Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman —But who is that on the other side of you?
man and woman/romance: This is another example that relates to my first two. Two people having the same experience from the outside, but internally they have completely different perspectives.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
men and women/romance: another example of two people being close physically but worlds away mentally. disconnect.
“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. “Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? “I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
men and women/romance: Example of two people that are close physically, but mentally far apart.
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.
Another reference to water. Is this just carrying on from the “fear death by water” line or is there something deeper going on?
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I wonder what the significance of tarot and “the hanged man” in particular is. The hanged man can be associated with intuition and decision-making. The speaker does not find this card.
In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
The mentions of winter are confusing, and so are the uses of location. With Summer, Elliot talks about Lake Starnberg and the Hofgarten, but locations aren't mentioned for the other seasons, besides going "south in the winter."
Wet spoil.
Cordially yours.
Murmur pet murmur pet murmur.
and which you were probably saving for breakfast
Feels like a weird love poem. The narrator knows the person they live with very well. Enough to know what they eat for breakfast, and enough to have access to their fridge. "So sweet" and "so cold" could describe the recipient.
and we degraded prisoners destined to hunger until we eat filth
He and Elsie might share a common worldview. They are "degraded prisoners" together and they seem to find comfort in this.
It is only in isolate flecks that something is given off
After September "destroys" them, the word "isolate" from stanza two is used again. Maybe the narrator is slipping back to his past self.
sheer rags-succumbing without emotion save numbed terror under some hedge of choke-cherry or viburnum- which they cannot express—
It sems like the narrator is one of the men described in the first few stanzas. After he describes Elsie, he switches to first person ("us" and "we" and "our").It feels like he wasn't fully himself before Elsie? And he's detaching himself from that past?
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
Before this stanza, I had a sort of uneasy feeling reading this poem. The narrator is hidden, and their horse is in an unfamiliar situation. It is the darkest evening of the year. After reading this though, I realized that the narrator is marveling at the beauty and mystery of the woods that night. They are "lovely, dark and deep" and the narrator is only pulled away by the "promises" they have to keep. If they could, I think the narrator would stay here watching the snow forever.
What but design of darkness to appall?– If design govern in a thing so small.
Frost starts this poem with a beautiful description of the spider, the flower, and the moth, but he ends it talking about design that "appalls". He's watching the moth meet its end, and it seems disturbing to him. I think this is another example of Frost trying to mislead his readers, and then leaving them with thoughtful questions.
Better to go down dignified With boughten friendship at your side Than none at all. Provide, provide! Archives
The witch that the poem talks about (Abishag) is now washing steps rather than "occupying a throne." The poem seems to be speaking about how all stars will eventually meet the same end as everyone else. Death is inevitable. I think he may be trying to mislead readers here by criticizing Hollywood and its darker aspects, because in this last stanza, he says it is better to "Go down dignified/With boughten friendship at your side."
For those of you who could not see the virtue Of knowing Volney’s “Ruins” as well as Butler’s “Analogy” And “Faust” as well as “Evangeline,” Were really the power in the village, And often you asked me “What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?”
These lines remind me of both DuBois's and Adams's connection to art, culture, and history, and the way they use these things to make sense of their present moments. Both writers drew from the past similarly to Masters here. He chooses to mention literature that came before his that had noticeable impacts on society. This connection to the past almost reminds me of Perkins Gilman too, as she reflects on the history of the room with the yellow wallpaper, which is her "world." The rest of the poem reminds me of all three authors, DuBois, Adams, and Perkins Gilman. "Choose your own good and call it good." All of these writers are individuals with unique ideas, about to enter a new era. All of them are choosing their own path.
He sat the jug down slowly at his feet With trembling care, knowing that most things break; And only when assured that on firm earth It stood, as the uncertain lives of men Assuredly did not, he paced away,
"Knowing that most things break" stood out to me here. In this poem Robinson is writing from the perspective of someone in isolation, probably nearing the end of life. He is preoccupied with the change going on around him. The friends lost, the uncertainty of life, and his past. He knows life is ever changing. This writing reminds me of the other pieces because each one deals with people on the cusp of some sort of change. For DuBois this is being born just after the abolition of slavery, for Adams the industrial revolution, and for Perkins Gilman this may be the women's suffrage movement. All of these authors experienced great societal change during their lifetimes. All of them also know that "most things break."
