Stop all the Clocks W.H. Auden Post-reading LEARNING CHECK
No study aids. 1. Vocabulary and text revision 1. Name as many adjectives that define sadness as you can think of. Which of these best characterize(s) the mood of the poem? 2. What animals are mentioned in the text? 3. Complete the first and last lines of the poem: a) Stop all the _________________ b) For nothing now can _______________________ WIDER CONTEXTS
1. Literary Context: genre: sonnet Which features, e.g. metre, rhyme, theme, does this poem share with a sonnet? Why do you think Auden has chosen sonnet features for this particular poem?
2. Literary context: texts by a different author: Thomas Hardy, “The Voice” and “After a Journey”. Compare Auden’s poem and one of these poems by Thomas Hardy, “After a Journey” and “The Voice”.
© Gyldendal, 2012
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Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was born and grew up in Dorchester in southwest England. He was trained as an architect, but soon devoted all his time to writing poetry and novels. After the hostile reception of his novel Jude the Obscure (1896), he stopped writing novels and spent the last thirty years of his life writing poetry. Hardy met his first wife, Emma Gifford, while visiting Cornwall to restore a church and they married in 1874. The marriage was long but the later years of Hardy’s married life with Emma were unhappy. After her death in 1912, Hardy made a trip to Cornwall where he revisited the places associated with their courtship, and he wrote over a hundred poems about their relationship. This sequence of poems has been characterized as one of the most intimate and moving sequences of love poems in English. “The Voice” and “After a Journey” appeared in Poems of 1912-13.Hardy remarried in 1914.
The Voice WOMAN much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair. Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown! Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here, You being ever consigned to wan wistlessness, Heard no more again far or near?
Gloser gown kjole listless mat, slap mead = meadow eng be consigned to være henvist til wan wistlessness in the original text Hardy wrote existlessness; later he changed it to wan wistlessness wan bleg wistlessness det at man ikke kan ænse noget falter vakle ooze sive langsomt thorn tjørn, tornebusk
Thus I; faltering forward, Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward, And the woman calling.
© Gyldendal, 2012
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COMPREHENSION AND ANALYSIS
1. 2. 3. 4.
Where is the speaker and who is he talking to? What does he hear and what does he see? How does the form and rhythm of the last stanza reflect the content? Characterize the tone of each stanza. Is it a tone of hope longing shock bewilderment desolation despair happiness yearning disillusion loss optimism remorse …? 5. What is the theme of the poem?
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After a Journey Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost; Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me? Up the cliff, down, till I'm lonely, lost, And the unseen waters' ejaculations awe me. Where you will next be there's no knowing, Facing round about me everywhere, With your nut-coloured hair, And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going. Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last; Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you; What have you now found to say of our past Scanned across the dark space wherein I have lacked you? Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division? Things were not lastly as firstly well With us twain, you tell? But all's closed now, despite Time's derision. I see what you are doing: you are leading me on To the spots we knew when we haunted here together, The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone At the then fair hour in the then fair weather, And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago, When you were all aglow, And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!
Gloser whither where whim lune påfund ejacu´lation lyden af vandets sprøjten awe skræmme flush rødmen haunt opholdssted scan se di´vision splittelse,uenighed twain = two de´rision spot mist tåge fair smuk hollow hul a´glow stråle af lykke frail skrøbelig flit flagre, dukke op og forsvinde waked der er vågnet op preen pudse sig, glatte sine fjer vanish forsvinde lour se mørk og truende ud shutter skodde Pentargan bay in Cornwall
Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see, The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily; Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me, For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily. Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours, The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again! I am just the same as when Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers. Pentargan Bay
© Gyldendal, 2012
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COMPREHENSION AND ANALYSIS
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Where is the speaker? Why? And to whom is he talking? Why isn’t the speaker in control of his actions? How does he feel about this loss of control? What is the effect of the words “years”, “dead scenes” and “the dark space” in stanza 2? Explain the expressions “Time’s derision” (line 16) and “Life lours” (line 29). What happens to the “voiceless ghost” (line 1) in the poem? How important is the setting (both time and place) to the speaker’s experience? Would you say that the poem is a monologue or a conversation? State your reasons. Characterize the tone of each stanza. Is it a tone of hope longing shock bewilderment desolation despair happiness yearning disillusion loss optimism remorse …? 10. What is the speaker’s quest? Is it successful? 11. What is the theme of the poem? 3. Literary context: text by a different author: Roger McGough: “Stop All the Cars” Read Roger McGough’s poem “Stop All the Cars!” in Roger McGough: The Way Things Are, Penguin 1999. Is this a parody of Auden’s poem? Why/ why not?
© Gyldendal, 2012
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