LT 327 Answer keys for midterm exam Page! 1 of! 5

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1 LT 327 Answer keys for midterm exam Page! 1 of! 5 1. Were we not weaned till then, But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted in the seven sleepers den? Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, twas but a dream of thee. And now good morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere. Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one. The excerpt is from John Donne s The Good-Morrow. This is an aubade or dawn poem, in which the lovers part way after the night of love-making. An aubade usually expresses grief, desire and longing of lovers who must separate at daybreak and return to the world of affairs. The Good-Morrow, however, clearly diverges from the aubade tradition in that lovers do not need to return to the world because their love is so satisfactory and complete, and the lovers bedroom itself becomes the whole world. The setting of the poem is lovers bed at dawn. The speaker is a male lover, and the direct audience is his woman. Donne used past tense in the first stanza, signaling the prior events of the lovers lives before they have found each other. Their former pleasure used to childish, unrefined, and only a passing fancy. The general atmosphere of drowsiness and limitations pervades the first stanza. Den has a special connotation of imprisonment. (According to the legend, the seven sleepers were put to sleep and locked up inside the den or cave for almost 200 years.) The first stanza gives the idea of the lovers dormant souls before they found each other. The second stanza is written in present tense. Their souls are waking and becoming one. (Their souls will become mixed equally in the subsequent stanza.) So much is going on simultaneously in the second stanza drowsiness gives way to excitement; limitation, childishness, and imprisonment becomes growth, maturity, and infinite expansion; folklore is suddenly replaced by scientific advance in sea-voyage, map-making, and discovery of the new world. The square of their bedroom becomes a perfect round earth, circular and endless. They have no need to part and return to the world because the lovers have found the new perfect world in one another. Donne contrasts the many disparate worlds of others (old world/new world of the sea-travelers, real world/world on the map of topographers) with the one-world image of the lovers. The conceit is not found in this excerpt but will be developed in the next stanza when lovers eyeballs (two half-circles or hemispheres) match and merge (alchemically) into one perfect round earth (as opposed to sharp north and declining west of the flat earth.) Once physically consummated and made into perfection, their love will never die. (i.e. sexual climax helps to strengthen, not lessen, spiritual love.)

2 LT 327 Answer keys for midterm exam Page! 2 of! 5 2. Rest in soft peace, and asked, say, Here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry. For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such As what he loves may never like too much. This excerpt is from Ben Jonson s On My First Son, written for the occasion of the boy s early death on his seventh birthday. The boy s name is Benjamin which means right hand, and also means dexterity and fortune (i.e. the qualities of good poetry.) Jonson indeed calls the boy his best piece of poetry. He is so proud perhaps too proud of his son, his own creation, his masterpiece. And perhaps God takes away his son as a punishment of Jonson s pride and selfindulgence. Jonson justifies his son s death and tries to console his own misfortune by reminding himself that his son is now in heaven with God and will rest forever without having to endure the guilt, shame, temptations, and many miseries of life. This comforting reason helps him overcoming his own grief. The lesson in grieving which Jonson draws from this occasion is to grieve only moderately, to use reason over emotion. The heroic couplet also helps to control the restrained tone of the poem. Jonson also promises himself that, since too much love of his son (his best piece of poetry) makes God takes him away, he will from now on never love his lesser pieces of poetry so much so that they will remain forever. Wit, confidence, and self-aggrandizement re-emerges again. Jonson never fails to assert his own greatness even in his most humblest and saddest poem. 3. I sent thee late a rosy wreath, Not so much honoring thee, As giving it a hope, that there It could not withered be. But thou thereon did'st only breathe, And sent'st it back to me; Since when it grows and smells, I swear, Not of itself, but thee. This excerpt is from Ben Jonson s Song: To Celia. The speaker is an old man, Volpone, who invites Celia, a young woman, to join him in his illicit love affair. The previous stanza involves a parody of Petrarchan convention: Volpone ostensibly asks almost nothing of Celia (drink to him only with her eyes, etc.) just like any Platonic lover who desires only her soul but not her body. But the poem is indeed brimming with many erotic suggestions. He recently sends her a rose, not out his honor for her. He only wants Celia to breathe upon it so they will be reinvigorated and blooms forever. The rose is phallic, the symbol for male sexual organ. In other words, Volpone really has no honor for Celia, only regarding her as a sex object, a perfume, or an aphrodisiac (or sexual stimuli) that renews the old man s diminishing sexual potency. On the surface, this poem is a woo song in which the speaker tries to seduce a young girl, but the poet is in fact warning the reader, especially youth, against such sexual indulgence and precociousness. There is a gap between the speaker s and the authorial voices.

