Preface xix

FICTION

On Fiction 2THE ORAL TRADITION 2

THE WRITTEN TRADITION 3

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES 3

MEANING 5

CHAPTER 1

The Narrative Impulse 9Rumpelstiltskin 10Stone Soup: A Folk Tale 12W. W. Jacobs, The Monkey's Paw 14John Collier, The Chaser 22Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Would Be King 24

CHAPTER 2

The Narrator as Participant 48Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart 48Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper 52Sherwood Anderson, I'm a Fool 64Eudora Welty, A Memory 71John Updike, A&P 75

CHAPTER 3

The Narrator as Observer 81Ernest Hemingway, My Old Man 81Doris Lessing, The Old Chief Mshlanga 90

V

VI CONTENTS

Ring Lardner, Haircut 99William Faulkner, Л Rose for Emily 106Ambrose Bierce, The Boarded Window 113

CHAPTER 4

The Omniscient Narrator H6F. Scott Fitzgerald, Babylon Revisited 116D. H. Lawrence, Mother and Daughter 131Kate Chopin, The Storm 146

CHAPTER 5

Realism mTheodore Dreiser, The Lost Phoebe 151William Carlos Williams, The Use of Force 162Langston Hughes, Feet Live Their Own Life 165Flannery O'Connor, Good Country People 167Ralph Ellison, Flying Home 181Vasily Aksenov, Halfway to the Moon 194

CHAPTER 6

Metaphor, Symbol, and Allegory 210Joyce Сагу, Evangelist 210Nathaniel Hawthorne, My Kinsman, Major Molineux 212Katherine Mansfield, Bliss 225James Joyce, A Little Cloud 234John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse 244Dylan Thomas, After the Fair 259

CHAPTER 7

Theme 263Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas 263Katherine Anne Porter, He 268Stanislaw Lern, The Seventh Sally 274Jack London, To Build a Fire 280Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man 290Jorge Luis Borges, The Gospel According to Mark 304Heinrich Boll, The Thrower-Away 308W. S. Merwin, The Ford 314Thomas Pynchon, The Story of Byron the Bulb 316

CONTENTS VII

CHAPTER 8

Longer Fiction 323Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan llych 323Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer 361

Writing About Fiction 389THE AUTHOR'S VOICE 3 8 9

THE NARRATIVE MODES 3 9 0

IRONY 3 9 2

THE FIGURATIVE DIMENSION 3 9 3

THEME 395

POETRY

On Poetry 400SOUND 400

MEANING 407

CHAPTER 1

Types of Poems 413LYRIC 413

Western Wind 413Waly, Waly, Love Be Bonny 414The Bonny Earl of Murray 417The Brazos River 419A. E. Housman, Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now 420George Gordon, Lord Byron, Maid of Athens, Ere We Part 422Philip Larkin, Cut Grass 423William Wordsworth, Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,

September 3, 1802 424W. B. Yeats, Down by the Salley Gardens 424

NARRATIVE 425

Edward 425The Two Sisters 427Sir Patrick Spens 429Queen Eleanor's Confession 430Poor Omie 433Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 434Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory 451Robinson Jeffers, Hurt Hawks 451

Vili CONTENTS

CHAPTER 2

The Poem as Drama 454SITUATION 454

Thomas Hardy, The Walk 454A. R. Ammons, Kind 456Stevie Smith, Not Waving But Drowning 456Robert Frost, Home Burial 457Alexander Pope, [A Question of Libel] 460Jean Valentine, Dream Barker 464Edwin Muir, The Brothers 465Ho! Ye Sun, Moon, Stars 466Thorn Gunn, Moly 467CHARACTER 468

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses 468Robert Browning, My Last Duchess 470Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter 472Randall Jarrell, The Lost Children 473T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 475

CHAPTER 3

Language 480DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION 480

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Those Hours When Happy HoursWere My Estate 480

