Poem Analysis: 'When I Heard The Learn' D Astronomer

Poetry Analysis – Daphne Yang
(i.e. all the allotted poems from The Pocket Book of Modern Verse)
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer – Walt Whitman
The poemWhen I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer has some repetition. In lines 1-4, all the sentences begin with ‘when’ and describe the event of the main character listening to an astronomy lecture. I like the repetition because it successfully provided a hypnotic, soothing rhythm.
I also like the phrasing. I like that the poem is one long sentence that starts with “When I heard the learn’d astronomer” and ends with “look’d up in perfect silence at the stars” to describe cause and effect. I like that the poem linearly connects the cause and effect presented in the poem – the cause being listening to the astronomy lecture and the effect being getting sick of the lecture and walking out and enjoying the stars.
The title, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”, helped me understand the poem. It states the inciting event of the poem – listening to the astronomy lecture. In the poem, the main character dislikes listening to the lecture, but does enjoy going out and observing the stars himself. The message of the poem is how learning for the sake of academia may not be as enjoyable as learning for the sake of learning.
--
Jabberwocky –

Lewis Caroll
Jabberwocky has a lot of onomatopoeia. This is seen in words such as “burbled” and “snicker-snack”, and the author did this to help visualise the auditory details. I like the sensory details because it contributed to the description of the image of the scene.
Jabberwocky also has a fair amount of alliteration. Phrases such as “gyre and gimble”, “claws that catch”, “snicker-sn¬ack”, and “beamish boy” all contribute to the upbeat quality of the poem. I personally disliked the alliteration – I can see how it was used and I believe it was successful in keeping the poem cheerful, but it caused me to stumble and trip over phrases as I read.
Jabberwocky has very interesting diction, which actually helped me understand the poem even though I had to reread it. It uses made-up words such as “Bandersnatch” and “galumphing”. Using roots of multiple words that already have meanings and connotations, the poem successfully described the jabberwocky and the setting as a fantastical and bizarre. The poem is about a young man who ventures into the forest to slay the monstrous beast, the Jabberwocky, and the bizarre diction describes the setting. The narrator of the poem is someone who cares about the young man, possibly his father. The narrator worries about the boy at first but is proud when he succeeds in killing the beast.
--
The Walrus and the Carpenter – Lewis Caroll
One very prominent poetic element in The Walrus and the Carpenter is the rhythm structure. The poem is structured in six-line stanzas and every second syllable is stressed (with some exceptions, such as line 11). There are 13 syllables in two lines; seven in the odd-numbered lines and six in the even-numbered lines. (Ex. He did his verybest to make / Thebillows smooth and bright.) This is done to control the way pattern in which the poem is read. I liked the rhythm because it made reading the poem very easy and smooth.
The poem also uses repetition to show significance of a described quality. For example, all the repetition in stanza 3 describes the setting; “A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk” conveys a mood of pleasantness; “And more, and more, and more” emphasises the multitude of oysters that wanted to go with the walrus and carpenter), are all used to emphasise the repeated word or idea. I liked the repetition because it created a sense of drama in the otherwise mundane sentences and made the reading interesting.
The irony helped convey the message of the poem. The poem uses situational irony when it is revealed that the walrus and carpenter didn’t want to innocuously take the oysters on a walk, but that they were going to eat them, and the message of the poem is to not blindly trust people.
--
When You Are Old – William Butler Yeats
I really liked the imagery in When You Are Old. The author used imagery such as “When you are old and grey and full of sleep / And nodding by the fire…” to vividly describe the event of an old person reading a book. The poem describes a man telling the person he loves to read a book in old age and remember they are loved. The imagery describes what exactly it is that the person should be remembering when reading the book – the varying degree to which everyone loves them, particularly the narrator’s true love (“And loved the sorrows of your changing [aging] face”), and love’s fleetingness (“Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled”) – all while staying in a firelit room (which is also vividly described).
The rhythm of the poem was iambic pentameter: ten syllables with stress every second syllable. The long lines and steady meter sets a relaxed mood and slow pace to the poem, establishing the backdrop for the evocative imagery of the poem. I didn’t particularly like the rhythm because until I figured out that there was a steady meter, reading the poem was fairly haphazard.
The personification in the poem really helped me understand it. The poem personifies Love, which is capitalised, and personifies it in saying that “Love Fled”. The poem is about love, but the personification of fleeing Love made it clear that the message is not only that love is present in one’s life, but also that love unfortunately fades over time.
--
The Second Coming – William Butler Yeats
The Second Coming uses metaphors to convey its meaning. “The blood-dimmed tide” is a metaphor for the chaos and anarchy that comes from war. The figure with the lion’s body and man’s head is a metaphor for the relentless suffering that is bound to happen post-war. I like the metaphors because they evoke a sense of doom and damnation (further illustrated with allusions to the Biblical second coming) that really sets the mood for the poem. The metaphors are what made the poem so captivating for me.
The words that really stood out to me in this poem were SpiritusMundi (world spirit), because it was a Latin phrase and in italics. I think the author inserted the Latin to convey the mystery that often comes from Latin words; however, I didn’t like it because I feel like the author could have conveyed the same tone and meaning by just saying ‘world spirit’. The other words that stood out for me were the Biblical references – Second Coming, Bethlehem – and those were there to compare the post-war scenery with Biblical events. Those, however, I liked mainly because I didn’tknow about them. It’s nice when literature prompts me to learn something new and I had to look up these Biblical references.
The imagery helped me understand the poem. Imagery such as “the blood-dimmed tide is loosed” and “the darkness drops again” and the description of the desert describe a war and the resulting almost-apocalyptic, post-conflict landscape. The message of the poem is that the aftermath of chaos or heavy conflict is terrible. (Upon further research, I found that this poem was written after World War I, which gives the post-war imagery a context.)
--
Mending Wall – Robert Frost
I like the personification in Mending Wall because the narrator uses it as part of the reasoning for the point he is trying to make. In the first four lines (“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall / That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it / And spills the upper boulders in the sun / And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”), the narrator personifies the elements and the weather that erodes down the fence that the neighbours have to fix every spring. The author does this because part of the narrator’s reasoning for not wanting to rebuild the fence is that something else (he brings up ‘elves’ in jest) does not want the fence to stay intact. I really like the personification because I think it’s interesting to see personification used as more than either a vivid descriptor or a characterised object or animal; in this case, it is used as a descriptor that is also a point for the narrator’s argument.

