Line 1    Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire 
Line 2    Of watching you; and swing me suddenly 
Line 3    Into the shade and loneliness and mire 
Line 4    Of the last land! There, waiting patiently, 
Line 5    One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing, 
Line 6   See a slow light across the Stygian tide, 
Line 7    And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing, 
Line 8   And tremble. And I shall know that you have died. 
Line 9    And watch you, a broad-browed and dream, 
Line 10 Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host, 
Line 11 Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam -  
Line 12 Most individual and bewildering ghost! -  
Line13    And turn, and toss your brown delightful head 
Line14    Amusedly, among the ancient Dead. 

RHETORICAL STANCE

Rupert Brooke presents us with a sort of “future” ENCOMIUM as well as a COMMORATIO on death and the afterlife in “Sonnet”.  The pathetic appeal lies in his presentation and graphic recreation of an “eternal” place where he and his lover will meet, as he feels that they can be lovers for eternity (Lines 1-2, “Death will find me long before I tire of watching you.”)  Brooke logically appeals to the reader by attempting to imagine (for us) what happens after death, that there is an afterlife where one may look for his/her loved ones.  As Brooke contains these lines in the sonnet form, he ethically appeals to us in the form of a very traditional love poem that, written out, contains only three sentences (and I will refer to the sentences as well as the lines), but whose rhetorical stylings compose a convincing romantic appeal overall to the reader.

SHOW ME

Line 1: EXCLAMATIO: “Oh!”

Line 1: APOSTROPHE and PERSONIFICATION:  “Oh! Death will find me…”

Line 2: APOSTROPHE: “Of watching you;” (in reference to his lover)

Line 3: TRICOLON, AUXESIS and POLYSYDETON: “Into the shade and loneliness and mire”

Lines 2-3: ALLITERATION: “…and swing me suddenly into the shade…”

Line 4: METONYMY: “…the last land!” (in reference to the afterlife)

Lines 4-8:  PARALLELISM: “…I’ll feel a cool wind blowing…see a slow light across the Stygian tide…hear the Dead about me stir…”

Line 7: OXYMORON: “And hear the Dead about me stir,…”

Lines 7-9: POLYSYNDETON: “And hear…And tremble…And I shall know…And watch…”

Lines 7 and 14: PERSONIFICATION: “The Dead” (which he capitalizes in both instances)

Lines 5-8: ENERGIA:  (Graphic description of the afterlife).

5 One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing, 
6 See a slow light across the Stygian tide, 
7 And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing, 
8 And tremble. And I shall know that you have died. 

Line 10: POLYPTOTON:  “Pass as light as ever, through the lightless host,…”

 Line 12: AUXESIS and TETRACOLON CLIMAX: “Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam-…”

SO WHAT

As the major metaphors of the poem are death and the afterlife, Brooke uses the graphic ENERGIA in lines 4 through 8 to describe his envisioning of what “could be” in the future.  The use of METONYMY demonstrates the distance that he feels between what he imagines and conceives and what may truly be in the after life:  “the last land”.  As he isn’t quite sure what to expect, Brooke “laundry lists” for us what he conceives through a repeated use of POLYSYNDETON.  However, he adheres to the idea that before the after life, one must go through a sort of passage or a door, “…the lightless host”, which pulls together the metaphor of the afterlife being a PLACE and not a state of being.  In this place, Brooke will meet his lover, for whom he has given a plethora of APPOSITIVES, never truly telling us exactly who she is:  “a broad-browed and smiling dream”, “Most individual and bewildering ghost”.  The mysterious nature of this lover points to the possibility that the relationship that they have may be a sort of tryst or love affair, which makes envisioning their being together in the  “afterlife” a more plausible reality than the one that they may possibly be living now behind the scenes.  As well, the pathetic appeal of this poem stems from not only his desire for his lover in the afterlife, but also facing death and this feeling of helplessness against “the end”.  Death (in its PERSONIFIED form) is going to take Brooke to task by basically throwing him into the afterlife:   “…swing me suddenly into the shade…” This ALLITERATIVE description which Brooke follows with a descriptive AUXESIS imagines “Death” as a combative force that takes the lifeless body of Brooke (the alliteration of “esses” demonstrating a sort of exhaling of spirit and soul) and throws it in a place that is increasingly wretched: “…shade and loneliness and mire of the last land!”  Brooke nicely balances the three sentences by placing a major PARALLELISM in the second sentence (possibly a tricolon, but not quite) and uses words that describe the senses of someone who isn’t dead:  “feel”, “see” and “hear”.  As the first sentence of the sonnet reads that he is going to be taken helplessly by Death, the second sentence counteracts that notion that he is “dead”; instead, Brooke is alive, “waiting patiently” for his lover.  This idea ties in with his OXYMORON that the “Dead” actually don’t just lie there…they “stir”.  The last sentence of the poem emphasizes Brooke’s finally seeing his lover alight into the afterworld and this event is built up through a TETRACOLON AUXESIS (because he can’t wait to see her) that describes her bewilderment at her predicament of being dead:  “…ponder, start, and sway, and gleam-…” Much like Brooke, his lover will be sort of “amused” at their location.  Why?  Because being “dead” isn’t really so bad after all, as it appears that their love can be more alive in the afterworld than it is on dry land here.

