#2 Oakley Julian

Oscar Wilde’s To Milton

1. Milton!  I think thy spirit hath passed away
2. From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
3. This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
4. Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey
5. And the age changed unto a mimic play
6. Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
7. For all out pomp and pageantry and powers
8. We are but fit to delve the common clay,
9. Seeing this little isle on which we stand,
10. This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
11. By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
12. Who love her not; Dear God!  Is this the land
13. Which bare a triple empire in her hand
14. When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!

Wilde is commenting on the Wildean England to that of the notable 17^th writer John Milton.  This oozes with historical references to Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth, and Wilde seems to be speaking with a tone of disappointment in the current condition.

Line 1   – Apostrophe “Milton!”

            -  Alliteration “think thy”

Line 2   – Antihimera “high-embattled”

Line 3 – Metonymy

Line 4   – Hyperbaton “ashes dull and grey”

Line 5   – Assonance “age changed

            - Pleonasm “mimic play”

Line 6   – Alliteration “Wherein we waste”

            - Paranomasia “too-crowded”

Line 7   – Alliteration “pomp and pageantry and powers”

Line 10 – Apposition “this sea-lion of the sea”

Line 11 – Categoria “ignorant demagogues”

Line 12 – Apostrophe “Dear God!”

Line 13 – Ambiguity

Lines 12-13 – Personification “the land” “in her hand”

Lines 12.5 – 14 – Epilexsis

Lines 6,8,13,14 – Alliteration “Wherein” “We” “Which” “When”

 The whole thing has a Commaratio feel to it.
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#3 Kirsten Gilliam Mullis

If We Must Die

Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

⁵If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

¹⁰Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! 

This sonnet rallies humankind to not die like cowards.  If we must die, which at some point we all will, we should die fighting and not sitting back idly or fearful.  This sonnet drives home the fact that we all have an open grave waiting for us, but we must not die without putting up a fight.  This sonnet could be seen as a EXUSCITATIO in an effort to move readers to feel the same about death as the rhetor.

Rhetorical Devices 

COMMORATIO 

Various ways of saying “die”

Line 6 “blood may not be shed”

Line 11 “before us lies the open grave”

Line 14 “Pressed to the wall, dying”

DIACOPE 

Line 1, 5, “die”
 

ENERGIA 

Line 1-3 “If we must die, let it not be like hogs/Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,/While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs 

Line 13-14 “Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,/Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!”

EPIMONE 

Line 1 “If we must die”

Line 5 “If we must die”

HOMOIOITELEUTON 

Line 2 “hunted and penned”

Line 14 “dying, but fighting”

HYPERBATON 

Line 12 “What though before us lies”

HYPERBOLE 

Line 1 “If we must die, let it not be like hogs”

Line 11 “And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!”

METAPHOR 

Line 7 “the monsters we defy”

ONOMATOPOEIA 

Line 3 “bark”

POLYPTOTON 

Line 1 “die”

Line 8 “dead”

Line 11 “death”

Line 14 “dying” 

RHETORICAL QUESTION 

Line 12 “What though before us lies the open grave?” 

RUNNING STYLE 

Lines 1-4 “If we must die, let it not be like hogs/Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,/While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,/Making their mock at our accursed lot.” 

SIMILE 

Line 1 “If we must die, let it not be like hogs” 

SO WHAT?
 The purpose of many of these devices (COMMORATIO, RHETORICAL QUESTION, RUNNING STYLE, AND EPIMONE) are to convey the sense of urgency the rhetor feels about if we must die, we should do so fighting back against death.  McKay uses SIMILE by comparing us to hogs, who usually die by hunters in an inglorious death.  No person would want to die that way.  By opening the poem with this simile, McKay automatically brings the reader to his side of the argument since the reader doesn’t want to identify with a hog.  His use of the RHETORICAL QUESTION at the end of the poem once again reminds readers that they have nothing to lose in life since nothing but death awaits them in their future.  He uses POLYPTOTON to keep reminding readers about death as well as the fact that it is inevitable.  By making this poem an EXUSCITATIO, McKay moves readers to feel the same way he does about dying. 
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Tanja Supon 

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

England in 1819 

              1An old, mad, blind, despis'd, and dying king,

              2Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

              3Through public scorn--mud from a muddy spring,

              4Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,

              5But leech-like to their fainting country cling,

              6Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,

              7A people starv'd and stabb'd in the untill'd field,

              8An army, which liberticide and prey

              9Makes as a two-edg'd sword to all who wield,

            10Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay,

            11Religion Christless, Godless--a book seal'd,

            12A Senate--Time's worst statute unrepeal'd,

            13Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may

            14Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

This sonnet is discussing the reform in England during the early 1800s.  Shelley also describes the horrible deaths that many have acquired during the Peterloo Massacre. Which the massacre is slightly mentioned in the sonnet in line 7, but it is under laid (called an apophasis).

Line 1 synathroesmus- “An old, mad, blind, despis’d, and dying king”      because it is a comical description full of adjectives describing George III, which died in 1820.

