Poem Summary

Lines 14
The theme of distance is introduced in the opening line. When the speaker informs the reader,

Media Adaptations

All of the poems in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair were released on cassette by Viking Penguin in 1996. Tonight I can write the saddest lines, he suggests that he could not previously. We later learn that his overwhelming sorrow over a lost lover has prevented him from writing about their relationship and its demise. The speakers constant juxtaposition of past and present illustrate his inability to come to terms with his present isolated state. Nerudas language here, as in the rest of the poem, is simple and to the point, suggesting the sincerity of the speakers emotions. The sense of distance is again addressed in the second and third lines as he notes the stars shivering in the distance. These lines also contain images of nature, which will become a central link to his memories and to his present state. The speaker contemplates the natural world, focusing on those aspects of it that remind him of his lost love and the cosmic nature of their relationship. He begins writing at night, a time when darkness will match his mood. The night sky filled with stars offers him no comfort since they are blue and shiver. Their distance from him reinforces the fact that he is alone. However, he can appreciate the night wind that sings as his verses will, describing the woman he loved.

Lines 510
Neruda repeats the first line in the fifth and follows it with a declaration of the speakers love for an unnamed woman. The staggered repetitions Neruda employs throughout the poem provide thematic unity. The speaker introduces the first detail of their relationship and points to a possible reason for its demise when he admits sometimes she loved me too. He then reminisces about being with her in nights like this one. The juxtaposition of nights from the past with this night reveals the change that has taken place, reinforcing his sense of aloneness. In this section, Neruda links the speakers lover with nature, a technique he will use throughout the poem to describe the sensual nature of their relationship. In the eighth line, the speaker remembers kissing his love again and again under the endless skya sky as endless as, he had hoped, their relationship would be. An ironic reversal of line six occurs in line nine when the speaker states, She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. The speaker may be offering a cynical statement of the fickle nature of love at this point. However, the eloquent, bittersweet lines that follow suggest that in this line he is trying to distance himself from the memory of his love for her and so ease his suffering. Immediately, in the next line he contradicts himself when he admits, How could one not have loved her great still eyes. The poems contradictions create a tension that reflects the speakers desperate attempts to forget the past.

Lines 1114
In line eleven Neruda again repeats his opening line, which becomes a plaintive refrain. The repetition of that line shows how the speaker is struggling to maintain distance, to convince himself that enough time has passed for him to have the strength to think about his lost love. But these lines are the saddest. He cannot yet escape the pain of remembering. It becomes almost unbearable to think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. His loneliness is reinforced by the immense night, still more immense without her. Yet the poetry that he creates helps replenish his soul, like dew to the pasture.

Lines 1518
In line fifteen the speaker refuses to analyze their relationship. What is important to him is that the night is starry and she is not with me as she used to be on similar starry nights. This is all that is now central to him. When the speaker hears someone singing in the distance and repeats in the distance, he reinforces the fact that he is alone. No one is singing to him. As a result, he admits my soul is not satisfied.

Lines 1926
In these lines the speaker expresses his longing to reunite with his love. His sight and his heart try to find her, but he notes, she is not with me. He again remembers that this night is so similar to the ones they shared together. Yet he understands that they are no longer the same. He declares that he no longer loves her,

thats certain, in an effort to relieve his pain, and admits he loved her greatly in the past. Again linking their relationship to nature, he explains that he had tried to find the wind to touch her hearing but failed. Now he must face the fact that she will be anothers. He remembers her bright body that he knows will be touched by another and her infinite eyes that will look upon a new lover.

