21
votes
Is George a dishwasher?
It means that George's job at the time was washing dirty dishes at a restaurant, bar, or other place that serves food. (You might be familiar with 'dishwasher' as the name of an appliance, but it can ...
- 814
20
votes
Accepted
What makes the Sydney barber's remark rude?
This is straightforward with the assistance of a comprehensive dictionary:
flat, n. 21. (obsolete) A dull fellow; a simpleton.
green, adj. 7. (figurative, of people) Naive or unaware of obvious facts....
- 60.7k
20
votes
English translation of a quatrain from the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam
This quatrain was not translated by Edward Fitzgerald (1859), nor by Richard Le Galliene (1902), but it was translated by E. H. Whinfield (1883):
167.
Be very wary in the soul’s domain,
And on the ...
- 60.7k
19
votes
Accepted
Have there been any scholarly attempts and/or consensus as regards the missing lines of "The Ruin"?
A secure or consensus reconstruction is not possible, as too much of the text has been destroyed. Here’s the first part of the poem, on folios 123v and 124r of the Exeter Book. ‘The Ruin’ starts on ...
- 60.7k
15
votes
Did George Bernard Shaw write the poem "Living Grave"?
The earliest appearance of this poem that I was able to locate is in Religion & Peace (1957) by S. C. Diwaker:
In this regard the words of George Bernard Shaw are ever memorable:
We are the ...
- 60.7k
15
votes
Accepted
What happened on April 22, 1838?
After looking into this further based on some hints in the book's footnotes, it turns out that Taras Shevchenko was a serf. He was trained as a painter for awhile, but he wanted to continue his ...
13
votes
To understand "silver dew" in William Blake's "To the Evening Star"
In “silver dew” the word “silver” is used in this sense:
silver, adj. 5.a. Having the whiteness or lustre of silver; silvery. Chiefly poetic.
Oxford English Dictionary.
So this describes the silvery ...
- 60.7k
10
votes
What did Walt Whitman mean by "a pennant universal"?
He is talking about a "spiritual" "flag" for all sailors.
Whitman starts by talking about the different flags of different nations.
But by line three he is talking about "one ...
- 996
9
votes
What is the meaning of the final stanza of The Rabbi's Song by Rudyard Kipling?
tl;dr
The "means" is forgiveness.
Deets
The quoted verse is Kipling's recasting of 2 Samuel 14 14:
For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up ...
- 30.8k
9
votes
Accepted
Trying to identify short poem
That sounds like "The Reassurance" by Thom Gunn:
About ten days or so
After we saw you dead
You came back in a dream.
I'm alright now you said.
And it was you, although
You were fleshed out ...
- 1,371
9
votes
Accepted
What does it mean for a "bad eye" to "touch" something?
If we interpret the poem as attempting to personify Kashgar, I think may no evil eye touch you might be a better translation; otherwise, may no villainous gaze land upon you would be suitable.
In ...
- 3,531
9
votes
What does it mean for a "bad eye" to "touch" something?
This is an elaboration of, not a substitute for, @CDR's accurate answer. The last few sentences of the poem use expressions common in many Asian cultures for wishing longevity to something or (more ...
- 30.8k
9
votes
Meaning of a passage in Milton's Sonnet 21
Milton is asking his friend Cyriack Skinner to take a brief break from studious pursuits. The opening stanza introduces Skinner, whose grandfather was the celebrated jurist Edward Coke, Chief Justice ...
- 30.8k
9
votes
Accepted
What does Athena mean by "suave, seductive words" in the Odyssey?
Earlier in book 1 it was explained that Odysseus wanted to return home to his wife Penelope and his kingdom of Ithaca, but Calypso kept him imprisoned because she wanted to marry him:
But one man ...
- 60.7k
8
votes
Accepted
What are 'The cobweb clues of Rosamond'?
Rosamund is Rosamund Clifford, Henry II's mistress. Legends claim that his wife, Eleanor, tracked her down to the heart of a maze that Henry had hidden her in and killed her. Sometimes, the legends ...
- 6,328
8
votes
Accepted
Trouble understanding two lines from John Donne's poem "The Good Morrow"
tl;dr
The speaker is saying, "Let it be the case that that sea-discoverers have found new worlds. Let there be maps that have shown many such worlds to others," and implying, "So what?&...
- 30.8k
8
votes
Accepted
Difficulty understanding the meaning of the word "attitude" in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Your argument is that the urn cannot have an “attitude” (in the sense “a posture of the body”), even considered as a figure of personification, because it is “presumably just sitting there, upright, ...
- 60.7k
8
votes
Accepted
Is it an error to identify the narrator of "Ozymandias" with the author?
tl;dr
The narrator of "Ozymandias" is not reducible to the poet. Yes, like a stand-up act, a lyric utterance is performance art. And yes, in "Ozymandias" as in all lyric poetry, ...
- 30.8k
8
votes
Help understanding lines 7 & 8 from Shakespeare's 18th sonnet
Using modern spelling (I don't think there's any real reason to use Renaissance spelling unless the pronunciation has changed), these lines are:
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, ...
- 13.8k
7
votes
Accepted
What was the intended audience of "Absent, Or Not Absent" by Tsering Woeser?
Tsering Woeser was born in Lhasa in 1966. From an interview with her published in Asymptote, the reason for her publishing her poetry in Mandarin was not to reach any particular audience, but simply ...
- 15.5k
7
votes
Accepted
Who is the 'pale Titan-woman' in Swinburne's 'Ave atque Vale'?
The general interpretation of this line is that it's an allusion to Baudelaire's poem La Géante (The Giantess).
From Walter Martin's translation in an omnibus edition:
When Mother Nature filled the ...
- 3,531
7
votes
Accepted
Is Chain Rhyme an ambiguous term? Or are Chain Rhyme and Chain Verse different things?
Both terms have been used for two different devices, so both terms are potentially ambiguous, but it is not difficult to explain which one you mean. In this answer, I’m going to call the two devices “...
- 60.7k
7
votes
Meaning of "too silver for a seam" in "A Bird, came down the Walk"
Essentially, Dickinson is comparing the bird's smooth flight to rowing in the ocean, saying that its strokes of the oars (which symbolize the bird's wings) that "divide the ocean" would be ...
- 3,531
7
votes
How does ignorance make a barren waste in "To the Nile" by John Keats?
I think the question is right: the poem criticizes descriptions of Egypt by westerners who look at the landscape and see only a barren waste.
The question asks if Keats ever visited Africa. He did not:...
- 60.7k
7
votes
Accepted
The rules of alliteration in Germanic poetry as they pertain to single syllable triple consonant clusters starting with the letter s
These are all the lines in Beowulf in which one of the alliterating words starts with three consonants, the first being ‘s’:
Line
Text
212
on stefn stigon. Streamas wundon,
320
Stræt wæs stanfah, ...
- 60.7k
7
votes
Accepted
Identifying a quotation from Dulce Maria Loynaz comparing physical pain to a civil war
This describes one of Loynaz's Poemas sin Nombre, a collection of her poems published in 1953. None of the poems are given titles, but are simply assigned a roman numeral. Poem XXXV begins:
Como una ...
- 15.5k
6
votes
Accepted
What is the "slow wheel" in Frost's "Into My Own"?
Virginia Smith explains in A Scientific Companion to Robert Frost:
highway where the slow wheel pours the sand:
This is most likely a description of the practice of spreading sand on gravel roads to ...
- 3,531
6
votes
Accepted
Was there a unified "First World War poetry" movement (during the war itself)?
tl;dr
There was no unified literary movement during the Great War that included poets from all over Europe, North America, and such colonies or dominions whose forces participated in the conflict. ...
- 30.8k
6
votes
Which poet explained 'why sweet Hesper glows'?
The reference is surely to Sappho fragments 104(a) and (b), in David Campbell’s numbering:
104(a) Demetrius, On Style
Sometimes, also, Sappho makes charming use of repetition as in the description ...
- 60.7k
6
votes
Accepted
Did Lord Byron fluff his Greek in his poem beginning 'Maid of Athens, ere we part'?
I am Greek and familiar with the poem, and I can say that Sumelic and Scott are right to interpret this as a misunderstanding of Byron. Ζωή μου means indeed My life, while Ζώη μου means nothing at all,...
- 76
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