Poetry

(c) Calmness

The speaker in 'If I Should Die' faces the thought of death with quiet acceptance, treating it as a natural and peaceful end rather than something to fear or resent.

(c) Quatrain

'The Three Knights' is written in the ballad style, and each of its stanzas consists of four lines with a regular rhyme scheme, so the stanza pattern used is the quatrain.

The title Lord! Make Me a Sheep is a paradoxical and ironic prayer, and it carries the main idea of the poem.

Literal meaning. The speaker prays to God to turn him into a sheep. A sheep is a humble, grass-eating animal, the opposite of what a proud human being would normally wish to become. This surprising contrast catches the reader's attention at once.

Irony. The speaker does not really want an animal's body; he wants to escape the burden of being human. Human beings have reason, ambition and conscience, but these bring greed, anxiety, envy and suffering. The sheep lives simply, eating, resting and following the flock. So the wish is really a cry of weariness at the complexity and cruelty of human life.

Satire on society. The title also criticises modern, materialistic society. People who call themselves civilised lie, cheat and exploit one another, while the sheep harms no one. By preferring to be a sheep, the speaker shows how unattractive human behaviour has become.

Spiritual surrender. The tone of the title is that of a prayer. The speaker humbly turns to God, asking not for wealth or power but for release from the pain of thought and from a corrupt world.

Conclusion: The title works at several levels, literal, ironic, satirical and spiritual, and sums up the poem's theme: the longing for simplicity and peace in a world made unhappy by human selfishness.

(iv) During spring in order to fix the wall.

The poem states, "And on a day we meet to walk the line / And set the wall between us once again," and earlier specifies the time as spring: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall, / That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it... / But at spring mending-time we find them there." The neighbours meet in spring to repair the wall.

(iii) Melancholic

The tone of Wole Soyinka's poem 'Abiku' is best described as melancholic. The spirit-child speaks of its repeated cycle of birth, death, and return to the spirit world, and the poem is marked by sorrow, resignation, and detachment. While the situation involves suffering, especially for the grieving mother, the speaker's perspective is more reflective and sorrowful than intensely painful. "Painful" (i) is close but too intense and focuses on suffering rather than the poem's overall tone. "Boastful" (ii) and "Apologetic" (iv) do not fit the poem's dominant tone. Therefore, (iii) Melancholic is the most accurate choice.

The poem retells the old story of King Lear and his three daughters.

Lear, an aged king, decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. He asks each of them to say how much she loves him, intending to give the largest share to the one who loves him best.

The two elder daughters, Goneril and Regan, flatter him with extravagant declarations of love, claiming to love him more than anything in the world. The king is pleased and rewards them. Cordelia, the youngest and most sincere, will not flatter him. She says she loves him as a daughter should, no more and no less. Lear is angry at what he takes for coldness, disowns her and gives her share to her sisters. Cordelia then marries the King of France, who values her honesty.

Once they have the kingdom, the two elder daughters treat their father with contempt. They deny him respect and shelter, and the old king is left wandering, miserable and helpless. He realises too late that he was foolish to trust flattery and to reject Cordelia, the one daughter who truly loved him.

Cordelia learns of her father's plight and comes to his aid with help from France. The poem shows the cruelty of the flatterers, the faithfulness of the honest daughter, and the lesson that pride and blind trust bring ruin, while true love is quiet and loyal.

Critical analysis of "Lord! Make Me a Sheep"

Introduction. The poem takes the form of an ironic prayer. A weary speaker begs God to turn him into a sheep. Behind this strange request lies a sharp criticism of human society and a deep dissatisfaction with human life.

Theme. The central theme is the burden of being human in a materialistic, selfish world. The speaker contrasts the simple, peaceful life of a sheep, which grazes, follows the flock and wants nothing more, with human life, full of ambition, greed, deceit and anxiety. He would rather lose his humanity than live in such a world.

Irony and paradox. It is normally a curse to be reduced to an animal, but the speaker begs for it as a blessing. The phrase "divine animality" is an oxymoron that joins what is holy with what is beastly. This inversion shows how unbearable human life has become.

Satire. The poem satirises a society in which money, competition and cunning matter more than kindness and honesty. It suggests that people who call themselves civilised are in fact less innocent than a sheep.

Symbolism. The sheep stands for innocence, contentment and freedom from desire. It can also suggest blind obedience and herd behaviour, so the speaker's wish is both a longing for peace and a sign of his defeat.

Tone and language. The tone moves from pleading to desperation ("Come! Please! Make me a sheep right now."). The language is simple, direct and conversational, and the urgent imperatives create the sense of a person who can bear no more. The prayer form gives the poem an outward humility that sharpens its irony.

