THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER- William Blake

The Chimney Sweeper is one of the most popular poems of William Blake about poverty and
child labor. It first appeared in 1789. The poem talks about the agony of children, forced to
live a miserable life. The children had to earn money through working as chimneysweepers at
such a young age in the era of William Blake. The poem is so popular because it portrays the
innocent children so realistically.
In the poem, The Chimney Sweeper, the speaker details about how he gets involved in
sweeping chimney business. He says that his father had put him into the work as a chimney
sweeper after the death of his mother. The speaker also recounts the story of his fellow
chimney sweeper, Tom, who was hurt when his head was shaved. The narrator consoles him,
and he goes to sleep. Tom had a dream in which he saw that all sweepers are in coffins. An
angel comes and sets the children free. Then they play happily in the sun, and the angel tells
Tom that he will have a heaven of his own. Next morning when he wakes up, he decides to
work hard because he believes that if he works hard, he will get a reward.
Summary of the Poem
Stanza 1
The speaker starts telling us in the start of the poem that his mother died when he was a small
boy. He also confesses how his father sold him when he did not even know how to speak,
indicating that he was probably a toddler at that time. In the eighteenth and nineteenth
century, people used to put little boys to cleaning chimneys because they could ideally fit in
there. The boy then tells us how he is used to sleep in soot every night, caught from cleaning
all day.
Stanza 2
Now, the chimney sweeper introduces us to his friend Tom. Starting with how his hairs that
got shaved because he had white and curly hairs, getting dirty often. When his head gets
shaved the small boy Tom cries helplessly. The speaker then tells us that he consoled Tom
and told him to stop crying and worrying about his hair because it is a good thing. He will no
longer have to worry about all that nasty soot getting into his hair.
Stanza 3
Here the speaker further explains that on the same night his friend Tom saw a strange dream.
He saw a lot of sweepers probably thousands of them locked up in some black coffins and the
names were written on the few of them such as Dick, Joe and Nick.
Black coffins refer to the black soot how every chimney sweeper is covered in black soot
around the world and how every chimney sweeper is the same. This is how chimney
sweepers sleep as well, covered in soot.
Stanza 4
In this stanza, Tom stops seeing the dreading black coffins. Instead, there comes an angle
with a bright key and sets all the sweepers free.
It can be related to how the only escape from this job for chimney sweepers is death. They
can only be free when they die and then they will be shinning like the bright sun.
Stanza 5
Now, Tom’s dream gets weirder as we come to know that all the sweepers are clean, naked
and flying on the clouds. They are playing in the wind as if they are finally free of all that
burden of working. An angel comes to Tom and tells him that if he remains good then the
God will become his permanent father. It sounds strange but it is a metaphor of desire. If you
do good, God will give you all you desire for.
Stanza 6
Finally, the dream ends. Tom and his sweeper friend wake up early morning, going straight to
work. It is too early and cold to work but they are working hard. Tom is shown happy with
his work after his dream last night, why?
Tom thinks that if will work hard everything will be good and he will get all his desires.
Here Blake is telling us that these children suffer mentally as well thinking that they have to
work no matter what.
Symbolism in the Poem The Chimney Sweeper:
Lamb: Poet compares child’s hair with hair on back of the lamb. Lamb here symbolizes
innocence, meekness and naivety.
Soot: As soot gets in the children’s hair and makes it dirty, soot in this poem symbolizes sins,
which corrupt life and make it polluted.
White Hair: The color white stands for purity, innocence and cleanliness. White hair in this
poem expresses purity and innocence of children.
Black Coffins: Black is the color associated with gloomy, dark and bad stuff. So black
coffins in the poem symbolize a place where people are stuck due to their sins.
Bright Key: Bright is the word that carries hope. Key contains message of freedom.
Therefore, the bright key is a symbol of the mercy of God, which frees the foul souls from
their darkness and brings them light and freedom.

