The Acolyte

# The poem is a reflection upon Arnold's contemporary Victorian life; the conflicts of the age; the loss of values; the rising clouds of doubts. # Arnold discloses his melancholy preoccupation with the thought of the inevitable decline of religious faith. # The poet is at the Dover straits - which is the closest beach to France. He is brooding over the evils that are haunting his country. # The Sea is usually taken as a symbol of misery and death, but Arnold uses it as a symbol of Faith and Hope. # The opening of the poem is perhaps the finest expression of the symbolic sense of the night quiet which provided the setting and emotional background for so much of Arnold's elegiac meditations. " The sea is calm tonight.   The tide is full, the moon lies fair   Upon the straits; on the French coast the light   Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,   Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.   Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!...

1. The stage or the theater is a platform where Love is celebrated more than other issues of mankind. On the stage, love is a matter for comedies or tragedies, but in real life it is very much more problematic. 2. Some times the mischiefs of love are like that of the sirens (sea nymphs who would sing and lure mariners to danger). Or sometimes it is like that of a fury (in Greek mythology they are spirits who punish the guilty and are the justice makers in the world). 3. Great men in history have never been transported to a mad degree of love. It is proof that noble minds can keep out this "weak passion". 4. But there are exceptions, such as Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony; who was a roman general who loved Cleopatra) and Appius Claudius (was a roman politician who loved a woman named Virginia). Antony was a voluptuous man where as Claudius was an austere and wise man. 5. Therefore love can find entrance into anywhere. Love is like a thief who will find entrance into ...

"The starry heavens above and the moral laws within" - Kant 1. Kant was a "religious" empiricist, without theoretical reason. 2. He was a German philosopher who was born in Russia, but his parents were from Scotland. 3. His mother was a "methodist" (pietist), and this religious bringing up influenced him a lot. 4. He was a better teacher than a writer. He categorized students into three groups : geniuses, average, idiots - He believed that only the average students needed help. 5. His earlier books were on physics, heavenly bodies etc. He thought there was life on other planets as well. He believed that humans came from animals by evolution, even before the theory of Darwin came. 6. In order to fully understand his philosophy, a brief look at other philosophers around that time is necessary.   # VOLTAIRE : French philosopher who propagated the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In him we see theoretical reason without religion.  ...

1. The sonnets 71 & 73 are called "Mortality Sonnets". Here the poet celebrates the mortal nature of man. 2. Sonnet 73 is about how the patron should remember the ageing poet. ANALYSIS OF THE POEM " That time of year thou mayst in me behold   When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang   Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,   Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. " 3. The poet is under the cruel spell of autumn. The image of an autumn day and "yellow leaves" create an impression of nearing death as well as the falling creative abilities of the poet. 4. The line "...shake against the cold" shows the defiance of the poet at the face of death. He is ready to fight back and challenge death. But he realizes that there is no use in that. Once his songs were like those that the "sweet birds sang", but now it is like "bare ruin'd choirs", meaning that the harmony in h...

1. In Sonnets 33-35, the poet is deeply hurt by the patron. These sonnets are called as "Estrangement sonnet cycle" in which we see a "transgression-pardon" cycle. 2. The pain of the poet arises from the disloyalty of the patron. The poet is very jealous and possessive about his patron. ANALYSIS OF THE POEM " Full many a glorious morning have I seen   Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,   Kissing with golden face the meadows green,   Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; " 3. Those mornings that the poet now recollects were glorious because he and his patron were united back then. The poet compares his patron to the radiant sun. Mountains and meadows are ordinary but they appear beautiful in the sunlight. Sun is performing this "heavenly alchemy" by transforming ordinary things.         " Anon permit the basest clouds to ride   With ugly rack on his celestial face,   And from the forl...