Homework

English 46A: Setting Up Paradise Lost 9 & 10 -----– Plus, Quick Quotations

Sorrow is knowledge; they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.”  
--Lord Byron, from Manfred (1816)

A.  Consider Books 9 & 10 of Milton’s Paradise Lost as a tragedy, as a blank verse drama, and what happens?  How can such a conceit aid us in understanding what Milton is doing, what Adam and Eve are doing, what Satan and God are doing?


B.  Who Wrote What?  What Else Ought We To Notice?

=1. Nought is there under heav’ns wide hollownesse,
   That moves more deare compassion of mind,
   Then beautie brought t’unworthy wretchednesse
   Through envies snares or fortunes freakes unkind:
   I whether lately through her brightnesse blind,
   Or through alleageance and fast fealtie,
   Which I do owe umnto all woman kind,
   Feele my heart perst with so great agonie,
When such I see, that all for pittie I could die.

-2. What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds?  Or to be smothered
With cassia?  Or to be shot to death with pearls?
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits, and ‘tis found
They go on such strange geometrical hinges,
You may open them both ways.

-3. Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay.
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

-4. When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least . . . .

-5. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike terror to my fainting soul.

-6. Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain . . . .

-7. “O place of bliss, renewer of my woes,
Give me accompt, where is my noble fere,
Whom in thy walls thou didst each night enclose,
To other life, but unto me most dear.”

Each stone, alas, that doth my sorrow rue,
Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint.
Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew,
In prison pine with bondage and restraint.

And with remembrance of the greater grief
To banish the less, I find my chief relief.

-8. Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
Therewithal sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

-9. They looking back, all th’ eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms:
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

Lost In Thought

"Whither Now, Friend?"

Two old clay pieces,
searching for the right setting,
for the proper game.
They seem slightly lost to me.  To you?

Whiskey With Ice; Leaping From Zeus

RANDOM THOUGHTS OF THE DAY
____________________________

"No, I still drink whiskey with ice."

My response when the dental hygienist asked if my teeth were sensitive to cold.

____________________________

Influence can be tricky to trace.  Was I headed in that direction already or did so-&-so turn my steps that way?

I tend to mythologize myself as having leapt full-bodied from the head of Zeus, but that's hardly likely.

Coomer: "Three Things Worth Doing"

"There are three things worth doing: making something new, caring for something old, and finding the lost. The fourth thing is your hand deep in dog fur, talking about the first three."

--Joe Coomer, Sailing in a Spoonful of Water

"Hooked, Slimed, and Gutted"

SONG: "CABIN'D, CRIBB'D, CONFIN'D"

There's a hammer in the head
And a pounding at the door.
You'll never sleep soft
Till you even out the score.
There's a question on the table
And a cupboard full of woes,
But your sole occupation's
Shooting blanks of Old Crow.

The innkeeper said,
It never fails, never fails.
Just make yourself at home:
Bed of nails, bed of nails.

Our ghosts just doze at dawn
In a soul-bin "Lost and Found."
Though hooked, slimed, and gutted,
Sorrows rarely ever drown.
(At every bottle's bottom,
Every sinner floats.
On this fishing trip to hell
You're still bailing out the boat.)

Opportunity's not knocking,
But Misery's banging pails;
You've made yourself at home:
Bed of nails, bed of nails.

--MD

David Wagoner: "Lost"

LOST

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.


--David Wagoner,
from Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Thank you, ST, for sharing this poem with me.

Boland: "Atlantis -- A Lost Sonnet"

ATLANTIS -- A LOST SONNET

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades, 
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all 
one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting 
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe 
what really happened is 

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and 
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of 

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.

--Eavan Boland

Thanks, EHS, for sharing.