THE SUN RISING by John Donne

“The Sun Rising” is a lyric love poem by John Donne, who was the leading figure of the
metaphysical poets. Metaphysical poetry is a type of poetry that originated in 17th-century
England and is characterized by its use of intellectual and philosophical themes,
unconventional syntax, and elaborate conceits (extended metaphors or comparisons) that
often compare abstract concepts to concrete objects. The term was coined by Samuel Johnson
in the 18th-century. Other famous metaphysical poets include John Druden, George Herbert,
and Andrew Marvell.
 In stanza 1, the speaker colloquially addresses the sun. He chides it for peeping through the
curtains and window and disturbing him and his lover (Lines 1-4). He lists some other tasks
that the sun could be doing instead: It should admonish boys who are late for school or
apprentices who are slow to get moving (Line 6). The sun could also tell huntsmen at the
court that the king is about to ride (Line 7), and summon farmers to their daily autumn tasks
(at harvest time) (Line 8). In contrast (Lines 9-10), the speaker states love is not bound to
time and the passage of hours, days, or months.
Stanza 2 continues the address to the sun. In Lines 11-13, the speaker tells the sun that it is
not as powerful as it thinks. The speaker could obscure the sun’s light just by closing his eyes
for a moment. In Line 14, though, he says he would not want to do that because he does not
want to lose sight of his beloved. In Lines 15-18, he tells the sun that if it is not blinded by
the light that shines from his beloved’s eyes, it can tell him whether the treasures of both the
East and West Indies remain where it last saw them or whether they now lie in bed with him
in the form of his lover. The speaker concludes the stanza by telling the sun that all the kings
it saw the day before are now lying in this one bed (implying the richness and majesty of the
love he and his beloved share).
Stanza 3 assigns an exalted status to the speaker and his lover: She contains all the countries
of the world, and he is all the princes. Nothing else exists (Lines 21-22). All the princes are
just play-acting; compared to their love, the honor accorded to princes is just an imitation and
their wealth is but a pretense (Lines 23-24). In Line 25, the speaker returns to directly
addressing the sun, saying that it is only half as happy as the two lovers (because the sun is a
single entity, whereas the lovers are two and can enjoy each other’s love). In Line 27, the
speaker says that since the sun’s task is to warm the world, it has done that job when it warms
the lovers, since they constitute an entire world. If the sun shines on them, it is shining
everywhere, as the lover’s bedroom is all that exists.

A SONG FOR ST CECILIA'S DAY - John Dryden

John Dryden wrote A Song for St. Cecilia's Day to be sung on November 22, 1687, the feast
of St. Cecilia, who is regarded as the patron saint of music. The ode naturally celebrates the
power of music. St. Cecilia was a Christian martyr who died along with her husband in 230
A.D. in Rome.
Summary
Stanza 1
The Universe was created from unrelated atoms by the help of Heavenly Harmony and thus
the universe was created through music, It is harmony that created the four qualities of hot
and cold, moist and dry and the whole of Universe obeyed the heavenly music until in the
climax, man himself came into being.
Stanza 2
Music can raise or control all human emotions. Jubal, the father of music in Jewish literature
first made music by tying a string across a shell, and his companions were surprised at his
music and began to worship the heavenly sound because they thought that God must be
within the /shell to make such sweet sounds.
Stanza 3
Different instruments bring about different emotions the trumpet's inspiring sound excites
men to fight raising emotions of anger and fear. The beat of the drum in the same way is a
part of martial music used in warfare and seems to say "the enemy is coming, advance for it
is too late to retreat'.
Stanza 4
The soft flute is dedicated to the melancholy music the lovers and the lute is used for songs of
mourning.
Stanza 5
Violins evoke feelings of jealousy, depression, fury, and anger on the one hand, as well as the
depth of sorrow and the height of passion on the other.
Stanza 6
But the human voice is something that is greater than any instrument because it inspires love
of holy things and of heavenly matters to join the songs of saints and Angels in heaven.
Stanza 7
Orpheus could lead his people to follow him by playing on his lyre but St. Cecildia could by
her singing bring down an angel frorn Heaven thinking that, earth was his home.
Stanza 8
Music therefore, from the time of creation has praised the creator or God himself and is to be
heard in Heaven as well as the earth and in the same way that when the Universe is to be
destroyed a trumpet from Heaven will be heard which will destroy the earth, raising the dead
to life and condemning the evil spirits to death.