3 LT 327 Answer keys for midterm exam Page! 3 of! 5 4. Call us what you will, we are made such by love; Call her one, me another fly, We re tapers too, and at our own cost die, And we in us find the eagle and the dove. The phoenix riddle hath more wit By us: we two being one, are it. So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit. We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love. The excerpt is from John Donne s The Canonization. The speaker, an old man, is demanding that his younger male friend should leave him and his love alone and mind his own business, that his love hurts nobody, and that he does not care one whit what the world and other people may think of his love. In renouncing this world, he regains another world in his love. And by this example and this mystery of his love, he and his lover shall be canonized as love s saints after he has died (reached sexual climax). The excerpt deals exclusively with metaphors of his mysterious love which culminates in the central conceit the phoenix. The first one is the taper and the fly, symbols of quick lust the physical love-making and consummation that destroys life. There was a medieval superstition that sexual climaxes can shorten life (hence the slangs die, end, spent, etc.) just like the fly that is lured to death by the taper, and the candle that consumes itself (i.e. the brighter it burns, the faster it annihilates.) The next metaphor is an addition of the previous one (the winged fly becomes the winged birds) in the form of the eagle and the dove, symbolizing swiftness and gentleness, the alchemy and mysterious attraction between two sexes. The phoenix the conceit is the summation and logical conclusion of the two previous pairs of metaphor. The firebird is a hermaphrodite (combing the eagle and the dove into one neutral thing both sexes fit ), it burns itself to death (like the taper and the fly) and rises again from its own ashes, therefore, it is the metaphor for the mysterious union of immortal bond between man and woman. The die and rise the same paradox points out the mystery of the speaker s love which outlives its physical consummation their love is regenerative, the sexual orgasm does not diminish but renews the erection. It must also be noted, though, that Donne does not believe in either a kind of love which is exclusively physical or exclusively spiritual. The body is not the prison but the temple of the soul; the body plays a necessary part in releasing the lovers souls through ecstasy before they can be refined into one mysterious (ly) permanent whole. His metaphysics of love must be taken seriously in order to appreciate the phoenix riddle of this poem.

4 LT 327 Answer keys for midterm exam Page! 4 of! 5 5. But that which most doth take my muse and me Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine, Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine; Of which, had Horace, or Anacreon tasted, Their lives, as do their lines, till now had lasted. Of this we will sup free but moderately, And we will have no Pooly or Parrot by; Nor shall our cups make any guilty men, But at our parting we will be as when We innocently met.. The excerpt comes from Ben Jonson s Inviting a Friend to Supper. This poem sums up quite nicely many characteristics of Jonson. He uses the classical, epistolary form. It is a formal letter of invitation to William Camden, the renowned classicist and Jonson s own teacher, to come dine at his humble house. The use of heroic couplet form highlights the conversational, yet semi-formal, tone of this poem. The classical ideal of hospitality and the proper decorum befitting a good host and a good guest is prevalent throughout this poem. Jonson s sense of humor is also abundant. (Jonson humorously promises not to disturb the guest with the recitation of his own poems; he calls Camden, an old man, grave sir, he is willing to tell numerous lies so Camden will accept his invitation, etc.) Jonson is a man of enormous appetite, and his poetry usually involves the enumeration of many sensual, epicurean details. This poem includes the long list of foods, from appetizer to main course to dessert. But the highlight of the evening is the Canary wine, the drink which plays a structural part in binding all the classical ideals presented in this poem together: liberty of enjoyment checked by moderation, and the innocent friendship and lively conversation as the food for the soul. Excessive indulgence in wine can rob men of their senses. But Jonson will not permit such excess in his house, and all his guests will stay sober and will not become drunk and say anything that might make them regret it later. Moreover, the wine, when taken moderately, can restore health. Jonson uses hyperbole in jokingly saying that, if the Roman poets had taken such wine, they would become immortal and have lived until now (like their classical works.)

5 LT 327 Answer keys for midterm exam Page! 5 of! 5 6. I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labor to admit you, but O, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, But am betrothed unto your enemy. Divorce me, untie or break that knot again; This is from John Donne s Holy Sonnets (XIV). The speaker is a man who has fallen from grace into sin, but still desires God strongly. He asks God to help redeem his soul through violent acts since all weaker measures ( knock, breathe, shine ) seem to have failed. He compares himself to the town besieged by the devil. God has placed his viceroy, reason, in him in order to protect him from the devil, but he nevertheless has failed. Reason is man s divine faculty, the sacred soul that separates him from all other animals in the chain of being. Reason should leads him away from sin and towards God, but the speaker finds it insufficient to fend off the devil. He then compares himself to the bride betrothed to the devil, God s enemy. He asks God to break that knot and free him from the devil. The knot can mean the nuptial or marriage knot, and the subtle knot that ties the soul to the body. The belief in divorce or the annulment of the holy bond of matrimony by religious authority may reflect Donne s own conversion to Anglicanism. The dissolution of the subtle knot can mean that death is the ultimate way to rid the soul of the physical sins. In the last two lines of the sonnets (not in this excerpt), the speaker asks God to imprison and rape him, so that he will be free and chaste again. This refers to the end war in which the victors raid the fallen town for valuable loots and rape the women before taking them as their prisoners. Donne s religious verse is passionate, perhaps too passionate. He struggles violently in order to attain God, and most of the time he never arrives at any solution or comfort. He mingles the sacred with the profane, and at times his verse is almost blasphemous. Such struggle signals Donne s own experience of being persecuted as a Catholic, his conversion of faith, his ordination, and his lifelong quest for one true God, one true Church, and one true religion.