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.

Play-Time: From the Medieval to the Renaissance

The manuscript poster--
Spring 2017:
English 46A
Come join the fun!
I'll make it as memorable as I can.

Dear Deer, Come Here

Hernest is my library-spirit, my book-totem, even if he looks like a mere deer in a trenchcoat. Look closely and you'll see the spirit of the Horned Lords of myth and magic, of the Celtic Cernunnos, of Herne the Hunter, of . . . okay, a deer in a trenchcoat. I think he brings me luck, though he is given to Jungian pranks and hijacking my pints of Blarney Duck Ale. He's been known to invite jackalopes to dinner. As autumn gains strength, he prefers whiskey, mythic fiction, and rather melancholy nature poetry, preferably featuring does and fawns, or creatures of the forest in general. He enjoys William Cowper's 18th-century masterpiece The Task and Sir Thomas Wyatt's Renaissance lyrics, particularly "They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek" and "Whoso List To Hunt, I Know Where Is An Hind." Listen!

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,

But as for me, alas, 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,

Since 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."

--Sir Thomas Wyatt

Besides reciting such poetic laments, Hernest claims to be composing a comic burlesque and a woodland epic, Stag Party and The Herniad. My first real poem, according to my mother, was a song calling the deer closer at sunset in the town park of either Weed, CA, or Mount Shasta, CA; I was perhaps three or four. Dear deer, come here. And he has.

I can't help but think of better poetry than my doggerel couplet, of Shakespeare's mention of Herne the Hunter. These are Mistress Page's words, setting forth the legend and setting in motion a mighty prank for poor Sir John Falstaff:

There is an old tale goes that Herne the Hunter,

Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,

Doth all the wintertime, at still midnight,

Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;

And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,

And makes milch kine yield blood, and shakes a chain

In a most hideous and dreadful manner.

You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know

The superstitious idle-headed eld

Receiv'd, and did deliver to our age,

This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth.

— The Merry Wives of Windsor (Act IV, scene iv, 26-36)

And then, my mind not being satisfied even by Shakespeare's verse--and resisting a full rereading of The Merry Wives just now, despite the evocative phrases I've quoted, despite the comic turns I'm recalling--I turn to another poem that I'd like to share with you. My "ragg'd-horn[ed]" fellow doesn't have the raw, eerie menace of the figure in John Montague's "The Split Lyre," but looking at my piece in clay somehow pulled me to this poet's piece in the following words.

THE SPLIT LYRE

On the frost held

field, Orpheus

strides, his greaves

bleak with light,

the split lyre

silver, hard

in his hands;

sleek after him

the damp-tongued

cringing hounds.

An unaccountable

desire to kneel,

to pray, pulls

my hands but

his head is not

a crown of thorns:

a great antlered

stag, pity

shrinks from

those horns.

--John Montague

Hernest: sculpture mix; brown glazes, layered.