KUBLA KHAN – S.T Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge composed his poem, ‘Kubla Khan’, in a state of semi-conscious
trance either in the autumn of 1797 or the spring of 1798 and published in 1816. The whole
poem is pervaded by an atmosphere of dream and remains in the form of a vision.
The title of the poem at once brings in our mind the picture of a very famous, powerful, and
dictatorial Mongol emperor, Kubla Khan. Kubla khan was one of the famous rulers of what is
now China.
Summary
Kubla Khan, one of the greatest oriental kings, once ordered a magnificent luxury palace to
be built for him in Xanadu on the bank of the sacred river, Alph. This sacred river flowed
through deep and immeasurable caves in the hill and then, at last, fell into a dark,
subterranean sea. Xanadu was surrounded up to ten square miles by walls and towers. It had
beautiful gardens, winding streams, and trees bearing sweet-smelling flowers.
There was also a deep mysterious chasm that ran down the slope of a green hill across a
wood of cedar trees. It was an awe-inspiring place. In fact, it was as holy and bewitched as
the one haunted by a woman wailing for her demon-lover in the dim light of a waning moon.
From this chasm, a mighty fountain gushed forth at short intervals producing an incessant
roaring sound. The powerful outburst of water threw up huge fragments of rocks here and
there on the earth. They sounded like the hailstones striking the earth or the grains spreading
when separated from the chaff by a farmer’s flail.
The sacred river Alph flowed across a five miles long winding course through woods and
valleys. Then, it entered the immeasurable deep caves and finally sank in the dead sea
producing a loud noise. In this tumult of the river, Kubla Khan seemed to hear the voices of
his ancestors foretelling him of the impending wars. The palace was built somewhere midway
between mighty spring and the caves measureless to men. Its shadow seemed floating in the
middle of the river. From the palace could be heard the mixed sounds of the water gushing
forth from the spring and the water noisily flowing through the caves. The palace had sunny
domes and caves of ice and its architecture displayed a rare skill or a miracle.
Once in a vision, the speaker saw an Abyssinian girl who was playing on a dulcimer and
singing a sweet song in praise of Mount Abora. If it were possible for the speaker to revive
the sweet melody and music of her song, it would fill him with divine inspiration and he
would feel enraptured and poetically inspired. With such divine inspiration, he would write
powerful poetry to give a vivid description of Kubla Khan’s marvellous palace.
The speaker says that his imaginative palace would be so vivid that all the people who would
listen to his songs would see it clearly before their eyes. They would then think of him as a
mighty magician and would ask others to be cautious of his flashing eyes and floating hair.
They would weave a circle around him three times and close their eyes with holy dread.
Furthermore, they would say that he had been fed on honey-dew and the Milk of Paradise and
warn one another to keep away from him.
ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE – John Keats
"Ode to a Nightingale" was written by the Romantic poet John Keats in the spring of 1819. At
80 lines, it is the longest of Keats's odes.
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is about the poet’s experience of listening to the beautiful song of the
nightingale. Keats has become intoxicated by the nightingale’s heartbreakingly beautiful
song, and he feels as though he’d drunk the numbing poison hemlock or the similarly
numbing (though less deadly) drug, opium. He is forgetting everything: it’s as though he’s
heading to Lethe (‘Lethe-wards’, as in ‘towards Lethe’), the river of forgetfulness in Greek
mythology.
Keats then addresses the nightingale directly, stating that he feels the way he does not
because he is envious of the bird’s happy existence, but because seeing the bird so happy
makes him, the poet, too happy: it’s overwhelming.
Keats likens the nightingale to a Dryad – another mythological reference, as dryads were
nymphs who inhabited the woods and trees, much as the nightingale sings its melodious
songs among the forests.
The language of intoxication continues in the second stanza, with Keats longing to drink
some wine (‘a draught of vintage’) that has been matured in the very earth and which tastes
of the flowers (Flora was the goddess of flowers in Roman mythology) grown out of the
earth. Hearing the nightingale sing makes Keats long to drink a beaker of wine that tastes of
the South of France, with its associations with Provencal song.
This takes us back to poetry, and for Keats, this wine would taste of ‘the blushful
Hippocrene’: Hippocrene was a fountain on Mount Helicon sacred to the Greek Muses, so
we’re once again in the realms of poetic inspiration.
Keats wants to drink to forget – just as hearing the nightingale has made him forget about the
troubles of this world and enter the enchanted groves of the forests. There is
something transporting about both getting drunk and hearing the beautiful song of the
nightingale.
The third stanza consolidates this idea, with the focus being on forgetting the realities of the
world Keats inhabits – the passing of youth and growing older, and with the process of
growing old, the fear of impending death – and the fact that Beauty must fade. In the fourth
stanza, Keats asks the nightingale to fly away, so that he might follow it away from this world
and discover somewhere more pleasant.
But now Keats abandons his earlier wine-references (‘Bacchus’ was the Roman god of wine,
often accompanied by leopards or ‘pards’) and says that he will use the ‘viewless wings’ of
his own poetry to follow the bird, rather than getting intoxicated on alcohol. This isn’t easy:
the poet’s ‘dull’ brain doesn’t make poetic creativity easy.
But already Keats can feel he is following the nightingale: the night is beautiful, and the
moon is bright in the sky (‘Queen-Moon’ suggesting Diana, the Roman goddess associated
with the moon; the stars are like fairies or ‘Fays’ attending on her). But here where the
nightingale flies, there’s no natural light: only heavenly light.
In the next stanza, Keats – unable to see – guesses what flowers are around him, largely
driven by the scent of the spring flowers in the air. And then, in the following stanza, the
sensory focus shifts from smell to hearing: ‘Darkling I listen’, Keats tells us, as he listens in
this darkness to the song of the bird; he has often been half in love with the idea of death, and
has written approvingly of the idea of dying in his verse.
And now, as he listens to the nightingale, it seems fitting to slip into death while the
nightingale provides the poet’s ‘requiem’ or funeral song as he returns to the earth (‘become a
sod’).
However, the ‘immortal bird’ of the nightingale was not made to die, and both high-born and
low-born people in ancient times heard the nightingale’s song. Keats then refers to the Old
Testament story of Ruth, who chose to remain with her mother-in-law after she was widowed,
rather than returning to her own people (the Moabites): this is why she was ‘amid the alien
corn’.
In the final stanza, Keats picks up on the last word of the penultimate stanza – ‘forlorn’ – and
so we return to the beginning of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, with Keats’s ‘heart [which] aches’,
just as the word ‘forlorn’ recalls Keats to himself, and to reality. The nightingale’s song
recedes, and the poet is left wondering whether it was all a dream.

