Man with the Hoe

PARADISE LOST
1. Dignity, reserve and stateliness
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse (i. 1–6)
2. Sonorous, orotund voice
O thou that, with surpassing glory crown'd
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god
Of this new World. (iv. 32–34)
3. Inversion of the natural order of words and phrases
Ten paces huge
He back recoil'd. (vi. 193–94)

"temperate vapours bland" (v. 5)
"heavenly form Angelic" (ix. 457-58)
"unvoyageable gulf obscure" (x. 366)
4. The omission of words not necessary to the sense
And where their weakness, how attempted best,
By force or subtlety. (ii. 357–58)
5. Parenthesis and opposition
Their song was partial, but the harmony
(What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?)
Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet
(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense)
Others apart sat on a hill retired (ii. 552–57)
6. The use of one part of speech for another
"with gems . . . rich emblazed", "grinned horrible" (adjective used as adverb)
"Heaven's azure" or "the vast of Heaven" (adjective used as noun)
"without disturb they took alarm"; "the place of her retire." (verbs used as nouns)
May serve to better us and worse our foes (adjective used as verb)
Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill (verb, adjective employed in participal sense)
"fuell'd entrails," "his con-sorted Eve," "roses bushing round." (substantive used as verb).
7. Vocabulary
Archaic words from Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare: "erst," "grunsel," "welkin," "frore," "lore," "grisly," "ken" etc.
Unusual Words from Greek or Latin: "dulcet," "panoplie," "sapience," "nocent," "congratulant" etc.
Words employed in senses obsolete to the eighteenth century: "the secret top Of Oreb," "a singèd bottom all in-volved With stench," "tempt an abyss," "his uncouth way"
8. The introduction into a comparatively short passage of proper names in number, not necessary to the sense, but adding richness, color, and imaginative suggestiveness
And what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son,
Begirt with British and Armoric knights;
And all who since, baptised or infidel, jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban,
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond;
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia. (i. 579–87)
9. Unusual compound epithets
"Sail-broad vans," "high-climbing hill," "arch-chemic sun," "half-rounding guards," "night-warbling bird," "love-labour'd song"

Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”
- Published 1842
Our world is changing and evolving at an astounding rate. Within the last 200 years, we have seen two World Wars and countless disputes over false borders created by colonialists, slavery, and every horrid form of human suffering imaginable!! Human lifestyles and cultures are changing every minute. While our grandparents and ancestors were growing up, do you ever think they imagined the world we live in today? What is to come is almost inconceivable to us now. In this world, the only thing we can be sure of is that things will change. With all of these transformations occurring, it is a wonder that a great poet like Robert Browning may write words so many years ago, that are still relevant to you and I in today's modern society. Browning’s first dramatic monologue “My last duchess” was written during the Italian Renaissance when egotism, marriage and aristocracy influenced the society.
The monologue is loosely based on historical events involving Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, who lived in the 16th century. The Duke is the reciter of the monologue, and tells us he is entertaining an emissary who has come to negotiate the Duke’s marriage (he has recently been widowed) to the daughter of another powerful family. As he shows the visitor through his palace, he stops before a portrait of the late Duchess, apparently a young and lovely girl. The Duke begins reminiscing about the portrait sessions, then about the Duchess herself. His musings give way to a diatribe on her disgraceful behaviour: he claims she flirted with everyone and did not appreciate his “gift of a nine-hundred-years- old name.” As his monologue continues, the reader realizes with ever-more chilling certainty that the Duke in fact caused the Duchess’s early demise: when her behaviour escalated, “[he] gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together.”
But Browning has more in mind than simply creating a colourful character and placing him in...

THE MAN WITH A HOE
The Man with a Hoe by Edwin Markham
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back, the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this–
More tongued with cries against the world’s blind greed–
More filled with signs and portents for the soul–
More packed with danger to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world,
A protest that is also prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion