53
votes
In Ozymandias, who is the "ye" in the line "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" meant to be addressing?
"Look on my works ye mighty and despair."
First point: you are correct, the ye is equivalent to you.
Second point: the reason he uses ye instead of you is because it is supposedly an ...
- 2,221
28
votes
Accepted
Why are all the schoolchildren referred to as guns in Clint Smith's "The Gun"?
The use of "gun" as a noun to refer to all the children in the school serves three linked purposes.
Initially it purposefully confuses the reader as to what's happening in the poem, while ...
- 21k
23
votes
Why Pallas in "The Raven"?
Poe himself offers a brief answer to this in his 1846 essay The Philosophy of Composition. He states:
I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also for the effect of contrast between the marble ...
- 21k
22
votes
In Ozymandias, who is the "ye" in the line "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" meant to be addressing?
My impression is that "ye noun" was regularly used as a vocative (i.e., a direct address) in English in the 19th century. See Google Ngrams. (Although you shouldn't entirely trust this Ngram ...
- 11.7k
18
votes
Why are all the schoolchildren referred to as guns in Clint Smith's "The Gun"?
The technique conveys that guns are all-pervasive in schools. By one measure, there were 303 gun-related incidents in American schools in 2022. That is more than one per school day. And so far this ...
- 22.1k
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 ...
14
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 ...
- 53.5k
13
votes
Accepted
Why does the speaker in the famous poem want the western wind to blow?
Some of the question's assumptions need clarification. To begin with, in the United Kingdom as well as in mythology, the western wind is associated with gentle weather rather than "rough winter&...
- 22.1k
12
votes
Can I trust that Shakespeare's sonnets will always be published with the same numbering system?
Since the numbering that we have become familiar with stems from the first edition, printed in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe, this is also the numbering used in most modern editions. However, it has been ...
- 44k
12
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "Your pin wad help to mend a mill" in "Address to a Haggis"
TL;DR: This is hyperbole: the skewer through the haggis is imagined to be as large as the post of a mill.
For “pin” I found a clear explanation in an old recipe:
Of the Preparation.—Clean out the ...
- 53.5k
11
votes
Why are all the schoolchildren referred to as guns in Clint Smith's "The Gun"?
You do need to remember that private gun ownership in the US is (politically) a higher priority than the lives of children. All material relating to that subject must be viewed through this social ...
- 339
11
votes
Is this phrase in Thomas Hardy's poem The Stranger's Song addressing the audience to catch their attention?
Your interpretation is correct. Your friend's is not plausible. The speaker is a hangman, and he is addressing a group of shepherds. In the first verse, he tells the shepherds that he is a hangman; in ...
- 22.1k
10
votes
In Ozymandias, who is the "ye" in the line "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" meant to be addressing?
Ye is/was the nominative second person plural pronoun. Its current use is chiefly dialect, ceremonial, historical and religious.
The religious and historical aspect are at play here as a literary ...
- 408
10
votes
What is the "love-god's string" in Sarojini Naidu's "A Song in Spring"?
This is a reference to the Hindu god of love, Kama, who, like Cupid, has a magical bow with magical arrows. (Comma overload)
Here is a line from the Shiva Purana as a scriptural reference for this:
...
- 1,835
9
votes
In Ozymandias, who is the "ye" in the line "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" meant to be addressing?
This is a second-person plural pronoun, already obsolete by Shelley’s time. He uses it because it’s supposed to be an old inscription (and most modern English readers are unfamiliar with any form of ...
- 271
9
votes
Accepted
Are these lines by Thomas Nuce a translation and/or taken from a longer poem?
It's not a poem: It is from Nuce's 1581 translation of a Latin play called Octavia. (Seneca's 9th tragedy) It's a monologue by the character Seneca that appears in the middle of Act 2, Scene 1.
So ...
- 1,835
9
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 ...
- 579
8
votes
Who wrote the poem starting "'Tis true my form is something odd"?
The first four lines are from an untitled poem by ‘J. G.’, printed in 1748:
The following Lines were sent by a Gentleman a little deformed, to a young Lady he was
encouraged to pay his Addresses to; ...
- 53.5k
8
votes
Why are all the schoolchildren referred to as guns in Clint Smith's "The Gun"?
Referring to a child as a "gun" (and by the pronoun "it") is dehumanising, obviously. What purpose does it serve in the poem to dehumanise the protagonist? It emphasises the awful ...
- 71.1k
8
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "sheer hulk" in the poem/song "Tom Bowling" by Charles Dibdin = "just a hulk of a ship" or "a floating crane"?
Although, as remarked in the comments, it may not be possible to definitively settle this question, I think that nonetheless there are certain indications that let us assess the balance of ...
- 8,861
8
votes
What is the "living shroud" in Sarojini Naidu's "Dirge"?
Traditional Hindu culture uses clothing and jewellery to mark a woman's marital status. Married women wear bangles of red or green glass, bracelets of gold or conch shell, and/or a ma.ngalasuutra, a ...
- 22.1k
8
votes
Significance of the title of "Corn-Grinders" by Sarojini Naidu
Naidu's title "Corn-Grinders" draws upon a metaphor common in the Indian subcontinent, where a grinding mill symbolizes the pitilessness of existence.
As Spagirl writes in her answer, corn ...
- 22.1k
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 ...
- 5,957
7
votes
What does “be one traveler” mean in “The Road Not Taken”?
It's a complex predicate.
I could not travel both and be one traveler
which could be broken down into
I could not travel both
and
I could not be one traveler
The second of which is grammatical ...
- 5,957
7
votes
Accepted
What were the poems other than those by Donne in the Melford Hall manuscript?
The Melford Hall Manuscript was acquired by the British Library after the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport placeed an export bar on the work in a bid to save the manuscript for the ...
- 8,861
6
votes
Accepted
Name of poem: dangers of nuclear war/energy, referencing music of philharmonic orchestra/trio/cricket
That would be "Apocalypse" by DJ Enright. Found here:
'After the New Apocalypse, very few members were still in possession of their instruments. Hardly a musician could call a decent suit ...
- 71.1k
6
votes
Why are William Mcgonagall's poems considered so terrible?
The question asks for “scholarly citations and evaluations of why scholars consider him to be so bad” but there is very little to cite. Anyone who reads and appreciates poetry can tell that McGonagall’...
- 53.5k
6
votes
Accepted
What is the term for the last word of each line in rhyme/poem? The word that is actually the rhyming one
The usual term is just rhyme! (In sense 1c.)
rhyme, n. 1.b. Correspondence of sound between the endings of two or more words or metrical lines such that the syllables involved carry identical vowel ...
- 53.5k
6
votes
Accepted
Formatting poetry books
The visual layout of a poem can sometimes be important to its meaning or interpretation. It's not a particularly common technique so, in a book of poetry, one might expect to find such poems alongside ...
- 21k
6
votes
Accepted
Pronouns in Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
The subject is such.
What it means is that the owl is complaining about the people (or animals) who wander near her secret bower and disturb her solitude.
Here, ye is the vocative case of you. The ...
- 11.7k
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