Lovers’ Infiniteness by John Donne – a prose version

There are plenty of analyses out there of the poem, so I thought it might be nice to do a prose translation instead (which would function as a line by line explanation in a way). First is the poem in full, then my prose translation.

Original poem

If yet I have not all thy love,
Dear, I shall never have it all;
I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move,
Nor intreat one other tear to fall;
And all my treasure, which should purchase thee –
Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters – I have spent.
Yet no more can be due to me,
Than at the bargain made was meant;
If then thy gift of love were partial,
That some to me, some should to others fall,
Dear, I shall never have thee all.

Or if then thou gavest me all,
All was but all, which thou hadst then;
But if in thy heart, since, there be or shall
New love created be, by other men,
Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,
In sighs, in oaths, and letters, outbid me,
This new love may beget new fears,
For this love was not vow’d by thee.
And yet it was, thy gift being general;
The ground, thy heart, is mine; whatever shall
Grow there, dear, I should have it all.

Yet I would not have all yet,
He that hath all can have no more;
And since my love doth every day admit
New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store;
Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,
If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it;
Love’s riddles are, that though thy heart depart,
It stays at home, and thou with losing savest it;
But we will have a way more liberal,
Than changing hearts, to join them; so we shall
Be one, and one another’s all.

Prose translation 

If I don’t have all of your love yet, then Dear, I will never have all of it. I cannot breathe another sigh to move you or beg another tear to fall for you; And all of my treasures, which should have been enough to purchase you by now – sighs, tears, promises and letters/words – I have already spent all of them. But no more can be owed to me, than what was meant to be given to me when we made the bargain. If your gift of love to me then was only partial, in that you gave some of your love to me and some to other people, then Dear, I will never have all of your love.

Or if back then you gave me all of your love, that amount of love was only all of the love which you had back then. But if, since then, in your heart, there has been new love that has been created, by the presence of other men who still have their stocks of treasures in full and unused, and they can, outbid me for you by their tears, sighs, promises and letters/words, then these new loves in your heart will create new fears for me, because you have not promised these new loves to me. And yet, in fact, your gift of love was a general one; The ground of your heart is mine. Whatever new loves that grow there, dear, I will have all of that too.

But I would not have all of your love yet. He who has all of it can’t have anymore of it; and since everyday my love grows, you should have new rewards for me in store. You can’t give me your heart every day. If you can give it to me everyday, then you have never given it at all. Love’s riddles are that, though you part with your heart, it stays at home, and by losing your heart, you save it. But we will have a way to love that is more liberal, rather than giving away our hearts to each other, we will join our hearts, so we will become one and one another’s all.

Notes of explanation for a few particular lines:

1. ‘You can’t give me your heart every day. If you can give it to me everyday, then you have never given it at all.’ – In the sense like, if I only had one unit of love, and if I give that to you today, and tomorrow I also claim to also give you another unit of love, then that means that I never gave my original unit of love to you at all. I was lying.
2. ‘Love’s riddles are that, though you part with your heart, it stays at home, and by losing your heart, you save it.’ Love’s riddles are that though you have to give away your heart (ie. by loving other people), your (literal) heart stays at home (in your body), but by giving away your heart (by loving other people), you save your heart (because humans need to love and be loved).

Farther by Owen Sheers (Analysis)

The OCR anthology Towards a World Unknown has the poem in full at this link:

Click to access 171147-poetry-anthology-towards-a-world-unknown.pdf

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A rough analysis: (the last line is analysed in the last paragraph)

Against a dramatic setting in the nature in Wales, the speaker explores his love for his father, his sorrow at the distance that has grown between them and his hope that they could become closer.