Robinson Jeffers, Iona: The Graves of the Kings 481William Shakespeare, My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like

the Sun 481William Carlos Williams, Queen-Ann's-Lace 482Theodore Roethke, / Knew a Woman 483Brother Antoninus (William Everson), The Raid 484Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus 485

ALLUSION 487

A. E. Housman, Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff 488Robert Graves, Ulysses 490W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts 491W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming 492W. B. Yeats, Two Songs from a Play 493W. B. Yeats, Fragments 494

IRONY 495

Stephen Crane, The Trees in the Garden Rained Flowers 496Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain 437A. E. Housman, 1887 498

CONTENTS IX

Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est 499Henry Reed, Naming of Parts 500

CHAPTER 4

Traditional Themes 502WHERE ARE THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR? 502

The Ruin 503Ubi Sunt Qui Ante Nos Fuerunt? 504François Villon, The Ballad of Dead Ladies 505A. E. Housman, With Rue My Heart Is Laden 506Delmore Schwartz, Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day 506

THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES 5 0 7

Thomas Campion, What If a Day, or a Month, or a Year 508Thomas Nashe, A Litany in Time of Plague 508Edmund Bolton, A Palinode 510Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes 510Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 521Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hamatreya 525Weldon Kees, Back 526

SEIZE THE DAY 5 2 7

Catullus, Lesbia 527Thomas Campion, My Sweetest Lesbia 528George Gordon, Lord Byron, Fragment 529Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time 529Robert Herrick, Corinna's Going A-Maying 529Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress 531John Donne, The Ecstasy 532

LOVE 534

As You Came from the Holy Land 535John Gay, Over the Hills and Far Away 536E. E. Cummings, When Faces Called Flowers 536Sir John Suckling, Song 537Ben Jonson, Song: To Celia 537Anne Bradstreet, To My Dear and Loving Husband 538Robert Burns, John Anderson My Jo 538Thomas Wyatt, They Flee from Me 539Robert Browning, Love Among the Ruins 539Edna St. Vincent Millay, Love Is Not All 542

AGE 542

W. B. Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium 542William Shakespeare, That Time of Year Thou Mayst

in Me Behold 544

X CONTENTS

Archibald MacLeish, Survivor 544William Carlos Williams, The Ivy Crown 545Walt Whitman, Good-bye My Fancy! 547

MUTABILITY 547

William Wordsworth, Mutability 548Michae l D r a y t o n , How Many Paltry, Foolish, Painted Things 548

J o h n D o n n e , Death, Be Not Proud 549

Rob inson Jeffers, To the Stone-Cutters 549

H a r t C r a n e , The River 549

Wal t W h i t m a n , As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life 553

Rober t Frost, Directive 556

DEATH 557

H e n r y King , The Exequy 557

J o h n Mi l t on , Lycidas 560

J o h n Mi l t on , On the University Carrier 566

K e n n e t h Rexro th , Andrée Rexroth 567

Alice Walker , Burial 569

W. H. A u d e n , In Memory of W. B. Yeats 572

Wal t W h i t m a n , Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 574

CHAPTER 5

Elements of Technique 580IMAGES: THE PRIMARY VISION 5 8 0

William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow 580Eudora Welty, A Flock of Guinea Hens Seen from a Car 582Robert Frost, After Apple-Picking 584William Cowper, On the Ice Islands Seen Floating in the

German Ocean 585John Keats, On Seeing the Elgin Marbles 587Archibald MacLeish, You, Andrew Marvell 588Edwin Arlington Robinson, Mr. Flood's Party 589Henry Vaughan, The Waterfall 591Frederic Prokosch, The Conspirators 592Sylvia Plath, Morning Song 592Earle Birney, The Bear on the Delhi Road 593Louis Simpson, Carentan О Carentan 594H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), Heat 595Robert Graves, The Cool Web 596

