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10 most famous foreign poems

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By Lechi Eke

We take a break before we get on to the next Literary Period, to look at Ten Famous non-African Poems which have featured in the curricula of African schools.  

  1. Sonnet 18 – Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? (1609)  

By William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

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Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease has all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

 And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

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And every fair from fair sometimes 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 even can see,

  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

My list starts with Sonnet 18 from the grandmaster, William Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. This is because William Shakespeare is the most famous writer in the world; his works are the bestsellers of all times. Over 4 billion of his works have been sold!

He was an English poet and dramatist of the Elizabethan period when Queen Elizabeth 1 (the daughter of Henry the 8th and Anne Boleyn) reigned (1553 – 1603).

In his time, men wooed women with long flattering words of endearment (although there’s no line supporting that Shakespeare addresses a woman in this poem, but we’re not deceived). Women were idolized because of the high position occupied by a woman, Queen Elizabeth 1. Talking or writing about the beauty of a woman was equal to talking about love. It was a tradition of the Elizabethan era.

This poem is well-known and well anthologized. It is set in summer, a time for love or romance and the mood is romantic (in the sense of romanticism because of its adulation of beauty, and comparing beauty with nature and finding nature wanting for its impermanence).

Shakespeare talks about “summer’s ease has too short a date” and “nature’s changing course”, etc. compare the treatment of Nature in the Elizabethan era with the Romantic treatment of nature in this poem by William Blake titled, The Schoolboy-

I love to rise in a summer morn,

When the birds sing on every tree;

The distant huntsman winds his horn,

And the skylark sings with me:

O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn, –

    O it drives all joy away!

   Under a cruel eye outworn,

The little ones spend the day

In sighing and dismay…

Sonnet 18 is of course a sonnet. A sonnet is a poem of 14 lines adapted from an Italian poet named Petrach whose sonnets were poems of fourteen lines in the structure of octave or octet (8 lines) and sextet (6 lines) with a composition of variations of rhyme schemes called the Petrachan Sonnet.

It was introduced into English and modified by English poet of the 15th century, Edward Spencer, and the Spenserian sonnet carries a structure of three quatrains (four lines) and a rhyming couplet (2 lines) of ababbcbccdcdee.

In the 17th century, William Shakespeare came up with what is now called the English or Elizabethan sonnet of the same three quatrains and a rhyming couplet, but composed of ababcdcdefefgg. 

2. The Second Coming (1920)

  By William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

  Turning and turning in the widening gyre

  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely, some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Hardly would you meet an African of any worthwhile age who doesn’t know this poem or part of it, made famous by Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

W. B. Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He is said to be the last of the Romantic poets for he transited to Modernism.

This poem is a pun on the return of the resurrected Christ. Yeats who was a nominal Christian before turning to the occult puns on this phrase to paint the picture of not only the existent evil, but the reborn of greater evil, like a second phase of the evil as the beast (beasts or demons are carriers of evil) “slouches towards Bethlehem to be born (again)!

The poem describes present evil and how it came about, a total dismantle or collapse of order brought about by the falcon’s disconnect from the falconer. Lines 2 and 3 signify that Order is the perfect state, whenever there is disorder like a falcon that should be under the control of a falconer, disconnects from this control to run free, things would fall apart!

And it did. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned… (Some literary appreciators believe that Yeats writes about the Russian Revolution of 1917 that brought the reign of the Communist Party, but I stand with those who believe he foretells WW1 in the first stanza and the body of the poem, and that the closing lines portend WW2 – a greater evil. A present evil seeking rebirth in a place where greatness is born (Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem).

This is because the poem is truly cosmological in scale – line 2 says mere anarchy is loosed upon the “world.” It is futuristic and apocalyptic on a cosmological scale. So, it is not just about a country or a place, but about the world, end time, Judgment Day!

Just the title the Second Coming, spells doom. Yeats who was a nominal Christian knew that Bible foretells that after the return of the resurrected Christ, there would be chaos. So, he patterned this poem after the biblical apocalypse. Only that in his poem, he foretells of the rebirth of evil perhaps more dangerous than what is present.

3. The Tyger  (1794)

 By William Blake (1757-1827)

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What dread hand? And what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp,

Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears

And water’d heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb made thee?

