BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

        Summary

The speaker thinks about who owns the woods that he is passing through, and is fairly sure of knowing the landowner. However, the owner’s home is far away in the village, and thus he is physically incapable of seeing the speaker pause to watch the snowfall in the forest.
The speaker thinks his horse must find it strange to stop so far from any signs of civilization. Indeed, they are surrounded only by the forest and a frozen lake, on the longest night of the year.
The horse shakes the bells on its harness, as if asking if the speaker has made a mistake by stopping. The only other sound besides, is that of the wind and falling snowflakes.
The speaker finds the woods very alluring, drawn both to their darkness and how vast and all-encompassing they seem. However, the speaker has obligations to fulfill elsewhere. Thus, though he or she would like to stay and rest, he knows there are many more miles to go before that is possible.

       Themes

• Nature vs. Society
  The speaker reflects on the natural world and its implicit contrast with society.The natural world it depicts is “lovely” and overwhelming. The fact that it seemingly lures the speaker to linger in the dark and cold suggests that nature is both a tempting and a threatening force, a realm that resists people’s efforts to tame it while also offering respite from the demands of civilized life. The complete lack of signs of civilization, meanwhile, further emphasizes the distance between society and nature. Far from the sights and sounds of the village, the speaker stands alone “Between the woods and frozen lake” on the “darkest evening of the year.” Together all these details present nature as a cold and foreboding space distinct from society. At the same time, however, the woods are “lovely” enough that they tempt the speaker to stay awhile, complicating the idea of nature as an entirely unwelcoming place for human beings. However raw and cold, nature also allows for the kind of quiet reflection people may struggle to find amidst the stimulation of society. 
• Social Obligation vs. Personal Desire(Hesitation vs. Choice)

Though the speaker is drawn to the woods and would like to stay there longer to simply watch the falling snow, various responsibilities prevent any lingering. The speaker is torn between duty to others and his wish to stay in the dark and lovely woods. The poem can thus be read as reflecting a broader conflict between social obligations and individualism. He seems worn by travel and social obligation, and the woods seem to represent his or her wish to rest. But this wish cannot be realized because of the oppressive “miles to go,” which must be traveled as a result of duty to others. He is  torn between the tiresome duties of society, and the desire for individual freedom, that is manifested in the woods. This poem points to the reality of making decisions in complex situations in order to fulfill our responsibilities.

SettingAs the title makes clear, the poem is set in the “woods on a snowy evening.” It’s the “darkest evening of the year,” which suggests that this might be the winter solstice.The setting is also mostly silent, with the exception of the sound of wind and snowfall. The woods are expansive, as evidenced in the description “dark and deep.”

Tone

The poem conjures a tone of quiet reflection and wintry reminiscence. The last lines are not of pain or sadness, but more of a meditative appreciation and realization that there’s still much to be done that day.While most readers agree that the general tone is calm and serene, quiet and contemplative, others argue that this is dark and depressing.

Poetic Devices

Metaphor: The last line of the third stanza, “sweep of easy wind and downy flake” and the second metaphor is used in the last line with repetition, “and miles to go before I sleep.” Here, miles represent life’s journey, while sleep represents death.

Personification: Frost has personified the thinking of the horse mildly in the second stanza when it stops, and in the third stanza he gives a sign to the rider. “He gives his harness bells a shake/ to ask if there is some mistake.” It shows as if the horse is a human being who understands his owner’s needs or inquires if they have to stop.

Imagery: The poet has used the images for the sense of sights such as woods, houses, lakes, and they help readers see the woods as a source of solace and comfort to a lonely traveler.

Alliteration: “watch his woods”, “sound’s the sweep”, “His house”.

Euphony: It refers to the sound that is pleasing to the ears. While the journey through the forest is of loneliness, according to Robert Frost woods are not haunting or even scary but provide comfort and calmness. The woods also represent an uncorrupted world that the traveler wishes to stay in. 