Lines 2732
The speaker reiterates, I no longer love her, thats certain, but immediately contradicts himself, uncovering his efforts at self deception when he admits, but maybe I love her. With a world-weary tone of resignation, he concludes, love is so short, forgetting is so long. His poem has become a painful exercise in forgetting. In line twenty-nine he explains that because this night is so similar to the nights in his memory when he held her in his arms, he cannot forget. Thus he repeats, my soul is not satisfied. In the final two lines, however, the speaker is determined to erase the memory of her and so ease his pain, insisting that his verses (this poem) will be the last verses that I write for "The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794. It is one of Blake's best-known and most analyzed poems. The Cambridge Companion to William Blake (2003) calls it "the most anthologized poem in English."[1][2] Much of the poem follows the metrical pattern of its first line and can be scanned as trochaic tetrameter catalectic. A number of lines, howeversuch as line four in the first stanzafall into iambic tetrameter. Most modern anthologies have kept Blake's choice of the archaic spelling "tyger". It was a common spelling of the word at the time but was already "slightly archaic"[3] when he wrote the poem; he spelled it as "tiger" elsewhere,[1] and many of his poetic effects "depended on subtle differences of punctuation and of spelling."[4] Thus, his choice of "tyger" has usually been interpreted as being for effect, perhaps to render an "exotic or alien quality of the beast",[5] or because it's not really about a tiger at all, but a metaphor.[1] "The Tyger" is the sister poem to "The Lamb" (from "Songs of Innocence"), a reflection of similar ideas from a different perspective (Blake's concept of "contraries"), with "The Lamb" focusing more goodness. "The Tyger" presents a duality between aesthetic beauty and primal ferocity. The speaker wonders whether the hand that created "The Lamb" also created "The Tyger.
Summary The poem begins with the speaker asking a fearsome tiger what kind of divine being could have created it: What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame they fearful symmetry? Each subsequent stanza contains further questions, all of which refine this first one. From what part of the cosmos could the tigers fiery eyes have come, and who would have dared to handle that fire? What sort of physical presence, and what kind of dark craftsmanship, would have been required to twist the sinews of the tigers heart? The speaker wonders how, once that horrible heart began to beat, its creator would have had the courage to continue the job. Comparing the creator to a blacksmith, he ponders about the anvil and the furnace that the project would have required and the smith who could have wielded them. And when the job was done, the speaker wonders, how would the creator have felt? Did he smile his work to see? Could this possibly be the same being who made the lamb?

My Last Duchess Summary

The first of these objects is a portrait of his "last" or former duchess, painted directly on one of the walls of the gallery by a friar named Pandolf. The Duke keeps this portrait behind a curtain that only he is allowed to draw. While the servant sits on a bench looking at the portrait, the Duke describes the circumstances in which it was painted and the fate of his unfortunate former wife. Apparently the Duchess was easily pleased: she smiled at everything, and seemed just as happy when someone brought her a branch of cherries as she did when the Duke decided to marry her. She also blushed easily. The Duchesss genial nature was enough to throw the Duke into a jealous, psychopathic rage, and he "gave commands" (45) that meant "all smiles stopped together" (46). Were guessing this means he had her killed although its possible that he had her shut up somewhere, such as in a convent. But its way more exciting if you interpret it as murder, and most critics do. After telling this story to the servant of the family that might provide his next victim er, sorry, bride the Duke takes him back downstairs to continue their business. On the way out, the Duke points out one more of his favorite art objects: a bronze statue of Neptune taming a seahorse.

Lines 1-2

The speaker points out a lifelike portrait of his "last Duchess" thats painted on the wall. This tells us that the speaker is a Duke, that his wife is dead, and that someone is listening to him describe his late wifes portrait, possibly in his private art gallery. It also makes us wonder what makes her his "last" Duchess for more thoughts on that phrase, check out our comments in the "Whats Up With the Title?" section.

Lines 2-4

The Duke tells his mysterious listener that the painting of the Duchess is impressively accurate. The painter, Fr (or "Friar") Pandolf, worked hard to achieve a realistic effect. Notice that the Dukes comment "there she stands" suggests that this is a full-length portrait of the Duchess showing her entire body, not just a close-up of her face.