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Heather L. Glover

My Mother

Claude McKay

1         The dawn departs, the morning is begun,

2         The Trades come whispering from off the seas,

3         The fields of corn are golden in the sun,

4         The dark-brown tassels fluttering in the breeze;

5         The bell is sounding and children pass,

6         Frog-leaping, skipping, shouting, laughing shrill,

7         Down the red road, over the pasture-grass,

8         Up to the schoolhouse crumbling on the hill.

9         The older folk are at their peaceful toil,

10     Some pulling up the weeds, some plucking corn,

11     And others breaking up the sun-baked soil.

12     Float, faintly scented breeze, at early morn

13     Over the earth where mortals so and reap—

14     Beneath its breast my mother lies asleep. 

The poem opens with an unconventional concept—usually, dawn is thought to come or to break, not to depart.  Line 3, however, contains a cliché—“golden” is often used to describe the light of the sun, harvests, and fields. 

At first glance, the poem may appear to employ a running style as the speaker lists countless actions that seem to have nothing in common (this is also an example of accumulation).  Upon reading the last line, the periodic style of the poem becomes evident—the subject of the poem remains unclear until the very end.   Without the title, one would never know this poem is about someone’s mother until the very end.  The final line of the poem is also an excellent example of kairos; with all of the light-hearted activity contained in the first thirteen lines, you never see the last line coming.  In fact, line 14 offers a paradox:  while the rest of the poem is bustling with life, the last line speaks of stillness and death.  Reserving the death of his mother for the last line is definitely an attempt by the speaker/poet to generate sympathy from readers. 

The structure and imagery of the poem alludes to Genesis 3:19—“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”  The first quatrain talks of earthly phenomena such as the dawn (line 1) and the trade winds (line 2); it also speaks of tilling the earth, as God warned Adam all men would have to do until their deaths because of Original Sin.  The second quatrain describes children and the third “older folk” (line 9), thus mirroring the natural progression of life.  The second and third quatrains are also an example of antithesis—the speaker devotes about the same number of lines and the same pattern to childhood and old age, two contrasting ideas.   In the last line, the speaker returns to the earth, claiming his mother buried “beneath its breast.” 

Other devices used in this poem include: 

Anaphora and Isocolon:   Lines 1-5 and line 9 all begin with “The,” followed by a noun and its action. 

Oxymoron:  Line 9 (“peaceful toil”) 

Homoioiteleuton:  Occurs throughout the poem (“morning,” “whispering,” “fluttering,” “breaking,” etc.).  This gives the poem a rhythm and makes the activity easy to picture.   It also makes the last line—“Beneath its breast my mother lies asleep”—sound even starker. 

Tetracolon:  Line 6 (“frog-leaping, skipping, shouting, laughing shrill”).  While line 6 is full of verbs, it brings to mind synathroesmus—all of this action is piled up to describe the boisterousness of the schoolchildren. 

Auxesis:  The lines of the poem build upon each other.  The poem begins with intangibles (we cannot really see the dawn departing or the wind whispering), moves on to children at play (something most readers have probably seen before) and old people at work (more serious than the children), and finally ends with death. 

Apostrphe:  Lines 12-13.  The speaker directly addresses the wind, almost seeming to envy it because it can float about the earth while his mother rests eternally. 

Asyndeton:  The entire poem.  Had the speaker employed polysyndeton, the poem would not “flow,” like the wind he describes, but would bump and jerk along.  The poem needs to have an uninterrupted feel so that the poet can deal his blow in the final line. 

Commoratio:  The speaker uses many examples throughout the poem to call attention to activity. 

Energia:  Lines 5-8.  Instead of merely describing the children as “playful” or “noisy,” the speaker uses terms that allow the reader to see what the children are doing.
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Chris McCormick

"If I were loved, as I desire to be" Alfred Tennyson

1. If I were loved, as I desire to be,

2. What is there in the great sphere of the earth,

3. And range of evil between death and birth,

4. That I should fear,--if I were loved by thee?                           

5. All the inner, all the outer world of pain                                    

6. Clear Love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine

7. As I have heard that, somewhere in the main,

8. Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine.

9. 'T were joy, not fear, claspt hand-in-hand with thee,

10. To wait for death--mute--careless of all ills,

11. Apart upon a mountain, tho' the surge

12. Of some new deluge from a thousand hills

13. Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge

14. Below us, as far on as eye could see.

In this sonnet, Tennyson pathetically conforms to the old cliché that love concurs all, even a biblical style flood. All Tennyson needs for his arc is a woman. As well as bluntly saying love will concur all evil, Tennyson manipulates a series of images in nature metaphorically in an Asiatic style.