Tiger Tyger burning,

In the forests of the night

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The choice of this poem is not because it is best in my preference but because it has often appeared in Nigerian curricula, and it is the most anthologized English poem in the world. Its theme of a good God who created good, how can He also create evil or something that can destroy the good makes it a literary delight any day.

The last line of the fourth stanza says Did he who made the Lamb made thee? This line completes the sense of what the Romantic Blake wants to convey – after painting the picture of the fearful animal that is powerful and destructive, he introduces a foil, the lamb – a gentle and powerless animal.

4. Ozymandias (1818)

By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

I met a traveler from an antic land,

Who said – “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. …Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear;

‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

*This poem has been analysed on this column.

5. Kubla Khan (1816)

 By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

   Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Were blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! As holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon lover

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:

And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,…

*This poem has been analysed on this column too.

6. Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819)

By John Keats (1795-1821)

Presented here are: (A) part of the first stanza and the (B) part of the last stanza – reply to PB Shelley’s Ozymandias.

Thou still unraveled bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:…

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain in the midst of other woe,

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

P. B. ridicules the greatness and power of royalties like the Egyptian king using his Greek name, Ozymandias, showing how time dehumanizes them robbing them of their great power. Keats in this poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn replies Shelley that art can preserve things.

7. My Last Duchess (1842)

By Robert Browning (1812-1889)

My Last Duchess has also been treated on this column, Inside Literature.

8. The Pulley (1633)

  By George Herbert (1593-1633)  

  When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,

“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.

Let the world’s riches, which dispense lies

   Contract into a span.”

  So strength first made a way;

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.

  When almost all was out, then God made a stay.

Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,

  Rest in the bottom lay.

  “For if I should,” said he,

“Bestow this jewel also on my creature.

  He would adore my gifts instead of me.

And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;

  So both should losers be.

  “Yet let him keep the rest

But keep them with repining restlessness.

  Let him be rich and weary, that at least,

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness

  May toss to my breast.”

This is a metaphysical poem depicting the typical metaphysical syllogistic approach. It is about God’s relationship with His creature. He created man pouring every kind of blessings into him, so that he wants nothing. However, in a clever move, God denies man some very vital things that might appear insignificant at first – man’s insatiable appetite or the need to want more, so that man will never be satisfied or independent. Man is restless. Being dissatisfied, man is oftentimes restless so that he keeps toiling. Total peace or satisfaction can only be found in God!

So the poem is of three syllogistic parts: a. God created man with all his goodness poured into him, but if man has everything, would he ever need his maker? b. God, figuring out that man will turn away from Him, decides to deny him rest – the peace of mind or satisfaction needed to enjoy life, c. so man has repining restlessness; he’s rich and weary (at once), so that “If goodness lead him not, yet weariness/May toss him to my breast.”

Metaphysical wits or conceits are employed by the use of a scientific or mechanical object (image), a pulley, to describe a natural phenomenon of man’s dependence on his maker. The pulley is a far-fetched imagery or conceit to convey the idea of man’s relationship with his maker. A pulley is used to lift heavy object. So here, Herbert uses the idea to describe how man is totally dependent on God to achieve peace of mind.

And Herbert should know because he was a clergy man. His poem also touches on God’s love for man and how God is not a dictator, but runs a government of inclusion by the poet alluding to the biblical creation story, “Let ‘us’ make man in our image…” (Genesis 1:26). 

9. Richard Cory (1897)

By Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935).

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked,

And still he fluttered pulses when he said,

‘Good morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

It was Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson that should have made this list, but I chose Richard Cory above it for its meaning which is so fundamental to us today. The message of Richard Cory is, don’t envy anyone, be content with what you have! Looks are deceptive.

American poet, Robinson, employs words to build up the personality of his character with connotations like “crown, imperially slim, glittered, grace,” etc., to show a man who has everything; and denotations like “downtown, pavement, worked and waited, without the meat, and cursed the bread, etc.” to show poor townspeople who are struggling and envy Cory.

10. The Road Not Taken

By Robert Frost (1874-1963)

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

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,

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.

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 travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Frost presents choices we all have to make in life. Should we choose a well-travelled road or the one less travelled in life? Should we choose a conventional thing or stand alone in what we deem right, but less popular? The choice is ours. Years later the two different roads might yield the same results. Only Time will tell.

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