THE SECOND COMING -W.B Yeats

William Butler Yeats wrote his visionary poem, 'The Second Coming', in January 1919 when
he was 44 years old. The title of the poem, “The Second Coming” has a thematic
significance. The poem’s title refers to the second coming or the return of Jesus Christ in
order to save humanity. The speaker of the poem describes the chaotic situation in the world
and hopes for the second coming.
STANZA I
The poem begins with the speaker saying that a falcon is turning again and again in a
widening spiral and it cannot hear the call of its owner. Things break and fall off while the
center can no longer hold it.
Anarchy has spread over the world and the tidal wave has darkened by blood. The rituals of
innocence have been drowned in this tide. Good people are unmotivated and have no energy
while the bad ones are eager and passionate full of energy.
STANZA II
The second stanza begins with the speaker saying that surely a revelation is soon approaching
and the second coming is also coming closer. The speaker excitedly says that the second
coming is soon to come but then suddenly his sight is troubled by the vision of the universe’s
collective soul.
He sees in the sands of a desert where a creature with a lion’s body and a man’s head. The
creature has an empty and pitiless expression as the sun and its legs are moving slowly. The
shadows of disturbed desert birds are moving all about it.
Darkness spreads all over everything but the speaker says that he now knows something new
that two thousand years of calm and comfortable sleep has been disrupted by the shaking of a
cradle.
The speaker says that the rough beast slowly moves towards Bethlehem where it will be born.
THEMES
CHRISTIANITY: The poem has the theme of Christianity. Its title is about the second coming or
the return of Jesus Christ to earth in order to save humanity. The poem describes a world full of
chaos and disturbance in the beginning and the reader expects the return of Jesus Christ as it is
predicted in the Bible that a bad stage will be followed by a good one.

But as the poem progresses, we come to know that instead of Jesus Christ’s return, a beast
arrives. The beast seems to collapse the Christian world.
CIVILIZATION
The poem also has a theme of human civilization. The speaker says that human beings have
civilized themselves through centuries but still his beastly side is not dead. He says that it is
humans who have caused destruction to the natural world.
PESSIMISM
Though the title suggests the return of Jesus Christ to earth which is a hope for the betterment
of humanity but as the reader keeps on reading, he gets to know that the second coming is not
actually the return of Jesus Christ but the arrival of a beast that will cause the collapse of
human civilization.
Pessimism is one of the main ideas of the poem because the speaker has no hope for the
world to become a better place but has the fear of the arrival of a beast.