METAPHOR: THE DOUBLE VISION 5 9 6

Thomas Campion, There Is a Garden in Her Face 597Charles Reznikoff, About an Excavation 598Thomas Hornsby Ferril, Always Begin Where You Are 599Twenty White Horses on a Red Hill 599

CONTENTS XI

Edgar Allan Poe, The Haunted Palace 600Michael Drayton, Since There's No Help, Come Let Us

Kiss and Part 601Alastair Reid, Calenture 602May Swenson, Question 603Robinson Jeffers, Shine, Perishing Republic 604William Shakespeare, Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds 605Ben Jonson, An Ode: To Himself 606Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Windhover 607Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose 607George Gordon, Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty 608William Shakespeare, When Daffodils Begin to Peer 609Emily Dickinson, After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes 609Dylan Thomas, The Force That Through the Green Fuse

Drives the Flower 610John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning 610

SYMBOL AND ALLEGORY 6 1 1

John Keats, [From] Endymion: Book I 612William Cullen Bryant, To a Waterfowl 613Thomas Wyatt, Whoso List to Hunt 614Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 615Wil l iam Blake, The Sick Rose 616

H e r m a n Melv i l l e , The Portent 617

E. E. C u m m i n g s , In Just- 617

Ben Jonson , Hymn to Cynthia 618

Ol ive r W e n d e l l H o l m e s , The Chambered Nautilus 619

SOUND 620

Sidney Lanier, The Marshes of Glynn 621Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur 624Alexander Pope, [From] Essay on Criticism 624Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Splendor Falls 625Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach 626Gerard Mänley Hopkins, Felix Randal 627John Donne, Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God 628Ben Jonson, Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount 628Edith Sitwell, Sir Beelzebub 628Emily Dickinson, / Like to See It Lap the Miles 629James Joyce, I Hear an Army Charging Upon the Land 630Alfred, Lord T e n n y s o n , Break, Break, Break 630Sylvia P l a th , Death & Co. 631

METER 631

William Wordsworth, Lines: Composed a Few MilesAbove Tintern Abbey 632

XU CONTENTS

Alexander Pope, [The Wild Garden] 636John Keats, When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be 637Theodore Roethke, My Papa's Waltz 638John Keats, la Belle Dame Sans Merci 638Thomas Love Peacock, The War-Song of Dinas Vawr 640Michael Drayton, To the Cambro-Britons and Their Harp 641L. E. Sissman, Henley, July 4: 1914-1964 645Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade 646William Carlos Williams, The Dance 648Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frost at Midnight 649Marianne Moore, No Swan So Fine 652Dylan Thomas, Poem in October 652

CHAPTER 6

Traditional Forms 655BALLAD 655

The Wife of Usher's Well 655Barbry Ellen 657W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening 659E. E. Cummings, Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town 661Woody Guthrie, Plane Wreck at Los Gatos 662John Davidson, A Runnable Stag 663Charles Causley, Recruiting Drive 666

SONNET 667

William Shakespeare, Shall I Compare Thee toSummer's Day? 667

John Keats, To Sleep 668W. B. Yeats, Leda and the Swan 668Robert Frost, Design 669William Shakespeare, When in Disgrace with Fortune

and Men's Eyes 669Edna St. Vincent Millay, What Lips My Lips Have Kissed 670William Wordsworth, The World Is Too Much with Us 670E. E. Cummings, When Serpents Bargain for the Right

to Squirm 671Sir Philip Sidney, Dear, Why Make You More of a Dog

than Me? 671John Keats, Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art 672Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves 672

VILLANELLE 673

Edwin Arlington Robinson, The House on the Hill 673Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night 674Theodore Roethke, The Waking 674

CONTENTS Xlîl

SESTINA 675

Rudyard Kipling, Sestina of the Tramp-Royal 675George Draper, Rink Keeper's Sestina 677

CHAPTER 7

Free Forms 679Stephen Crane, A Man Said to the Universe 679Robinson Jeffers, The Purse-Seine 679Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California 680Theodore Roethke, The Far Field 681