Line 5

The Duke asks his listener politely to sit down and examine the painting. But the politeness is somewhat fake, and the question seems more like a command. Could the listener refuse to sit down and look and listen? We dont think so.

Lines 5-13

The Duke explains to the listener why he brought up the painter, Fr Pandolf. He says that he mentioned Pandolf on purpose, or "by design" (6) because strangers never examine the Duchess's portrait without looking like they want to ask the Duke how the painter put so much "depth and passion" (8) into the expression on the Duchess's face, or "countenance" (7).

They dont actually ask, because they dont dare, but the Duke thinks he can tell that they want to. Parenthetically, the Duke mentions that hes always the one there to answer this question because nobody else is allowed to draw back the curtain that hangs over the portrait. Only the Duke is allowed to look at it or show it to anyone else. This is clearly his private gallery, and were a little afraid of what might happen to someone who broke the rules there.

Lines 13-15

He describes her cheek as having a "spot / Of joy" (14-15) in it, perhaps a slight blush of pleasure. It wasnt just "her husbands presence" (14) that made her blush in this way, although the Duke seems to believe that it should have been the only thing that would. The Duke doesnt like the idea that anyone else might compliment his wife or do something sweet that would make her blush.

Lines 15-21

The Duke imagines some of the ways that Fr Pandolf might have caused the Duchess to get that "spot of joy" in her face. He might have told her that her "mantle" (her shawl) covered her wrist too much, which is the Renaissance equivalent of saying, "man, that skirts way too long maybe you should hike it up a little." Or he might have complimented her on the becoming way that she flushes, telling her that "paint / Must never hope to reproduce" (17-18) the beautiful effect of her skin and coloring. The Duke thinks the Duchess would have thought that comments like this, the normal flirtatious "courtesy" (20) that noblemen would pay to noblewomen, were "cause enough" (20) to blush. Strangely, the Duke seems to believe that blushing in response to someone like Fr Pandolf was a decision, not an involuntary physical reaction. Notice that the Duke also seems to infuse his comments with a judgmental tone.

Lines 21-24
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The Duke describes the Duchess as "too soon made glad" (22) and "too easily impressed" (23). This is his main problem with her: too many things make her happy. Another way of looking at it is that shes not serious enough. She doesnt save her "spot of joy" for him alone. Shes not the discriminating snob that he wants her to be. She likes everything she sees, and she sees everything.

Lines 25-31
The Duke elaborates further on the Duchess's tendency to see every pleasant thing as pretty much the same.

If he gives her a "favor" or mark of his esteem that she can wear, such as a corsage or piece of jewelry, she thanks him for it in the same way that she approves of a pretty sunset, a branch of cherries, or her white mule. At first the Duke suggests that she speaks of all these things equally, but then he changes his claim and admits that sometimes she doesnt say anything and just blushes in that special way. And maybe shes a little promiscuous either in reality, or (more likely) in the Dukes imagination. Part of the problem is not just that she likes boughs of cherries its that some "officious fool" (27) brings them to her. (An "officious" person is someone who pokes their nose in and starts doing things when theyre not wanted somebody self-important who thinks theyre the best person to do something, even when everyone else wishes they would just butt out.)

Lines 31-34

The Duke claims that, although its all well and good to thank people for doing things for you, the way the Duchess thanked people seemed to imply that she thought the little favors they did her were just as important as what the Duke himself did for her. After all, the Duke gave her his "nine-hundred-years-old name" (33) a connection to a longstanding aristocratic family with power and prestige. The Dukes family has been around for nearly a thousand years running things in Ferrara, and he thinks this makes him superior to the Duchess, who doesnt have the same heritage. He thinks the Duchess ought to value the social elevation of her marriage over the simple pleasures of life.

Lines 34-35

The Duke asks his listener a rhetorical question: who would actually lower himself and bother to have an argument with the Duchess about her indiscriminate behavior? He thinks the answer is "nobody." We dont think that there is much open and honest communication in this relationship!