Topic: Poetry Sub-Topic: On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book (Poem) Class: 10 Text Poem: On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book By: Charles Tennyson Turner
Some hand, that never meant to do thee hurt,
Has crushed thee here between these pages pent; But thou hast left thine own fair monument, Thy wings gleam out and tell me what thou wert: Oh! that the memories, which survive us here, Were half as lovely as these wings of thine! Pure relics of a blameless life, that shine Now thou art gone. Our doom is ever near: The peril is beside us day by day; The book will close upon us, it may be, Just as we lift ourselves to soar away Upon the summer-airs. But, unlike thee, The closing book may stop our vital breath, Yet leave no lustre on our page of death.
VOCABULARY— WORD MEANINGS:
1. Thee (pro): archaic form of ‘you’ 2. Pent (adj): close 3. Thine ((pro): archaic form of ‘your’
4. Monument (n): memorial 4. Gleam (v): shine brightly 5. Wert (v): were
6. Relics (n): a part of a deceased holy person's body or belongings kept as an object of reverence
‘On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book’ written by Charles Tennyson Turner is an unconventional sonnet based on its rhyme scheme. It does not fit any of the traditional sonnet forms: Petrarchan, Spenserian or Shakespearian. This variation (the “break” in meaning, that usually occurs after the octave, actually comes in the middle of the eighth line) allows Turner to express himself more freely. This is also evident in its seemingly generic title: the construction “On…” was widespread among reflective poems of the 17th to 19th centuries. Yet “On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book” cannot be considered a generic or typical poem.
On the surface, it may seem as if the writer is moved by something as mundane as a dead fly. But on closer reading, it becomes clear that the poem is rather reflective, which is prompted by this small incident that follows the book's opening. The poet's feelings are stirred because the sight of that fly reminded him of man's life.
INFORMATION ABOUT THE POET: Judith Wright
Charles Tennyson Turner (4 July 1808 – 25 April 1879) was an English poet. He is the lesser-known brother of the poet Alfred Tennyson. In 1833, Charles was ordained a priest in the Church of England. On 1 October 1835, he changed his surname to Turner after inheriting his great-uncle's estate, the Reverend Samuel Turner of Caistor in Lincolnshire. On 24 May 1836, he married Louisa Sellwood, the younger sister of Alfred's future wife; she later suffered from mental illness and became an opium addict. Charles died on 25 April 1879, at the age of 70, at 6 Imperial Square in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Turner was key in the construction of Grasby, a small village on the outskirts of Caistor. He helped construct part of the school (Grasby School) and was the vicar of Grasby Church for a while. Some of his prominent works are Sonnets (1864), Small Tableaux (1868), Sonnets, Lyrics and Translations (1873), Collected Poems (1880, 8 months after death), assembled by Alfred and Hallam Tennyson, and James Spedding.
STRUCTURE & FORM OF THE POEM:
‘On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book’ by Charles Tennyson Turner is a fourteen-line poem that follows a rhyme scheme of ABABCDDCEFEFGG, which can be interpreted as an alternative sonnet form. It does not follow the pattern of conventional sonnets that reflect the atypical subject matter of this poem. This is backed up by the metrical pattern that comes through in the first lines. As most sonnets do, ‘On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book’ makes use of iambic pentameter. This means that the lines, mostly, contain five sets of two beats. The first of which is unstressed and the second stressed.
SUMMARY OF THE POEM:
In the first lines of the poem, the speaker talks to a deceased fly that he has found crushed in a book. He interprets its death as accidental, as though someone closed the book on it without meaning to. Despite this, he marvels over the fly’s wings and the imprint it left on its life.
As the poem progresses, he turns to talk about human life and death and how everyone is going to get crushed in the book of death eventually. But, unlike the fly, humanity will not leave behind something as beautiful as the shimmer of the fly’s wings on the book pages.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE POEM
Turner lived in a time of drama and turmoil. During his lifetime, proverbially, the "sun never set on the British Empire": Britain had colonial holdings across the world, and was the major world power. At the same time, the new wealth (and new difficulties) of the Industrial Revolution was changing the face of Britain, as what was once a primarily rural nation quickly became primarily urban. Staggering poverty and staggering luxury coexisted in the newly crowded cities.
