  (flogging the dead ) hors .there is no greatness or glory in it .She will be dishonoured  for doing so .She is a lady of honour and she must maintain her honour by making peace with him .

                         The sonnet is one of the best known Edmund Spenser .Here he has altered the conventional image of a warrior .generally we have a brave warrior who is young solider .He fights against his enemies bravely and mercilessly .Here we have the beloved as a warrior but instead of being brave she is sweet .It mean she is a warrior but she has all feminist qualities within her – an oxymoron .The wounds made by a brave solider on the body of his enemies can be seen .He used traditional weapons .But here the wounds which the warrior makes on the poet are invisible .The arrows from her eyes can not be seen but felt . The lover has humbled himself and craves for peace or compromise with the beloved .Here the  poet alters the medieval conception of heroism as ‘only the brave deserve the fair ‘ as only the brave women deserve a handsome young man .There are examples of apostrophe , pan, alliteration ,personification and metaphor figure of speech in the sonnet .The rhyme scheme of the sonnet is like that of a Shakespearean sonnet with some variation in the second quitrent .The diction of the sonnet is very simple .homely world and beauty to the meaning of the sonnet.