CHAPTER 8

Time and Place 685John Dryden, The Secular Masque 685W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939 688T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding 691

CHAPTER 9

The Popular Muse 703Thomas Moore, The Minstrel Boy 703John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Eleanor Rigby 704Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Excelsior 705Edward Fitzgerald, [From] The Rubâiyàt of Omar Khayyâm 706Ernest Dowson, Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub

Regno Cynarae 710Edwin Markham, The Man with the Hoe 711Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life 712Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus 713

CHAPTER 10

Poems for Study 715Geoffrey Chaucer, When April with Its Sweet Showers 715William Shakespeare, When Daisies Pied 715William Shakespeare, When Icicles Hang by the Wall 716William Shakespeare, Hark, Hark, the Lark 717William Shakespeare, Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun 717William Shakespeare, Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind 718Ben Jonson, Still to Be Neat 718John Webster, Call for the Robin Redbreast and the Wren 718

XIV CONTENTS

Robert Herrick, Delight in Disorder 719Robert Herrick, The Bad Season Makes the Poet Sad 719George Herbert, The Pulley 720Edmund Waller, Song 720John Milton, On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three 721Sir John Suckling, Song 721James Graham, His Metrical Prayer: Before Execution 722Andrew Marvell, The Picture of Little Т. С in a Prospect

of Flowers 722John Dryden, Whilst Alexis Lay Pressed 724John Dryden, Harvest Home 724Alexander Pope, [Man] 725Thomas Gray, Ode: On a Distant Prospect of Eton College 725Christopher Smart, Of Jeoffry, His Cat 728Oliver Goldsmith, When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly 730William Blake, The Clod and the Pebble 730William Blake, Mad Song 731William Blake, The Tiger 731William Blake, And Did Those Feet 732William Blake, Ah, Sunflower 733William Blake, London 733William Blake, Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau! 734Robert Burns, To a Mouse 734Robert Burns, To a Louse 736Robert Burns, The Banks o' Doon 737William Wordsworth, She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways 738William Wordsworth, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal 739William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality

from Recollections of Early Childhood 739Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan 745George Gordon, Lord Byron, So We'll Go No More A-Roving 746Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind 7\7John Clare, 1 Am 749John Clare, Badger 749John Clare, Gypsies 750John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer 751John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale 751John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn 754John Keats, Ode on Melancholy 755John Keats, To Autumn 756Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Song by Isbrand 757Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chaucer 759Edgar Allan Рое, То Helen 759Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee 760

CONTENTS XV

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Eagle 761Robert Browning, The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's

Church 761Robert Browning, Home-Thoughts, from Abroad 764Walt Whitman, / Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing 765Walt Whitman, The Wound-Dresser 765Walt Whitman, The Dalliance of the Eagles 767Matthew Arnold, To Marguerite 768Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Woodspürge 768Emily Dickinson, The Heart Asks Pleasure—First 769Algernon Charles Swinburne, When the Hounds of Spring

Are on Winter's Traces 769Thomas Hardy, / Look into My Glass 771Thomas Hardy, The Self-Unseeing 771Thomas Hardy, In Tenebris 772Thomas Hardy, Channel Firing 772Thomas Hardy, The Impercipient 774Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty 775Gerard Manley Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies

Draw Flame 775A. E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young 776A. E. Housman, On Wenlock Edge the Wood's in Trouble 776A. E. Housman, From Far, from Eve and Morning 777A. E. Housman, Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries 778A. E. Housman, The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux 778A. E. Housman, The Night Is Freezing Fast 779Rudyard Kipling, The Song of the Banjo 779W. B. Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree 782W. B. Yeats, When You Are Old 782W. B. Yeats, A Prayer for My Daughter 782W. B. Yeats, Among School Children 785W. B. Yeats, After Long Silence 787W. B. Yeats, The Circus Animals' Desertion 787Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Mill 788Robert Frost, Mending Wall 789Robert Frost, Dust of Snow 790Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time 790Robert Frost, Fire and Ice 792Robert Frost, Once by the Pacific 792Wallace Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar 793Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man 793Wallace Stevens, The Idea of Order at Key West 794Wallace Stevens, Of Modern Poetry 795William Carlos Williams, The Sparrow 796

