Sister Maude 'And The Ballad Of Reading Gaol'
Poetry Across Time: Relationships
Sister Maude
Content
Before we analyse the poem in detail, it is important to understand what the poem is about i.e. the main content of the poem.
General summary
A sibling complains that her sister Maude has revealed details about a private relationship to their parents and has caused the death of the relationship. The speaker is bitter and resentful.
Detailed summary Stanza one: The speaker asks who has informed her mother of her ‘shame’ and asks who has told her father of her ‘dear’. The question is answered by the speaker herself – it is her sister Maude. The speaker is angry, accusing Maude of lurking ‘to spy and peer’. Maude has evidently related private matters to their …show more content…
• Ballads usually tell a story.
• Although the quatrain is often used, a sestet (six-line stanza) can also be employed e.g. Wilde's 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' and Lewis Carroll's 'The Walrus and the Carpenter'.
Metre
Rossetti tends to vary the metre within the poem to achieve different effects.
In the opening stanza, Rossetti deviates from the traditional metric construction of the ballad stanza. The first and the third lines are as one would expect: they are iambic tetrameter; the fourth line also conforms to the traditional metric pattern: it is an iambic trimeter. However, the second line is not an iambic trimeter but an iambic tetrameter:
u / u / u / u / Who told my mother of my shame,
u / u / u / u / Who told my father of my dear?
u / u / u / u / Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,
u / u / u / Who lurked to spy and peer.
What is the effect of this deviation?
Now look at the first line of the second …show more content…
Love is not love
• Paraphrase of lines 1 & 2: I will not allow myself to admit that true love has any restrictions. Love is not real love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove:
• Paraphrase of lines 3 & 4: If it changes in response to change, or if it allows itself to be changed by the one who is changing:
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
• Paraphrase of lines 5 & 6: Not at all! Love is a permanent fixture that persists unshaken despite the harsh winds of change;
It is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
• Paraphrase of lines 7 & 8: Love is the guiding, constant star for every wandering ship, a fixed point whose nature is unknown, although its height can be measured.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
• Paraphrase of lines 9 & 10: True love is not subject to the changes of Time, although beautiful faces do fall victim to the sweep of Time's curved scythe:
Love alters not with his brief hours and
Sister Maude
Content
Before we analyse the poem in detail, it is important to understand what the poem is about i.e. the main content of the poem.
General summary
A sibling complains that her sister Maude has revealed details about a private relationship to their parents and has caused the death of the relationship. The speaker is bitter and resentful.
Detailed summary Stanza one: The speaker asks who has informed her mother of her ‘shame’ and asks who has told her father of her ‘dear’. The question is answered by the speaker herself – it is her sister Maude. The speaker is angry, accusing Maude of lurking ‘to spy and peer’. Maude has evidently related private matters to their …show more content…
• Ballads usually tell a story.
• Although the quatrain is often used, a sestet (six-line stanza) can also be employed e.g. Wilde's 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' and Lewis Carroll's 'The Walrus and the Carpenter'.
Metre
Rossetti tends to vary the metre within the poem to achieve different effects.
In the opening stanza, Rossetti deviates from the traditional metric construction of the ballad stanza. The first and the third lines are as one would expect: they are iambic tetrameter; the fourth line also conforms to the traditional metric pattern: it is an iambic trimeter. However, the second line is not an iambic trimeter but an iambic tetrameter:
u / u / u / u / Who told my mother of my shame,
u / u / u / u / Who told my father of my dear?
u / u / u / u / Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,
u / u / u / Who lurked to spy and peer.
What is the effect of this deviation?
Now look at the first line of the second …show more content…
Love is not love
• Paraphrase of lines 1 & 2: I will not allow myself to admit that true love has any restrictions. Love is not real love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove:
• Paraphrase of lines 3 & 4: If it changes in response to change, or if it allows itself to be changed by the one who is changing:
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
• Paraphrase of lines 5 & 6: Not at all! Love is a permanent fixture that persists unshaken despite the harsh winds of change;
It is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
• Paraphrase of lines 7 & 8: Love is the guiding, constant star for every wandering ship, a fixed point whose nature is unknown, although its height can be measured.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
• Paraphrase of lines 9 & 10: True love is not subject to the changes of Time, although beautiful faces do fall victim to the sweep of Time's curved scythe:
Love alters not with his brief hours and