Victorian Poetry

Part one ended as Hopkins arrived, the Jesuit poet published only in the twentieth century. This second part begins with his poems, then gathers the period into methods. The unit's governing idea still holds: Victorian poetry turned toward objectivity, engagement and doubt, and the poets differ by sound and by how they meet that doubt. We move in three steps: Hopkins, then the late-century poets, Hardy, Housman, Kipling, FitzGerald, Carroll, Clough and the aesthetes; then four procedures, for a dramatic monologue, a Hopkins poem, Tennyson against Browning, and lines without names; and then doubt, women poets, medievalism and errors, before a matching procedure and the capstone.

We begin with Hopkins's praise and desolation, and then the poets who closed the century.

First, a falcon and dappled things.

ENL 1332 "The Windhover" and "Pied Beauty"

"The Windhover," of eighteen seventy-seven, dedicated "To Christ our Lord," describes a kestrel, "morning's minion," whose flight reveals God's glory. "Pied Beauty," a curtal sonnet, opens, "Glory be to God for dappled things," praising variety in nature. A falcon, dappled things, praise. The bird points to Christ.

Hopkins wrote grandeur and desolation.

ENL 1333 "God's Grandeur" and the Terrible Sonnets

"God's Grandeur" opens, "The world is charged with the grandeur of God," and mourns that "all is seared with trade," yet "nature is never spent." In his last years Hopkins wrote the "terrible sonnets" of spiritual desolation, such as "No worst, there is none." Grandeur, then desolation. Both kinds of poem are sonnets.

A novelist turned to poetry.

ENL 1334 Thomas Hardy the Poet

Thomas Hardy regarded himself primarily as a poet, but his first collection appeared only in eighteen ninety-eight, after his novels. His poem "Drummer Hodge" mourns a young soldier buried "Uncoffined" in South Africa. His novels are in unit fifteen. Novelist turned poet. Hardy's poems are late Victorian and modern.

A professor wrote simple lyrics.

ENL 1335 A. E. Housman: A Shropshire Lad

A. E. Housman, a professor of Latin, published A Shropshire Lad in eighteen ninety-six, sixty-three poems lamenting the transience of love and youth in a half-imaginary pastoral countryside. "Loveliest of Trees" counts how few springs remain of "threescore years and ten." Brief youth, lost love, a cherry tree. Housman's simple lyrics are carefully crafted.

Kipling sang of soldiers.

ENL 1336 Rudyard Kipling's Verse

Rudyard Kipling, born in India, wrote Barrack-Room Ballads in soldiers' voices, "The White Man's Burden" and "Recessional," written for Victoria's Diamond Jubilee with its refrain "Lest we forget." He won the Nobel Prize in nineteen-oh-seven, the first English-language winner. Soldiers' ballads, empire, a warning. "Recessional" warns against imperial pride.

One poem came from Persia.

ENL 1337 Edward FitzGerald's Rubaiyat

Edward FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, of eighteen fifty-nine, is a free translation from Persian of quatrains attributed to the astronomer-poet Omar Khayyam. Unsuccessful at first, it was popularized from eighteen sixty-one and admired by the Pre-Raphaelites. Persian quatrains in English. It is a translation, very freely made.

Nonsense verse has rules.

ENL 1338 Lewis Carroll and Nonsense Verse

Lewis Carroll, the pen name of the Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson, wrote literary nonsense: "Jabberwocky," in Through the Looking-Glass, of eighteen seventy-one, tells of slaying the Jabberwock in invented words, and The Hunting of the Snark followed. His Alice books are in unit fifteen. Invented words, strict logic. Nonsense verse keeps strict form.

Another poet of doubt.

ENL 1339 Arthur Hugh Clough

Arthur Hugh Clough, Arnold's friend, wrote poems of religious doubt and modern uncertainty, including "Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth," Amours de Voyage, inspired by the siege of Rome in eighteen forty-nine, and "Easter Day," a denial of the Resurrection. Doubt and irony. Clough is a poet of doubt like Arnold.

Some poets rejected morals in art.

ENL 1340 The Aesthetic Movement in Verse

Aestheticism held that art should be beautiful rather than teach a lesson, the slogan being "art for art's sake." It flourished in the eighteen seventies and eighties with Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, and the anchor notes aesthetes made art a substitute religion. Beauty, not morals. Aestheticism rejects the didactic.

Now four procedures that turn Victorian verse into answers.

Here is the method for a dramatic monologue.

ENL 1341 Reading a Dramatic Monologue

A dramatic monologue asks you to read a character, not a poet. Identify the speaker and situation: in "My Last Duchess," "Ferrara" and the portrait tell you a duke is showing a painting. Identify the silent listener, revealed only in the speaker's words, as when the duke says, "Will't please you rise?" Find what the speaker reveals without meaning to: "I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together." Measure the gap between how he sees himself and how we see him, because that irony is the point. Never treat the speaker's view as the poet's.

Here is the method for a Hopkins poem.

ENL 1342 Reading a Hopkins Poem

Hopkins looks difficult because of his sound. Find the grammatical core: "I caught this morning morning's minion" means I saw the falcon, the morning's darling. Hear the sprung rhythm, strong stresses falling close together. Notice the alliteration, internal rhyme and compounds such as "dapple-dawn-drawn," which create the thing's inscape. Find the religious turn: the falcon leads to Christ, dappled things to praise, while in the terrible sonnets the turn fails into desolation. Do not stop at the nature description; the turn is the answer.

