POEM SUMMARY "THE OLD STOIC" BY EMILY BRONTE

THE OLD STOIC 

RICHES I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream
That vanish'd with the morn:

And, if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, 'Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!'

Yea, as my swift days near their goal,
'Tis all that I implore:
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.


SUMMARY!!!!

POEM SUMMARY "AN ANTHEM OF LOVE" BY SAROJINI NAIDU

SUMMARY!!

MUGHAL EMPIRE IN INDIA

GREAT KINGS OF MUGHAL EMPIRE OF INDIA

MUGHALS or Mongols were originally natives of Mongolia in Central Asia. They were very brave and warlike. In the 13th century, they made their first incursions into India. One of their well-known chiefs was Chingiz Khan, the dreaded Great Khan of the Mongols. Chingiz Khan, with his hordes, ravaged the north - western frontier of India and western Punjab during the reign of IItumish (1211 - 1236), a king of the slave dynasty. Subsequently,  the Mongols made inroads into India from time to time during the period of the Delhi Sultanate.

POEM SUMMARY "NIGHT OF THE SCORPION" BY NISSIM EZEKIEL

THE NIGHT OF THE SCORPION 

I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.

Parting with his poison - flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room -
he risked the rain again.

The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.

With candles and with lanterns
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the mud-baked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.

May he sit still, they said
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world

against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh

of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through,
groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing,
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
He even poured a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.

My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my children.


SUMMARY!!!!!!

POEM SUMMARY "THE LISTENERS" BY WALTER DE LA MARE

THE LISTENERS

"Is there anybody there?' said the Traveler,

Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveler's head
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveler;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his Grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveler's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone...

SUMMARY!!!!

THE LISTENERS

The poet is simple and the sense of fear is evoked through suggestion by the poet. It depicts its encounter of a man with ghosts though he is not aware of it.

It was a moonlit night. A traveler came to the door of a house in the forest. He knocked at the door calling the house-holders to open the door. Silence was the answer to his call. A bird flew out of the window above his head. He knocked an the door again but there was no answer. The traveler stood there in confusion. He did not know that there was a group of spirits listening to him. Those phantoms were dwelling in that house. They were so still that except the call of the visitor even the air was motionless. The visitor felt strange and his horse too sensed the eerie atmosphere. He move on. The visitor shouted to the stillness that he had come here to keep his promise but no one received him. His words echoed in the house but the spirits stood silently. He left the place and the horse galloped away.

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BY WALTER DE LA MARE

POEM SUMMARY "THE DARKLING THRUSH" BY THOMAS HARDY

THE DARKLING THRUSH

I leant upon a coppice gate
      When Frost was specter-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
      The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
      Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
      The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
      The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
      Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
      The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
      Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
      In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
      Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
      Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
      His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
      And I was unaware.

SUMMARY!!!!!

THE DARKLING

It was the cold season in which the poet had visited a garden. The days were made weak by winter and they were frosty. All the trees were still and people were confined to their household fire as it was very cold.

The whole atmosphere is portrayed as dull and desolate. The still garden the cold weather reminded the poet of corpses and mourners at the graveyard. This poem was supposed to have been written in December, 1990, described by the poet called the''corpse of the Century". As the old century came to an end, everything appeared as dead and hopeless as the poet himself felt.

At that still moment, a joyous song was heard by the poet. A full-throated song, sung by an old thrush was heard and the mournful mood of the poet started changing. The aged bird has chosen to strike a note of new hope. The growing gloom is checked by that spirited song. Till then the poem didn't hear such ecstatic sounds on the earth. Hopeful thoughts and cheer filled the atmosphere. The poet felt that ecstasy of the bird was not known to him till then and without its knowledge, the bird had lifted his mood from a melancholic state to a joyful state. Thus the poem which began sorrowfully ended on a of hope note. So also the mood of the poet changed from gloom to hope. 

POEM VIDEO

BY THOMAS HARDY

POEM SUMMARY "DOVER BEACH" BY MATHEW ARNOLD

DOVER BEACH

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

SUMMARY

DOVER BEACH

The sea is calm that night. The sea is full of tides and the night is filled with moonlight. the armies - are involved in battle on the shore. But the armies are calm as it is night.

The poet then calls his beloved to come to the window and watch the beautiful night. And the horizon where the sea appears to meet the moon. If one can listen intently, one can also hear the sound made by the pebbles drawn in and thrown out by the waves of the sea. These sounds strike a note of sadness that is universal. 

Long ago the same misery struck the lives of the characters created by Sophocles. The tragedy is intensified in modern days by the loss of faith. Once upon a time the sea of faith was full. As the waters surround the earth, faith used to form a protective ring around human life. But in modern times that faith has disappeared and its faith cry is heard far away. It has shrunk and withdraw itself to the edge of the earth.

Then the poet makes an earnest appeal to his beloved. He asks her to help him create an ideal world within their room. The world outside has no joy, no love, no light, no peace, no help and above all no faith. So he requests his beloved to come forward to create a beautiful, new world. The world out side is a dark plain where the armies clash with each other in the night and are ignorant of what they are doing. The poet meas that the individual should develop a sense of peace and joy to compensate the general loss and try to help himself in this dark ignorant world.

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BY MATHEW ARNOLD