THOUGHT FOX- TED HUGHES

“The Thought Fox” is a poem about writing a poem and not about an animal. This poem was
first published in 1957.
Summary
It is midnight's time. The poet is sitting in his room all alone. He seems to be in conscious
state. He tries to collect the thoughts so that he may be able to compose a poem. But it seems
that he is completely devoid of poetic energy and inspiration. Just then the poet imagines that
it is midnight's time of a snowy forest and he feels his presence in the forest. There is utter
darkness in the forest. In such a snowy forest and utter darkness, no sign of any creature can
be traced. In fact , he finds the state of desolation all around him. But he feels that some other
creature is also awake at that moment. He feels the entering of something alive in his room.
In the solitude and silence of the room, the sound of ticking of the clock is heard. A blank
page is lying on the writing table of the poet and his fingers are moving on that paper, but due
to being thoughtless, he does not know what to write. Suddenly the idea of the fox enters his
empty mind and he writes a poem on it which is entitled The Thought Fox.
During midnight, the poet is sitting in his room all alone. Due to being unconscious and
devoid of poetic energy and inspiration, the poet finds himself unable to collect the thoughts
for composing the poem. But next time, at the same moment, he visualises a snowy forest. It
appears to him that he is in the forest. There is pindrop silence. There is utter darkness out of
his room. He peeps through the window and finds that no star is twinkling in the sky. Hence,
he is unable to get inspiration from the stars. He feels that something is moving through utter
darkness. He feels that something is coming towards him and that thing wants to disturb his
solitude.
Sitting in his room at midnight, the poet wants to compose a poem. He tries to his best to
pour down his thoughts on the blank paper. But he feels himself in unconscious state. He
feels that he is completely deprived of poetic energy and inspiration. Then he visualises his
presence in a snowy forest. He finds that the atmosphere is pervaded with utter darkness.
When he peeps out through the window of his room, he finds that no single star is twinkling
in the sky, but he feels that something alive is approaching towards him through utter
darkness and its intention is to disturb his solitude. He perceives that a fox in the form of
thought, poetic energy and inspiration is coming through the forest. In his imagination, he
feels a sudden change in temperature. In the cold night, a fox's nose, delicate as snow, seems
to touch a tender twig then a leaf. In fact, it is strange thing that the white snow is not visible
in the dark night. The poet notices the two eyes of the fox. Two eyes of the fox shine out
clearly and brilliantly in the middle of the darkness. The movement of the eyes of the fox
suggests the movement of the fox.
At midnight, the poet is sitting in his room all alone with a blank paper. He wants to compose
a poem, but inspiration does not dawn upon him and he feels himself in unconscious state. He
imagines that the room in which he is dwelling and is waiting for the poetic energy and
inspiration, is situated in the midst of the snowy forest. He feels that something alive is
approaching to him. Perhaps it wants to disturb his loneliness. He feels a sudden fall in the
temperature. He feels a cold touch which is very delicate like a fox smelling a twig and then a
leaf. He recognizes two staring eyes of fox which are the source of inspiration. The poet is
able to see very clearly the repeated movement of the eyes of the fox. As the fox moves
towards him, it leaves its footprints on white snow. In other words the fox is a thought, poetic
energy and inspiration and the snow is a blank white paper and the footprints are words or
thoughts written on blank white paper. It means that the inspiration in the form of fox is
dawning upon the mind of the poet. In this way, the poet's mind is illumined with thought.
The shadow of fox seems to be lingering about the stumps of the trees. Because of having a
bodiless existence, it does not have fear of anything. It shows its fearlessness and boldness
while moving to poet.
In his imagination, the poet feels himself in the midst of a snowy forest where the utter
darkness is pervaded. He feels that something alive is coming towards him and that thing
wants to disturb his solitude. The imaginary fox which is the source of the poet's poetic
inspiration keeps on moving to the poet. Now the poet sees the fox's one eye. It means that
the fox's attention seems to be fixed. The one eye of the fox has an extraordinary illumination
of inspiration. It makes the poet feel the presence of greenery in utter darkness. The thoughts
illumined with inspiration begin to enter in the poet's mind. The faculty of poet's mind
drowned in utter darkness is illumined with deep and expressive thoughts.
When the poet feels himself unable to compose a poem because of having no inspiration and
thought, he visualises a snowy forest drowned in utter darkness. In his imagination he feels
that a fox in the form of inspiration is approaching to him. He perceives the fox continuing to
move forward. The poet thinks that the fox has determined its destination firmly and it is
approaching to its fixed target. The fox in the form of inspiration like an invisible presence
approach to the poet. Then with a sudden sharp stink, it penetrates into dark hole of the poet's
head. Inspiration enters the dark faculty of the poet's mind, much in the same way that a fox
walking stealthily reaches its hole and then becomes invisible. In other words, the imagined
presence of the thought - fox enters the poet's mind and becomes one with it and possesses
him completely. The rest of the atmosphere such as the sound of ticking clock, the dark house
and the loneliness remain unaffected. But as this thought fox, the inspiration enters the poet's
head; it leaves the footprints on the snow-white paper which the poet has been holding in
front of him. The dark footprints of thought fox have now entered as black letters on the
white paper in the form of a poem.