The music failed, and then God frowned, and shut the village from His sight.
The end of this poem reminds me of Adams's descriptions of the Virgin in America. Missing, ashamed, and powerless. The Virgin couldn't exist as a powerful force in a place she isn't wanted. This is how I see God here.
John is a physician, and PERHAPS—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.
Secretly, the narrator believes that she may improve more quickly if her husband weren't a physician. I think she does know to some extent from the very beginning that his prescribed cures and lifestyle changes are doing more harm to her than good. He diagnoses her with "temporary nervous depression" with a "slight hysterical tendency" and places her in confinement. She disagrees with him and her brother, which I think shows she knows deep down that this will lead to her coming undone. I think it's more clear after reading that she mistrusts John from the beginning.
John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wall-paper. I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was BECAUSE of the wall-paper—he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away.
As the narrator distances herself emotionally from John, she is driven further into the paper. At this point, John has brushed off her concerns, ignored her wishes, and isolated her physically and emotionally from himself and everyone she loves. She has attached herself to the only thing available to her, and her obsession is only growing. Now she doesn't even want to leave.
“I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”
Who is "Jane"? Is she referring to Jennie, who helped John trap her? Or is she referring to something else, maybe a spirit or someone from her past? This was startling to read and made the last part of this story even more unsettling.
And now what I have briefly sketched in large outline let me on coming pages tell again in many ways, with loving emphasis and deeper detail, that men may listen to the striving in the souls of black folk.
The last sentence of Du Bois's chapter sharply contrasts the last paragraph of Adams's chapter. Du Bois writes with "loving emphasis" while Adams's pen has become "a sort of blind-man's dog." Adams is giving up, while Du Bois is pressing on. What does this say about Adams's cause in comparison to Du Bois's? Du Bois carries clear purpose in his writing, making Adams's problems seem almost self-contrived.
Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.
This reminds me of the moment that Adam's saw the Dynamo, the moment his world shifted and his "new education" began. What Du Bois experienced in this moment changed his outlook on life, permanently altering his identity, his path, and his perception of himself.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
Du Bois's decision to include another writer's words reminds me of Adams in a way. They go about it differently, but both writers make a point to borrow from the work of someone else. Adams quotes Dante, but Du Bois quotes someone from his own time period. I wonder if there is significance to this?
he turned from the Virgin to the Dynamo
The author sees a disconnect between science and emotion?
yet his mind was ready to feel the force of all, though the rays were unborn and the women were dead.
"The best chemist" is a scientist, probably someone who doesn't think like Adams. Someone who wouldn't hear the "humming warning" from the dynamo. He's just ready to feel the force of it all, maybe like Langley?
Where he saw sequence, other men saw something quite different, and no one saw the same unit of measure.
Adams has a different perspective than most of his peers? Like earlier with the dynamo. He sees patterns and symbolism where other people don't.
The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm’s length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring–scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair’s-breadth further for respect of power–while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame.
It seems like the sight of the dynamo cheapens the meaning of life for Adams? It has power so infinite one feels inclined to pray to it. The planet seems less impressive in its presence. He also says is "hums an audible warning." Does he fear it?
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts. Adams had looked at most of the accumulations of art in the storehouses called Art Museums; yet he did not know how to look at the art exhibits of 1900. He had studied Karl Marx and his doctrines of history with profound attention, yet he could not apply them at Paris.
Why is Adams struggling to apply his knowledge here? What is different about the 1900 Paris Exposition for him? In the first sentence of the chapter it says Adams is "aching to absorb knowledge, and helpless to find it." Langley seems to do this without issue.
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride, West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties, Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps, Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch,
American landscapes, the past meeting the present, time, history, and the need for transformation. "West Virginia to Kiss My Ass" to me says it doesn't matter where, everyone can feel it.
From my five arms and all my hands, From all my white sins forgiven, they feed, From my car passing under the stars,
It comes from everything. It grows without reason, and it grows without stopping. Maybe this is a prayer? With every generation, with every action, the lion grows.
They Lion grow.
Thinking of power, pride, strength, courage, and phrases like "the proud lion," "king of the animals."