Evaluation. The poem is effective because it expresses a serious protest through a simple, startling image. It offers no remedy and ends in escape rather than action, but this hopelessness is itself part of the message: a society that makes thoughtful people long to be sheep has gone wrong. The poem remains a powerful comment on modern human life.

(iv) if she would marry him.

In the poem, the third knight asks the lady whether she would marry him.

(ii) King Lear and his Three Daughters.

This is the narrative poem: it tells the story of Lear, his three daughters and the consequences of his choice. "No Second Troy" and "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways" are lyric poems, and "Lord Make Me a Sheep" is an ironic prayer.

In "No Second Troy", W. B. Yeats thinks about Maud Gonne, the woman he loved, and about the pain she caused him.

The poem opens with a question: why should he blame her for filling his days with misery? He recalls that she had lately urged ignorant men to violent action and tried to rouse the poor against the powerful, if only they had courage equal to their desire. Yet he finds it hard to condemn her.

He then explains why. Her mind had a noble simplicity, like a fire, and her beauty was like a tightened bow, a kind that is not natural in an age like his, being high, solitary and stern. Such a woman could not have lived peacefully. He asks what else she could have done, being what she is.

The poem ends by comparing her with Helen, whose beauty brought about the burning of Troy. Yeats asks whether there was another Troy for her to burn. The answer is no, and that is the title: her heroic, destructive spirit belongs to an age of great deeds, but she lives in a smaller, duller age with no worthy stage for her passion.

The poem therefore combines resentment, admiration and sorrow. It excuses her, praises her grandeur and mourns that such greatness has nowhere to go.

Critical analysis of "Kidnapped"

Introduction. "Kidnapped" is a poem about colonial education and cultural loss. The title is surprising, since the "kidnapping" is not a physical abduction but the way a colonial schooling system takes away a person's identity.

Theme. The central theme is cultural assimilation and the loss of identity under colonial rule. The speaker is gradually taken away from his own language, dress, customs and roots and made over in the image of the coloniser. The line "I grew whiter and whiter" shows how he becomes more like the ruling culture and less like himself.

Title and metaphor. The word "kidnapped" turns education into a kind of theft. A person is taken, without understanding it, from home and heritage. The metaphor makes the quiet damage of cultural domination feel violent.

Tone. The tone is ironic, sad and critical. The speaker shows regret at what has been lost, and there is bitterness in the contrast between the learning he has gained and the identity he has surrendered.

Language and technique. The language is plain, which makes the loss feel personal and direct. Colour imagery, "whiter and whiter", stands for the pressure to become like the coloniser. Repetition suggests how the change goes on step by step.

Relevance. The poem speaks to anyone whose education has pulled them away from their own culture. It raises the question of what is gained and what is lost when a people accept the language and values of a foreign power.

Evaluation. The poem's strength is its simple, striking metaphor and its honest feeling. It does not offer an easy answer, but it invites the reader to value cultural roots and to resist forgetting them.

In Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," the speaker identifies two forces that make the stone wall fall apart:

1. Natural, unseen forces The speaker says the wall is broken by something that "doesn't love a wall" — the frozen ground swells under it, and when the thaw comes the upper stones "spill" and "make gaps even two can pass abreast." The sun and frost, the swelling and shrinking of the earth, and the hunters' dogs and the "elves" he jokingly blames all work against the wall. Nature itself, in other words, is the first force: it has no love for barriers and constantly pulls the stones down.

2. Human forces The second force is human. The speaker and his neighbour must walk the line each spring and "set the wall between us once again," replacing the boulders that have fallen. The hunters also break the wall in pursuit of rabbits, and the speaker himself wonders "what I was walling in or walling out." Human activity — repair, trespass, and the very need to keep dividing land — keeps disturbing the wall even as people try to hold it up.

Tones of the speaker The speaker's tone shifts and is deliberately mixed:

• Playful and mischievous: He jokes about "elves" and calls the wall-breaker "something... that wants it down," almost teasing his neighbour's seriousness.
• Sceptical and questioning: He doubts the need for a wall where there are only apple trees and pine trees, asking "Why do they make good neighbours?" and "What am I walling in or walling out?"
• Ironic and reflective: He notes that "good fences make good neighbours" is a saying his neighbour repeats without thinking, and he sees the darkness in it — "He moves in darkness as it seems to me."
• Sympathetic yet firm: He respects his neighbour's tradition but gently challenges it, wishing he could "put a notion in his head."

Thus the two forces — nature's quiet destruction and humanity's restless building and breaking — are presented through a tone that moves between humour, doubt, and quiet criticism, showing the speaker's ambivalence about walls and boundaries.

(d) a spell

In "Mending Wall" the neighbours find that some stones are loaves or balls and will not stay put, so they use a spell: "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!" The speaker uses the spell playfully, and it adds to the poem's light, teasing tone.