I dislike the visual layout because there are no stanza breaks – i.e. the poem was one large verse. (I would give a quote but I would have to quote the entire poem.) It was written this way because of the way the poem is structured. There are 10 syllables per line and no foot structure. There is likely no foot structure so the poem reads like prose. However, to make it fit 10 syllables per line and keep the sentences natural, the author sometimes started a new sentence in the middle of a line, thus making it difficult to have stanza breaks. Yet while I can see the reasoning behind laying the page out as it is, it was difficult to read the poem. It’s much easier to read something when there’s a visual bookmark in the layout; in this poem, my eyes glazed over because there were no breaks.
The repetition in Mending Wall helped me understand the poem. In the poem, the lines “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” and “Good fences make good neighbours” are repeated. These lines are repeated to emphasise the two opposing viewpoints brought up by the poem. The narrator wants to not fix the fence between the houses that breaks down every year because he believes there is no point if there is nothing to fence out or in; this is represented by the first repeated line. However, the neighbour does want to fix the fence; this is represented by the second repeated line. The message is that walls that are not keeping anything out or in – or objects that don’t serve a purpose – should not be repaired, though some people resolutely disagree.
--
Stopping By Woods on a Snow Evening – Robert Frost
I like the rhyme structure because it makes the entire poem really easy to read.

The rhyme structure is AABA (ex. know/though/here/snow) in the first two stanzas and AAAA in the last stanza (deep/keep/sleep/sleep). Not only does the rhyme structure contribute to the ease of reading, it contributes to the easygoingatmosphere of the poem. The narrator knows he has responsibilities to be somewhere; however, he’s moving at a steady even pace that isn’t rushed with as few jars in the rhythm as possible. I like that the rhyme structure contributes to this unrushed tone that makes reading the poem very relaxing. (The 8-syllable-per-line iambic rhythm is also really nice and contributes to

this.)
I also like the repetition in the stanza 3 (“And miles to go before I sleep / And miles to go before I sleep”). This emphasises the narrator’s need to get to where he needs to be before he takes a break despite the beauty of the woods, as detailed in previous parts of the poem and the first line of stanza 3. I also like the mood conveyed by the repetition in the last few lines, showing that the narrator is tired but determined to continue.
The personification is the key factor to helping me understand the poem because it presents a different point of view from the narrator’s that the narrator acknowledges. The personification takes place from “My little horse must think it queer” onward for the next five lines. The horse ‘thinks’ it is strange that the traveller (the narrator) is stopping in the middle of the woods instead of taking a break at an earlier farmhouse, to which the narrator muses that he must continue on his path as much as possible. The message of the poem is that while resting is often tempting, continuing on steadily is also worth doing. We would not get this dichotomy of opposing ideas without the personification of the horse.
--
somewherei have never travelled – e.e.¬cummings
The use of punctuation in somewhere i have never travelled is very interesting. There is no foot structure to this poem; instead, the poem reads like sentences of prose that have just been broken up in strange places (ex. “i do not know what it is about you that closes / and opens; only something in me understands / the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses”). I had previously complained in my analysis of Robert Frost’s Mending Wall that sentences broken up in the middle of lines had a hard-to-read one-stanza poem; however, the stanzas are successfully broken up here and the I think the way the ‘sentences’ and lines are broken up are interesting. I like that when I’m reading this, I’m not supposed to take a break between each line, but where the punctuation indicates to do so. I like how surprisingly smooth the reading gets with this method of punctuating poetry.
I dislike the lack of title in the poem. From the other e. e. cummings poems in this books, I can infer by inductive reasoning that either e. e. cummings always titles his works with part of the first line of each poemor that he doesn’t title his poems at all and the editors of the book titled them for identification purposes. Usually, I would have no problem with titling that way. However, in this case with the title and first part of the first line being “somewhere i have never travelled”, I don’t think the title reflects a major part of poem or has a purpose aside from identification. I think that titling poetry appropriately adds to the poem and the fact that this poem is haphazardly titled is disappointing.
One specific simile helped me understand this poem. The simile of the rose is used to describe how infatuated the narrator is with the person he is in love with. The narrator describes how the seasons can open and close the petals of the rose just as his lover can control his happiness by ‘opening and closing’ him. (“You open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens / (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose”.) The simile here essentially describes the main idea (message, per se) of the poem – that the author is really in love with this person.
--