         Structure

The whole poem follows the AABA rhyme scheme. Frost has used end rhyme in every first, second and fourth line of the poem. The third line of each stanza rhymes with the next stanza. Such as, “know”, “though” and “snow” rhymes with each other in the first stanza and” here” rhymes with “near” in the second stanza.

Repetition (Refrain): There is a repetition of the verse “and miles to go before I sleep” “and miles to go before I sleep “which has created a musical quality in the poem

BY WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

    Summary:

    The speaker begins with a description of soldiers, bent under the weight of their packs like beggars, their knees unsteady, coughing like poor and sick old women, and struggling miserably through a muddy landscape. They turn away from the light flares and begin to march towards their distant camp, as lethargic as the walking dead. Many have lost their combat boots, yet continue on despite their bare and bleeding feet. They are tired to the point of hindered eyesight, and don’t even notice the sound of the dangerous poison gas-shells dropping just behind them.
Somebody cries out an urgent warning about the poison gas, and the soldiers fumble with their gas masks, getting them on just in time. One man, however, is left yelling and struggling, unable to get his mask on. The speaker describes this man as looking like someone caught in fire or lime (an ancient chemical weapon used to effectively blind opponents). The speaker then compares the scene—through the panes of his gas-mask and with poison gas filling the air — to being underwater, and imagines the soldier is drowning.
The speaker jumps from the past moment of the gas attack to a present moment sometime afterward, and describes a recurring dream that he can’t escape, in which the dying soldier races towards him in agony.

  Theme:The Horror and Trauma of War
The banal daily life of a soldier is excruciating, the brutal reality of death is unimaginable agony, and even surviving a war after watching others die invites a future of endless trauma. 

The speaker thrusts the reader into the mundane drudgery and suffering of the wartime experience, as the speaker’s regiment walks from the front lines back to an undescribed place of “distant rest.” They are miserable: “coughing like hags,” cursing as they “trudge” through “sludge” with bloody feet. They march “asleep,” suggesting that these soldiers are like a kind of living dead. The terror and brutality of war have deadened them.
The poem reveals another aspect of the horror of war: even surviving war offers ceaseless future torment. The speaker’s sleep is permanently haunted by the trauma of the death he has witnessed.

The Enduring Myth that War is Glorious
This poem presents a vision of war—that is entirely brutal, bitter, and pessimistic. Owen wrote the poem with the belief that by highlighting the juxtaposition between a sanitized image of honorable death versus the messy, horrifying truth of actual war, perhaps the poem’s audience will change its attitude towards war and cease cheerfully sending young men to die in agony. The speaker suggests that if readers could experience their own such suffocating dreams,marching behind a wagon in which the other men have placed the dying soldier, seeing the writhing of the dying soldier’s eyes in an otherwise slack and wrecked face, and hearing him cough up blood from his ruined lungs at every bump in the path—a sight the speaker compares to the horror of cancer and other diseases that ravage even the innocent, they would not so eagerly tell children, hungry for a sense of heroism, the old lie that “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

The poem demands that the readers face the truth and no longer be complicit with that old Lie, but even as it does so, it seems to bitterly perceive that nothing will change, because nothing ever has.

 Structure: 

The poem is a combination of two sonnets. In the first sonnet, the poet describes his experiences of the war, in the second sonnet he becomes analytic and attempts to correct the outlook of others about the war.

Sonnet: A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in which a single idea floats throughout the poem.

Rhyme Scheme: The whole poem follows the ABAB, CDCD rhyme scheme.

Poetic Devices:

1. Alliteration: “But someone still was yelling out and stumbling” and /w/ sound in “And watch the white eyes writhing in his face.
2. Simile: Owen has used many self-explanatory similes in this poem such as,” Bent double, like old beggars under sacks”, “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags”, “like a man in fire or lime” and “like a devil’s sick of sin.”
3. Metaphor: “Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots.” It presents the physical state of the men.
4. Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the /r/ sound in “Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs.”
5. Synecdoche: It is a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole. For example, the word “sight” in the second stanza represents the speaker.
6. Imagery: Imagery is used to make the readers perceive things with their five senses. “old beggars under sacks”, “had lost their boots”, “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin” and “white eyes.”

