Showing 1 - 10 of 11 annotations in the genre "Sonnet"

Sonnet - to Science

Poe, Edgar Allan

Last Updated: Jan-09-2007
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Sonnet

Summary:

Poe asks why science preys on the poet. Science is peering, destructive and interested only in cold realities. It will not allow the poet to soar in fantasy or even to sit peacefully dreaming beneath a tree.

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Sonnet 16 (On His Blindness )

Milton, John

Last Updated: Sep-08-2006
Annotated by:
Belling, Catherine

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Sonnet

Summary:

In this sonnet, the speaker meditates on the fact that he has become blind (Milton himself was blind when he wrote this). He expresses his frustration at being prevented by his disability from serving God as well as he desires to. He is answered by "Patience," who tells him that God has many who hurry to do his bidding, and does not really need man’s work. Rather, what is valued is the ability to bear God’s "mild yoke," to tolerate whatever God asks faithfully and without complaint. As the famous last line sums it up, "They also serve who only stand and wait."

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My love is as a fever, longing still

Shakespeare, William

Last Updated: Sep-01-2006
Annotated by:
Chen, Irene
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Sonnet

Summary:

The unrequited love of the narrator is compared to a devastating fever. Reason, "the physician," is ignored and cannot abate the disease. Without reason, madness (fever) reigns; and the poet renounces his beloved as "black as hell, as dark as night."

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The Mental Status Exam

Campo, Rafael

Last Updated: Aug-15-2005
Annotated by:
Henderson, Schuyler

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Sonnet

Summary:

One of Campo's projects has been to interrogate the methods used by physicians to understand patients. These methods can be expertly employed to hone in on certain diseases and pathologies, but can also come with a price, most notably a blindness to that patient's experience and personhood. Campo's message might be, It's hard to see the big picture through a microscope.

In this sonnet, he turns to the mental status exam. The inadequacy of a dualist perspective of mind and brain and the reductionism of simple interpretations are the starting point. Campo then turns to several questions from the Feinstein mental status exam (remembering three objects, interpreting a phrase, etc.). Ever attuned to the life of being a physician, Campo has captured the embarrassed way in which many of the (very simple) questions are asked ("Just two more silly questions").

He does grant the divergence of mental experience, with the reminder that the mind is "timeless, dizzy, unscrupulous" as well as "sometimes only dimly lit," and acknowledges the limits of the mental status exam, one in which a certain type of memory is tested (three objects) but not another (that the patient might sing).

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When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd

Shakespeare, William

Last Updated: May-07-2001
Annotated by:
Chen, Irene
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Sonnet

Summary:

Shakespeare considers the destructive power of time: it can ruin "lofty towers" and destroy land and bodies of water. He realizes that time will eventually tear him from his beloved, and mourns her death to come.

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That time of year thou mayest in me behold

Shakespeare, William

Last Updated: May-07-2001
Annotated by:
Chen, Irene
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Sonnet

Summary:

Picturesque autumn and evening imagery is an analogy for the changes that occur during aging. These changes are "perceiv[ed]" by one's beloved, whose love grows stronger in the face of the knowledge that death will come "ere long."

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Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore

Shakespeare, William

Last Updated: May-07-2001
Annotated by:
Chen, Irene
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Sonnet

Summary:

Shakespeare compares the directionality and rhythmic quality of waves to the natural life cycle: "nativity . . . / crawls to maturity", and to the relentless nature of time. Although death is eventually inevitable, the poet's tone is not one of fear or frustration, but of calm acceptance and the hope that his "verse shall stand."

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My glass shall not persuade me I am old

Shakespeare, William

Last Updated: May-07-2001
Annotated by:
Chen, Irene
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Sonnet

Summary:

The aging narrator identifies strongly with his apparently young and beautiful love. He also believes that the love within his heart keeps his beloved youthful. The sonnet considers how humans perceive the aging process in themselves by observing it in those they love.

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Felix Randal

Hopkins, Gerard Manley

Last Updated: May-07-2001
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Sonnet

Summary:

In this sonnet Hopkins reflects on the long illness and death of Felix Randal, the farrier. The poet watched this "big-boned and hardy-handsome" man decline, until he was broken by "some / fatal four disorders" and his "reason rambled . . . . " At first Randal had railed against his fate, but later, anointed by the poet-priest, he developed a "heavenlier heart" and "sweet reprieve."

The poet reflects on his role as a spiritual healer: "This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears." While the priestly tongue and touch refreshed Felix Randal in his illness, Randal's tears also touched the priest's heart, and so he is left with a sense of loss and mourning when the man dies.

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Sonnet ("Ye hasten to the grave! What seek ye there,")

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Last Updated: Aug-08-1994
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Sonnet

Summary:

Shelley angrily asks why some people chase after death or knowledge of it. To analyze the source of life or the conditions of its end is "vain" curiosity. Such knowledge has no benefit; it merely is a case of man trying to usurp the role of God.

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