XVI CONTENTS

D. H. Lawrence, Snake 799D. H. Lawrence, The Ship of Death 802Elinor Wylie, Prophecy 805John Crowe Ransom, Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter 805John Crowe Ransom, Blue Girls 806John Crowe Ransom, Winter Remembered 807Conrad Aiken, Tetélestai 807Edna St. Vincent Millay, This Beast That Rends Me 810E. E. Cummings, Since Feeling Is First 810E. E. Cummings, // You Can't Eat You Got To 811E. E. Cummings, О Sweet Spontaneous 811Charles Reznikoff, After I Had Worked All Day 812F. Scott Fitzgerald, Obit on Parnassus 812Louise Bogan, To Be Sung on the Water 813Hart Crane, To Brooklyn Bridge 814Allen Tate, Ode to the Confederate Dead 815Roy Campbell, The Zebras 817Countee Cullen, Only the Polished Skeleton 818Richard Eberhart, The Fury of Aerial Bombardment 818Louis MacNeice, The Sunlight on the Garden 819Stephen Spender, Icarus 820J. V. Cunningham, Montana Pastoral 820J. V. Cunningham, Coffee 820John Berryman, Dream Songs: 14 821David Ignatow, Rescue the Dead 822Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner 822Dylan Thomas, The Hunchback in the Park 822Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters 824Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool 824Robert Lowell, SJttmfc Hour 824Philip Larkin, Church Going 826Philip Larkin, Poetry of Departures 827James Dickey, Cherrylog Road 828Carolyn Kizer, The Skein 831Kenneth Koch, Down at the Docks 831Galway Kinnell, To Christ Our Lord 832W. S. Merwin, Grandmother Watching at Her Window 833James Wright, Evening 834Gregory Corso, Marriage 835Ted Hughes, Second Glance at a Jaguar 838Sylvia Plath, Daddy 839Robert Sward, Uncle Dog: The Poet at 9 841Diane Wakoski, Smudging 842Ishmael Reed, / Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra 846

CONTENTS XVII

Writing About Poetry 848SENSE 848

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias 850

Horatio H. Smith, On a Stupendous Leg of Granite 851

IMAGES 853

SOUNDS 856

John Milton, On His Blindness 865William Shakespeare, When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent

Thought 865Ben Jonson, Her Triumph 866

WRITING THE PAPER 8 6 8

DRAMA

On Drama 874SPECTACLE 874

DRAMATIC ROLES 8 7 5

ILLUSION AND IRONY 8 7 7

CHAPTER 1

Tragedy 881THE GREEK THEATER 881

Sophocles, Oedipus Rex 883

GREEK TRAGEDY 920

THE ELIZABETHAN THEATER 923

William Shakespeare, Macbeth 926

CHAPTER 2

Comedy, Satire, and Romance 994Aristophanes, Lysistrata 995Molière, The Physician in Spite of Himself 1035William Shakespeare, The Tempest 1059

CHAPTER 3

Social Drama 1120Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People 1121August Strindberg, Miss Julie 1185Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard 1214

XVlll CONTENTS

Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman 1249Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun 1316

CHAPTER 4

Farce, Fantasy, and the Absurd

Luigi Pirandello, It Is So! (If You Think So) 1378Eugène Ionesco, The Bald Soprano 1421Edward Albee, The American Dream 1443

Writing About Drama

Samuel Beckett, Not I 1470

OEDIPUS REX

COMEDY

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

Index of Topics and Terms

Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines of Poems

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1498