Line  3 aposiopesis- “public scorn—“ because its not a complete thought.  Also in this line there is a ploce, “mud from a muddy spring”.

Line 6 tricolon- “Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow”

Line 7 apophasis- “a people starv’d and stabb’d in the untill’d field” because its an understatement about the Massacre

Line 12 asyndeton -“A senate—Time’s worst statue unrepeal’d“  its like an interruption.

Line 14 apostrophe-“Burst, …” because it breaks off before the last scene.

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"Only until this cigarette is ended"

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Kasey Ray

1           Only until this cigarette is ended,

2          A little moment at the end of all,

3          While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,

4          And in the firelight to a lance extended,

5          Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,

6          The broken shadow dances on the wall,

7          I will permit my memory to recall

8          The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.

9          And then adieu,--farewell!--the dream is done.

10        Yours is a face of which I can forget

11         The colour and the features, every one,

12         The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;

13         But in your day this moment is the sun

14         Upon a hill, after the sun has set. 

The rhetorical situation is that the writer is coming out of a dream state into reality, cutting her lover’s memory out of her mind.  She does the opposite of using pathos to make her point.  She actually takes all the emotional feelings she once had and uses the image of the time it takes to smoke a cigarette as the length of time it will take to forget her lover.  The parallel is used again at the end, but the second time she also adds the sun for a comparison of putting out the light (cigarette and the sun). 

Line 2, 5           ALLITERATION-“little moment at” and “bizarrely with the jazzing     music”

Line 9               APOSIOPESIS and PARENTHESIS-“adieu--farewell!--the dream is done” 

This is the awakening to reality.

Line 12 ELLIPSIS-“the words not ever, and the smiles not yet;”

                        This shows what actions meant the most to her, which undermines her

                        strength to overcome her lover’s memory.

Line 5                ONOMATOPOEIA or at least EPITHET-“the jazzing music blended” This either describes what music is playing or indicates the type of music is playing

Line 6                PERSONIFICATION-“the broken shadow dances”

                        This gives life to another image of light in this image.

Lines 1-14        The TENOR is the time it will take to forget her lover, and the VEHICLE is use of the cigarette burning and the sun setting on a hill.
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P. Beavers

England in 1819

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

1    An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;

2    Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

3    Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;

4    Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,

5    But leechlike to their fainting country cling

6    Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

7    A people starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field;

8    An army, whom liberticide and prey

9    Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;

10    Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;

11    Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;

12    A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—

13    Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may

14    Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

 RHETORICAL SITUATION: 

This sonnet exposes the deplorable situation that English Society is facing.   

ACCUMULATION

The sonnet gathers a number of concerns in England which at the time was an issue presented to parliament as the “Condition of England Question.” 

HOMOIOITELEUTON Line 1 and Line 7

This rhetorical device is used in the beginning of both of the two sentences in the poem.  There is a hard “d” sound that creates a drumming effect that foreshadows the army in line eight.  The drumming sound is also the clang of thunder on the “tempestuous day” in line fourteen. 

ANALOGY

Line 4: Rulers as leeches

Line 11:   Religion as a book sealed or the closing of the Bible

Line 14:   Revolution as a storm

Line 11-13:  All of the social and religious injustices make a grave and kill the spirit of men. 

CATACHRESIS

The first metaphor that appears is in the first sentence (lines 2-5) is the aristocracy as a murky pool of water. 

Line 2: The princes are dregs (sediment) that ironically flow. 

Line 3: The princes are “mud form a muddy spring” this is their polluted royal bloodline.  

Line 4: The rulers are leeches that parasitically take from the country that they have been given the divine right to rule.

Line 10: “Golden and sanguine laws” can be seen as valiant (i.e. the Golden Rule) but they are not because they “tempt and slay”  

AUXESIS

Line 4: Rulers progressively lose their humanity as they are further removed from the people until they eventually become parasites in line 5. 

DIACOPE AND POLYSYNDETON

Line 4: The devices combined really drive home the idea of the people’s alienation from their government. 

POLYPTOTON

Line 3: Springs are usually clean and crisp but princes come from polluted springs (poor lineage) 

PERSONIFICATION

Line 10:   The laws “tempt and slay” 

ALLITERATION

Line 6: “Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.” 

AMBIGUITY

Lines 4-6:   Unsure of who exactly is dropping “blind in blood, without a blow” signifying that We are unsure who will give out first, the leechlike rulers or the country.

Line 10:   Whom do the laws “tempt and slay?”   Is this happening to men or is the injustice to the  ideals that men have about the roles of government. 

PARADOXLine 2: Dregs are sediment or what is usually the undesirable discard and does not normally flow but gets left behind

Line 6:   People starve and die in fields that are fruitful. 

METONYMYLines 8-9:  The army, as a collective for the king, wields a collective sword of “liberticide and  prey” just as the King wields the army.
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English 5730 is taught by Dr. Richard Nordquist.
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Savannah, Georgia 31419
912-921-5991