Epicrisis
Circumstance in which a speaker quotes a passage and comments on it.
While Tennyson does not directly quote a passage, he makes direct allusions to the Old Testament. I’m stretching it a bit, but this is a quasi-epicrisis.

Commoratio
Repetition of a point several times in different words.

Tennyson dwells on the point that love takes precedence over fear. 

1-4) Simply put, with love there is nothing to fear.

5-6) Love defeats all that is fearful

9) With love, fear will become joy.

10) With love, death can be faced fearlessly and with confidence.

14) With our love, we will look down on all that is fearful.

Apposition
Placing side-by-side two coordinate elements, the second of which serves as an explanation or modification of the first.

Throughout the sonnet, Tennyson uses appositives to elaborate his thoughts. This also helps build the commoratio. 

Asyndeton
Omission of conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses.

In line 5, Tennyson disregards conjunctions.

Rhetorical question
A figure wherein rhetors ask questions to which they and (presumably) the audience already know the answers.  A question asked merely for effect with no answer expected.

Erotesis [erotema]
Rhetorical question implying strong affirmation or denial.

Lines 2-4 asks a rhetorical question that is intended to affirm his “love conquers all” thesis and establish his confidence in love. 

Asiatic
A prolix or highly ornamented style.

The entire poem is highly ornamented by far-fetched metaphors (catechresis) and grandiose terms.
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Alicia Ferrell

William Wordsworth, THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US

1 The world is too much with us; late and soon,
2 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
3 Little we see in Nature that is ours;
4 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
5 This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
6 The winds that will be howling at all hours,
7 And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
8 For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
9 It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
10 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
11 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
12 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
13 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
14 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. 

The speaker in this sonnet is addressing his fear for the world, which, he believes, has become too materialistic.  In the octave, the speaker describes how we no longer find our joy in nature, but find our happiness in material things.  As a result of our materialism, we are no longer in “tune” with the world.  We fail to acknowledge where our power comes from, and are no longer moved by the natural world.  In the sestet, the speaker describes his wish to return to the days of the Pagan, even though their beliefs are outdated, where he would be happier because they valued nature.   

ETHOS:
In the octave of the poem, the speaker uses the pronoun “We.” The use of “We,” gives the speaker authority to speak on the problem because he is affected by the materialism of the world also.  The shift to “I” in the sestet shows the separating of the speaker from the materialistic world.   

METAPHOR:
Line 4: “We have given our hearts away”

Line 8: “We are out of tune”

The use of these metaphors shows that we are missing an essential part of our life (our hearts) and as a result of this lack; we are not living our lives to the fullest. 

COMMORATIO:

Lines 2, 4 and 8:  The speaker is emphasizing the seriousness of the problem. 

HOMOITELEUTON:
Line 2 – Getting and spending:  The repetition of the ending mirrors the way in which life has become monotonous.  It also drives home the futility of the materialistic lifestyle. You can almost hear the exasperation in the tone of the speaker. 

HYPERBATON:
Line 7: “And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;”

Line 10: “A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn”

ASYNDETON:
Lines 1-6:  This lack of connectors emphasizes our lack of connection from the world in which we are living.

POLYSYNDETON:
Lines 9-14:  The use of more connectors would seem to indicate a hope for a return to the connection found in the appreciation of nature.   

PERSONIFICATION:
Line 5:  “This sea that bears her bosom to the moon”  

METONOMY: “Bosom” for waves. (?)

 This serves to humanize the natural world; especially its use of the image of the sea baring its “bosom,” which may evoke the idea of motherhood (Mother Nature).    

SIMILE:
Line 7: “And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;”

This allows us to view nature as something fragile and beautiful; something we should protect and admire.  This is also a nice contrast to the line before this; “The winds that will be howling at all hours” (6).  Together they show the power of nature, as well as the fragility of nature.   

PARALLELISM OR ISOCOLON:
Line 5-6:  ‘This sea that bears her bosom to the moon / The winds that will be howling at all hours.” This works to show both the gentleness and force of nature.

PERIPHRASIS:
Line 13-14:  “Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; / Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”  Because Proteus is able to see into the future, and son of Neptune the sea god, and Triton, also son of Neptune, is often depicted as sounding a trumpet, this could stand for sending a message of what the future will look like if we continue to ignore the importance of nature. 

SPREZZATURA:
Line 9:  “Great God!”  The dashes before this line indicate a thoughtful pause before this exclamation.  (Dr. Nordquist helped out with this one)
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English 5730 is taught by Dr. Richard Nordquist.
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Savannah, Georgia 31419
912-921-5991