          Setting:

Wilfred Owen wrote “Dulce et Decorum Est” while he was fighting as a soldier during World War I. The use of “flares” and “gas-shells” are specific to World War I, since they had not been used in combat before this time.The majority of British troops in WWI were deployed to France. Chlorine gas, with its distinctive green color, was first deployed by the German army in Belgium in 1915.The “clumsy helmets,” or gas masks, were developed in response to the introduction of gas.  

Language:The way Owen uses language to put readers inside the experiences of a soldier helps them begin to understand the horrific experience of all of these awful aspects of war.If the audience could experience the trauma the speaker describes (“the white eyes writhing,” the “gargling from froth-corrupted lungs”), then they wouldn’t pass their patriotic militarism down to their children. But they don’t experience it, except through the language of the poem 

Tone

The tone of this poem is angry and critical. Owen’s own voice in this poem is bitter – perhaps partly fuelled by self-recrimination for the suffering he could do nothing to alleviate. Owen dwells on explicit details of horror and misery in order to maximise the impact he wishes to have on those who tell the ‘old Lie’. The way in which he addresses as ‘My friend’ those with whom he so strongly disagrees is ironic.

SMALL PAIN IN MY CHEST

    BY MICHAEL MACK

SUMMARY:

The poem records a dying soldier asking for aid from the narrator. He is injured and about to meet the horn of death. He finds himself lucky as his injury is not severe as he is alive in comparison to those who met their death already, yet doesn’t deserve this fate only for fulfilling the ill-desires of some warmongers.  

The young soldier was smiling at his best to hide his pain and asked for the narrator’s aid.The narrator saw a number of soldiers lying dead, who had fought a long and difficult battle throughout the night and had died in the battle.

The narrator finds a large reddish-brown stain of blood on the soldier’s shirt which is a mixture of his blood and the local Asian dirt. The soldier then describes his experience of the battle which took place at night, that he along with a troop of two hundred soldiers was climbing a hill and as they reached the top, there was an explosion and then he felt this small pain in his chest. The soldier then feels bad and tells the narrator that though he is an enthusiastic and big man, he was defeated and left with a small pain in his chest. It seemed that the soldier was injured in the explosion and the pain was of the injury that he went through, and was hiding the pain with his subtle yet brave smile. Finally,the soldier succumbs to the fatal pain, the world closed in on him.The narrator had put his arms around the dead soldier and as he pulled him towards himself, he could feel their wounds pressed against each other- the large one in the narrator’s heart due to the deep agony he was in after watching a soldier die for his country, against the small one in the soldier’s chest.  

SETTING:

This poem is based on the prolonged struggle of the Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975.  The word ‘HERE’ is written in capital letters to indicate the battlefield, which is of no use to humanity. 

THEME:

“Small Pain in My Chest” is another addition to the ‘Anti-war’ poem group. This poem joins the crusade against the uselessness and negativity of war. 

Irony: The title of the poem Small Pain in My Chest is used ironically. The expression “small pain” is repeatedly used in the poem only to make sure we get the irony. The pain was not at all a small one, rather it was a fatal injury that the soldier boy succumbed to. But, the poet is hinting that the injury of the soldier boy was small compared to the destruction war can cause.

The narrator felt extremely sad at the futility of war which takes away so many great young lives. He saw the soldier boy, helped him respond to his call, talked to him, felt his concerns and saw him yield to the injury. So he can’t, but feel the evils of war at heart, which overwhelmed him to an extent that his pain seemed greater than the physical pain of the soldier boy. 