(c) contemplative and reflective

The speaker thinks calmly about his own death and what will remain after it. The tone is quiet and accepting, neither bitter nor festive, and it is thoughtful rather than despairing.

"The Three Knights" is a short ballad that tells of three knights who each try to win the love of a lady.

The knights come to her one after another, and each makes a different request. The first asks whether she will be his friend, and the second asks in terms of a lighter, more selfish kind of affection, such as being his delight. The third speaks differently and asks whether she will marry him. In other words, the first two seek pleasure or companionship, while the third offers a lasting, honourable commitment.

The lady listens to each and answers with care. The poem suggests that she values the sincere offer of marriage over the flattering approaches of the others, so the third knight is preferred.

Told in simple language, with quatrain stanzas, dialogue and repetition as in a traditional ballad, the poem conveys that true love means honest commitment and not mere pleasure.

William Wordsworth's "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways" is one of the "Lucy poems". In three short stanzas it mourns a modest young woman who lived unnoticed and died young.

Summary and theme. Lucy lived in a remote place, near the springs of the river Dove, and few people knew or praised her. She was "a maid whom there were none to praise / And very few to love". She has died, and only the speaker truly feels the loss: "oh, / The difference to me!" The central theme is the contrast between the world's indifference and the speaker's deep grief, together with the beauty of a simple, natural life.

Stanza by stanza.

1. The first stanza introduces Lucy as living in solitude, in places not trodden by crowds, and untouched by fame.
2. The second compares her to a violet half hidden by a mossy stone, and to a single star shining in the sky. The violet suggests modesty and delicacy, while the star suggests her rare beauty. Both are natural images that show she was lovely though unseen.
3. In the last stanza her death is told plainly: she is "in her grave", and the quiet end of the poem carries the speaker's personal grief.

Style and technique.

• Simile and imagery: the violet and the star come from nature, matching Wordsworth's view that the humble and natural are precious.
• Simple diction: plain language gives sincerity, in keeping with Wordsworth's theory of poetry in common speech.
• Form: three quatrains in an ABAB rhyme scheme and short lines, giving a song-like, restrained tone.
• Contrast: the world's ignorance against the speaker's love.
• Understatement: the grief is stated briefly, which makes it more affecting.

Evaluation. The poem is a good example of Romantic poetry: it values nature, ordinary people, emotion and simplicity. Its limitation is that Lucy herself remains vague, but this vagueness makes the poem universal. It is a moving, compact elegy for a quiet life.

(d) The Three Knights

"The Three Knights" is a traditional narrative poem written in the ballad form — it uses the typical ballad features of simple language, dialogue, repetition and a refrain-like structure to tell the story of three knights and a lady. The other three poems are lyric or dramatic-lyric poems, not ballads.

(d) he got assimilated in the western culture.

The line is a metaphor for the loss of native identity: the speaker, "kidnapped" by the English education system, gradually loses his own language, dress and customs and is absorbed into western ways — growing "whiter and whiter" means becoming more and more like the coloniser's culture rather than simply becoming learned or happy.

In "If I Should Die", the speaker imagines the moment of his own death and meets it with calm acceptance.

He thinks of what will happen when he is gone, and he asks those who love him not to grieve too much. Death is not presented as something terrible. It is a natural end that comes to everyone, and he faces it without fear, bitterness or anger.

The poem turns from the fear of dying to the memory that remains behind. The speaker wishes to be remembered kindly and hopes that something of him will live on in the hearts of those he leaves.

The tone is quiet, gentle and peaceful, and the language is simple. The poem comforts the reader by suggesting that death need not be met with terror, and that a life well lived and a love shared leave something lasting behind.

In these lines the speaker, tired of the cunning and selfishness of human society, begs God to turn him into a sheep at once. The phrase "divine animality" is an oxymoron — "animality" suggests a low, beastly state, while "divine" suggests something holy. The speaker calls animal life divine because, in his view, a sheep lives without greed, deceit, ambition or the urge to exploit others. He asks Providence (God) to be kind and "seize" him quickly, as if he cannot bear to remain human a moment longer. The repeated imperatives — "Come! Please!" — and the blunt demand "Make me a sheep right now" show his desperation and impatience. He is not asking for wealth, status or knowledge; he is asking to be released from the burden of being human.

The speaker's longing speaks directly to our materialistic age. In a society driven by money, competition and endless consumption, people measure worth by possessions and success. Relationships are often transactional, and honesty is sacrificed for profit. The sheep, by contrast, is content with grass and water, harms no one, and feels no envy or ambition. Its simplicity is what the speaker calls "divine." His prayer is thus a protest against a world where ambition has replaced innocence and where being clever matters more than being good. He would rather be a harmless, simple animal than a scheming, dissatisfied human being.