Here is the method for telling two poets apart.

ENL 1343 Tennyson or Browning?

Listen to the music: Tennyson's lines are smooth and patterned, as in the refrains of "The Lady of Shalott"; Browning's are rough and conversational, with outbursts like "ah God, I know not!" Look at the subject: Tennyson favours Arthurian and classical legend, grief and doubt; Browning favours Renaissance Italy, painters, churchmen and murderers. Look at the voice: both wrote monologues, but Tennyson's speakers, like Ulysses, are often noble, while Browning's reveal their corruption. Check the form: the ABBA In Memoriam stanza points to Tennyson.

Here is the method for naming a Victorian poet.

ENL 1344 Identifying Victorian Poets From Their Lines

Use form, subject and voice. A melodic Arthurian or elegiac passage suggests Tennyson; a self-revealing speaker in Renaissance Italy, Browning; a sonnet of personal love, Barrett Browning; a retreating sea of faith, Arnold; packed stresses and God in nature, Hopkins; a religious fairy tale, Christina Rossetti; a sensuous medieval sonnet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti; a soldier's ballad, Kipling; lost youth in the countryside, Housman; bleak fate, Hardy; nonsense words, Carroll. Then check the date, since Hopkins and Hardy reach into the twentieth century, and do not assign every monologue to Browning.

Last, the themes that run through the period, the errors to avoid, and the capstone.

Doubt runs through every voice.

ENL 1345 Victorian Poetry and Doubt

Doubt runs through Victorian verse: Tennyson's "honest doubt" in In Memoriam, Arnold's withdrawing Sea of Faith, Clough's ironies, Hopkins's terrible sonnets, Hardy's bleak fate. The anchor ties it to geology, Darwin and higher criticism of the Bible. Faith questioned in every voice. Doubt is not always despair.

Three women poets stand out.

ENL 1346 Victorian Women Poets

Victorian women poets claimed major forms: Barrett Browning the sonnet sequence and the verse novel, Emily Brontë a visionary lyric, Christina Rossetti devotional verse and "Goblin Market." Their work addressed women's limited lives, child labour and faith. Barrett Browning, Brontë, Rossetti. They wrote social and religious poetry.

The Middle Ages served the present.

ENL 1347 Medievalism in Victorian Verse

Victorian poets turned repeatedly to the Middle Ages, as had the Romantics and the Gothic Revival: Tennyson's Camelot in "The Lady of Shalott" and Idylls of the King, the Pre-Raphaelites' medieval detail, and Morris's Defence of Guenevere and Arts and Crafts ideal. Camelot, Guenevere, the craftsman. Medievalism often criticizes the industrial present.

Four errors need correcting.

ENL 1348 Common Errors About Victorian Poetry

Four errors recur. The monologue's speaker is not the poet. Hopkins was published in nineteen eighteen, not in his lifetime. "Ulysses" is Tennyson's, not Joyce's. And Sonnets from the Portuguese are original English poems, not translations. Four corrections. The title "from the Portuguese" is a disguise.

Here is the method for matching poems to poets.

ENL 1349 Matching Victorian Poems and Poets

Sort by poet. Tennyson: "Ulysses," "The Lady of Shalott," In Memoriam, the sea poems, the Light Brigade, the Idylls. Robert Browning: the Duchess, Porphyria, the Bishop, the two painter poems, The Ring and the Book. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: the Portuguese sonnets, Aurora Leigh, "The Cry of the Children." Arnold: "Dover Beach." Christina Rossetti: "Goblin Market"; Dante Gabriel: "The Blessed Damozel" and The House of Life. Hopkins: the Windhover, "Pied Beauty," "God's Grandeur." Then check the clue: a dying bishop or jealous duke is Browning; a mirror and a curse is Tennyson.

The capstone weighs Victorian verse.

ENL 1350 The Victorian Poem Weighed

Victorian poetry answered the Romantics with objectivity, social engagement and doubt. The age of railways, slums, reform and empire, and of Lyell and Darwin, unsettled faith, and the poets made that their subject. Tennyson mourned Hallam in In Memoriam, where honest doubt holds more faith than creeds, and sent Ulysses out to strive and not to yield. Browning perfected the dramatic monologue, a speaker, a silent listener and an unintended revelation. Elizabeth Barrett Browning claimed the sonnet sequence and the verse novel. Arnold heard the Sea of Faith's withdrawing roar, and Clough wrote ironies of doubt. The Pre-Raphaelites turned to medieval detail and devotion. Hopkins, published only in nineteen eighteen, praised God in dappled things, then wrote sonnets of desolation. By the century's end Swinburne and the aesthetes sought art for art's sake, Housman mourned lost youth, Hardy turned bleak and Kipling warned, lest we forget. Tennyson's music, Browning's rough voices and Hopkins's sprung rhythm each mark a different poet.

This second part turned the verse into method. We read Hopkins's praise in the Windhover and his desolation in the terrible sonnets. We identified the late century's poets, from Hardy and Housman to Kipling, FitzGerald, Carroll, Clough and the aesthetes. We read a monologue for its unintended revelation, a Hopkins poem for its turn, and told Tennyson's music from Browning's rough voices. We named poets from lines, and traced doubt, women poets and medievalism. And we matched poems to poets, closing on the capstone: each poet meets the age's doubt in a different sound. Unit fifteen, Victorian Fiction, Prose and Drama, turns to the novel and the stage.