Perhaps in response to all this uproar, Victorian English social mores, especially among the upper classes, were marked by a strong sense of propriety and conformity. The Victorians considered themselves models for the world, and their strict social, moral, and sexual codes meant that people today sometimes use the word "Victorian" to mean "prudish." This poem's gently sorrowful reflections on death and memory are a pretty non- confrontational example of Victorian morality in art!
This poem's interest in death might also reflect a very Victorian preoccupation with mourning, which became almost a national hobby after Queen Victoria's beloved husband Albert died. Victoria mourned lavishly and publicly until the day she died, and her citizens followed suit. Victorian mourning was a ritualised affair, with strict rules about clothing and conduct. This poem's reflections on what kind of "monument" we leave behind us when we die fit right into a culture obsessed with grief.
ANALYSIS OF THE POEM:
Lines 1-4
In the first lines of ‘On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book,’ the speaker begins by addressing the fly. This is a technique known as an apostrophe. The fly cannot understand the speaker, and even if it could, it cannot respond since it is a dead fly. He believes that whoever crushed the fly in the book did not mean to do so, but it happened nonetheless. Although this is a terrible and unimpressive death, the fly has created a monument to its own life with its body. Its wings are still shining and telling the speaker about itself. The fly was once alive, and now its presence in the book reminds everyone that comes upon it of that.
But the speaker's comparison of these wings to a "monument" suggests that there might be more to see in these wings than just a pretty, poignant reminder of a little life. As this poem goes on, the speaker will treat this fly and its wings as a metaphor for people and what they leave behind them when they die. Lines 5-8
In the second stanza, the poet begins with the exclamation, “Oh!” He connects the fly’s monument, its tiny body in the book, to another kind of memory, those of life. He wishes that life’s memories were as beautiful, or “half as lovely,” as the vision of the fly in the book. Its wings are striking and connected with the speaker at that moment.
He continues to speak about the fly’s wings, telling it that the wings appear to him as “Pure relics of a blameless life.” The fly lived as a pure, sinless creature, doing what it was supposed to do every day without any misstep. Now, they continue to shine when “thou art is gone.” This reminds the speaker of his mortality and that of everyone he knows and has ever known. In the second half of the eighth line, after the caesura, the speaker says that “Our doom is ever near.” This leads into the final six lines, or sestet, of the poem.
Lines 9-14
In the ninth line of ‘‘On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book,’ the speaker, now directing his words out more broadly to whoever is reading or listening, says that our destruction is awaiting us. Death and danger are companions throughout life. Eventually, the same book that closed on the fly is going to “close upon us.” He has interpreted the death of the fly as a broader metaphor for the death that is going to come for everyone. It can come just as we try to fly away into the summer air.
In the final two lines, the speaker draws a comparison between what humanity leaves behind compared to what the fly has left. “We,” he says, are not going to leave the “lustre” of our lives on “our page of death.” This is an allusion back to the shine of the fly’s wings in the previous line. It’s a marker of the fly’s life, something that humanity, the speaker says, is not going to have.
THEMES OF THE POEM:
In ‘On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book,’ Turner primarily addresses the theme of the inevitability of death. He spends the first part of the poem admiring the fly, its untimely death, and what it left behind. Then, he transitions into a description of death as a feature of everyone’s life. The book is expanded and used as a metaphor for death as something that can come out of nowhere and take someone’s life. It can close at any moment as it did on the fly. It is also clear by the end of the poem that the speaker does not believe that human death could ever be as beautiful as the fly’s death. Not all human beings cannot leave behind an exemplary legacy either as our temptations prompt us to commit sins. But the fly has left a ‘blameless’ life. The shimmer of its wings proves that.
LITERARY DEVICES
In ‘On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book’ Turner makes use of several literary devices. These include but are not limited to alliteration, caesura, and metaphor. The first of these, alliteration, is a common literary device that is concerned with the use and reuse of the same consonant sound at the beginning of multiple words. For example, “thou” and “thine” in line three and “hand” and “hurt” in line one.
There are examples of caesuras in ‘On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book.’ One of the best is in line eight. It reads: “Now thou art gone. Our doom is ever near.” Caesurae occurs when the poet inserts a pause into the middle of a line. This might be with punctuation or with a natural pause in the metre. In the second half of the poem, the speaker uses the book that crushed the fly as a metaphor for death. It could come and close on anyone at any time.
QUESTION:
HW: Explore the overall theme of death in this poem. Why can human beings not leave ‘lustre on our page of death’? Explain. [25] [Word Limit: 300—400];