The pity of war is felt all over the poem. War cannot bring merriment; it always has a sad ending. The real pity is aroused when the soldier boy expresses his concern regarding what his mother and wife, who immensely depend on him, would think if they saw him in such helpless condition.War doesn’t have any productive potential; it only destroys. The soldier wouldn’t mind even dying for a noble cause, but to be sitting here without a good reason seems silly to him. 

Theme of sacrifice: The soldier boy has been used as an idol of Sacrifice to portray the sacrifice made by the soldiers while fighting for their country which comes out of a sense of duty and bravery without having any grudge against anyone on the opposite side of the battle.He says:

We fought all day and fought all night with scarcely any rest –

I kept firing at them, sir. I tried to do my best,

But we see he has no complaints against anyone, not even any demand. He fought bravely and tried to do his best just from his sense of giving service for his motherland. We see him covering up his fatal pain with a subtle smile that only imparts strength to think of it as a “small” pain. 

War takes away those lives for a wrong reason. All those lives are lost and spoiled. It’s a sacrifice more of a nation than for a nation. The love and spirit of sacrifice the soldier has within himself for his country does not consider his injury as fatal but just a small pain in his chest. He showed his bravery till which gives us the emotions of the poet on the sacrifice made by the soldier boy who died happily even after making such a huge sacrifice out of the sense of duty and responsibility. 

TONE: 

We find ‘Small Pain in My Chest’ to reflect strong condemnation against the war. This poem through the conversation between the two soldiers reflects that war brings pain, separation, agony, hatred and above all loss of all innocent lives.The death of the young soldier hints that warmongers do go in the battlefield and fight rather guileless young soldiers are sent to kill and to be killed. War does not bring any solution, it kills humans and humanity. Nothing influences a soldier on the battlefield than the fear of being killed and the task of killing the enemy.They have no space for emotion, feelings, sympathy or leisure. Food, rest, recreation etc. become baffling to them

STRUCTURE/STYLE/LANGUAGE:

“Small pain in my chest” is a ballad with a refrain. The poem has a musical tenet. The whole poem is of 36 lines and divided into nine four-line stanzas.It maintains the rhyme scheme of aa bb. It comprises stanzas that can be sung to musical instruments. We find the use of alliteration, inversion, enjambment, imagery, and refrain in the poem.

A Refrain is a repeated line or number of lines in a poem or in a song that comes typically at the end of each verse, which generally carries the main message of the poem. Here the refrain hints at the horrors of war, pain and suffering of a soldier in the war.

POETIC DEVICES:

Alliteration

Alliteration is repetition of consonant sounds in the beginning of nearby words.

What would my Wife be thinking…

Refrain

The poet has repeated the expression ‘a small pain in my chest’ at the end of each stanza beginning from the second one. 

Symbolism

Can it be getting dark so soon?…

I thought that the day had just begun.

These two lines are symbolic. Here, ‘getting dark’ signifies the approaching death of the young soldier. ‘The day’ indicates his life which he thought had just begun.

The ill-fated soldier boy can no longer withstand the fatal wound and the great pain. He is nearing his death. ‘The day’ here symbolises the life of the soldier, which had just begun, and he had a long future ahead. He could not believe that it was ending so soon. 

Euphemism

This is the use of good-sounding indirect words to substitute harsh and unpleasant ones.

They’re all gone while I feel this…

In the above example, ‘gone’ is used to mean ‘dead’ to make it sound milder.

Transferred Epithet

The night exploded and …

Here, the night didn’t really explode, rather the bombs that exploded at night. 

Hyperbole

It is an exaggerated statement, generally to make an emphasis.

…the brightest that I’ve seen.

The speaker has described the soldier’s smile as the brightest smile he has ever seen. Clearly this is an exaggeration.

DAFFODILS

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

SUMMARY:

The speaker was walking aimlessly down the hills and valley when he stumbled upon a beautiful field of daffodils which sparked up his creative spirit. He is transfixed by the daffodils seemingly waving, fluttering, and dancing along the waterside. Albeit, the lake’s waves moved as fervently but the beauty of daffodils outdid with flying colors. The poet feels immensely gleeful and chirpy at this mesmerizing naturalistic sight. He remains transfixed at those daffodils wavering with full vigor, oblivious to the fact that this wondrous scenery brings the poet immense blithe and joy when he’s in a tense mood or perplexed. His heart breathes a new life and gives him exponential happiness at a sight worth a thousand words.The flowers were a “jocund company” to him that he could not find in humans. Their silent presence told more than the words of humans could convey to him. They had a purity that made the poet spellbound, and celebrated the beauty of nature along with the bliss of solitude, which he deems as an asset that inspires him to live a meaningful life.

STRUCTURE/FORM:

The poem is composed of four stanzas, six lines each. It is an adherent to the A-B-A-B-C-C (quatrain couplet rhyme scheme) as it uses consistent rhyming to invoke nature at each stanza’s end. Consonance and alliteration are used to create rhymes.

This poem is written from the first person point of view, therefore it is an ideal example of a lyric poem.

POETIC DEVICES and LITERARY TOOLS:

Similes are used since the poet alludes himself to an aimless cloud, as he takes a casual stroll.The poet metaphorically compares him to a cloud for describing his thoughtless mental state on that day.  The daffodils are compared to star clusters in the Milky Way to explicate the magnitude of daffodils fluttering freely beside the lake. 

Hyperbole is used to explain the immensity of the situation. By “ten thousand”, he meant a collection of daffodils were fluttering in the air. It’s just a wild estimation at best as he supposes ten thousand daffodils at a glance.  

The poet makes an  allusion to the Milky Way, our galaxy filled with its own planetary solar systems stretched beyond infinity. Along the Milky Way’s premises lie countless stars which the poet alludes to daffodils fluttering beside the lake.

The daffodils are even made anthropomorphous in order to create a human portrayal of Mother Nature in this instance.

He has also used personification, equating humans to clouds, and daffodils to humans with constant movement. He personifies the daffodils, dancing, a trait relatable to humans. The term “sprightly” comes from sprite which is primarily dandy little spirits, people deemed existed in such times. They are akin to fairies.

THEMES:

Symbolism: The poem begins with a symbolic reference to the cloud, wandering aimlessly and lonely. The poetic persona is the embodiment of such a cloud.Although the clouds mostly travel in groups, this cloud prefers singular hovering. Hence, it symbolises being lonely and thoughtless, free from mundane thoughts. The daffodils act as a symbol of rejuvenation and pure joy. In his pensive mood, they become a means for the poet’s self-reflection, through which the flowers express their vibrance.

The “inward eye” is a reference to the mind’s eyes. When one shuts his physical eyes, it unleashes those eyes. Wordsworth compares the daffodils to the “bliss” of his solitary moments. 

According to him, the memory associated with the daffodils fills his heart with pleasure, making his heart leap up once again like a child. Blissful memories are so gripping that they stick with a person throughout his or her life.

Imagery: The image of the cloud describes the poet’s mental state, and the images that appear thereafter vividly portray the flowers. These images are visual and some have auditory effects (Example, “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”) The waves are sparkling due to the sunlight. This image is contrasted with the dance of daffodils.

 The space continuum holds great mystery for our Romantic Era poet as he envisions the daffodils to be in a constant state of wonder as are the stars beyond the reach of humans.

TONE and MOOD:

The tone  of this poem is emotive, hyperbolic, expressive, and thoughtful. Using this clever tactic of personification, the poet brings people closer to nature, becoming a hallmark of William Wordsworth’s most basic yet effective methods for leading the readers to appreciate nature’s pristine glory. Throughout, the poet maintains a calm and joyous mood. This poem is famous for its simplicity, sing-song-like rhythm, and thematic beauty.