The Welsh setting plays an integral part in the poem. Apart from having its own character, it sets the tone for the poem and reflects aspects of the changing relationship between father and son.
Lines 3-9 first sets the scene:
(a) ‘choosing the long way round’– both father and son treasure this time that they are spending together, and want to prolong it, so they choose the long way round. Sets a loving and sad tone. They want to spend time together but clearly do not do so often.
(b) ‘simplified by snow’ and ‘its puzzle solved by moss‘- a form of pathetic fallacy? sets the expectation for readers that this poem is a journey to untangle something, some unsolved sentiment. It also portrays nature as an intelligent being – it ‘simplifies’ the forest by laying snow over its complicated forestry, and it ‘solves’ the puzzle laid out by the deteriorated stone wall through growing moss strategically over it.
(c) ‘and out of the trees into that cleft of earth/split they say by a father’s grief/at the loss of his son to man.’ – these are powerfully emotionally lines. the first line builds suspense – what is there outside of the trees? What is so special about that ‘cleft of earth’? The next two lines have almost identical rhythms (do some simple scansion and you’ll see). This (and the enjambement) adds to the gravity of the tone, makes the emotion behind the lines especially intense. There is also obviously a similarity here to God’s sending of Jesus Christ to die for humanity. So, the speaker could be acknowledging that he knows that his father’s love for him is on epic proportions. In what way has his father lost him to ‘man’? Maybe the son (Owen Sheers) has left Wales after he has grown up and that could be interpreted as a betrayal and a ‘loss’.
The religious connotation is continued in Line 9 – an ‘altar’ of rock. What are they worshipping at this ‘altar’? Makes their journey seem like a pilgramage.
(d) ‘A blade of wind from the east/and the broken stone giving under our feet/with the sound of a crowd sighing.’– ‘Blade’ of wind – metaphor of wind as a knife blade, clearly sets a hostile tone. ‘broken stone’ – dysfunctional environment? Or just one steeped in ancient history? ‘the sound of a crowd sighing’- irony – there is no crowd in this rural place. Highlights the father and son’s isolation. Concentrates the spotlight of the poem on them.
(e)‘and shared the shock of a country unrolled before us,/the hedged fields breaking on the edge of Wales.’ – again the environment is animate and dynamic (don’t say it’s personification – humans don’t “unroll” or literally “break”). ‘Unrolled’ is a great verb to describe the vastness of the landscape before them and ‘breaking’ is a effective way of conveying the sudden ending of the fields against the coastline. The speaker and the father are sharing a memorable, dramatic, emotional moment. This is further reflected in the line ‘the sky rubbed raw over the mountains’. The sky’s colour may be ‘raw’, but the adjective also reflects on the emotional vulnerability of the speaker in the last lines of the poem.

In addition, the speaker’s relationship with his father oscillates between being distant and being close throughout the poem.
(a) The underlying tone of loss and sadness is set by the description of the ‘cleft of earth’ as described above.
(b) Then the son and father set out on a journey where they encounter a shared problem: the slope is ‘steeper than expected‘. In a way, this sets the reader up to expect that this is a journey where father and son bond (because as is commonly known, people bond together over shared problems). One of the most significant passages in the poem is:
(c) ‘Half way up and I turned to look at you,
your bent head the colour of the rocks,
your breath reaching me, short and sharp and solitary,
and again I felt the tipping in the scales of us,
the intersection of our ages.’
Here, the speaker comes to a realisation of the vast age gap between him and his father. ‘your bent head the colour of rocks’ – this line is ominous and brings up the shadow of death. Human bodies return to nature in death, but already, the father’s ‘bent head’ reminds the speaker of ‘rocks’ on the ground. The father’s breathlessness (evoked by the caesura and the consecutive conjunctions) is also a reminder of the ailing health (due to age). And so the speaker feels the ‘tipping in the scales of us’ – whereas once upon a time, the speaker was the one who would have been young and fragile and his father was strong and able, the speaker is now the able one and the father is ageing and fragile. The long/short length of the last two sentences evokes the imbalance of the tipped ‘scales’.
(d) ‘Pulling a camera from my pocket I placed it on the trig point
and leant my cheek against the stone to find you in its frame,
before joining you and waiting for the shutter’s blink
that would tell me I had caught this:’
The speaker and the father are out of touch with each other’s thoughts and intentions. Whilst the speaker intends to take a photo of the scenery by perching his camera on his camera stand, his father stands squarely in the frame. However, instead of asking his father to move away, the speaker sets the camera up to take a picture, walks to join his father, and waits for the camera to take a picture of the scene with the two of them in it automatically.
(e)’the sky rubbed raw over the mountains,
us standing on the edge of the world, together against the view
and me reaching for some kind of purchase
or at least a shallow handhold in the thought
that with every step apart, I’m another closer to you.’
As said – ‘raw’ reflects the colour of the sky but also the speaker’s emotional vulnerability in this moment. The next line emphasises the bond between the father and the son – they are a collective unit – ‘us’ and ‘together against’. But even in this powerful moment, the speaker acknowledges that there is still distance between them. This distance is, to some extent, irreparable – there is a hint of hopelessness when the speaker says ‘or at least…’. As if he is grasping at straws at a last resort to close the distance between them.

The last line is enigmatic – on the literal level, it makes no sense – it is an example of the speaker’s refusal to admit that the gap between him and his father is irreparable- he has convinced himself that growing apart from his father also means growing closer to him. On another level, it could be that the speaker is saying that although him and his father are growing apart as his father grows older and the speaker moves further away from Welsh culture, yet by growing apart, the speaker also gains the distance necessary to have a more complete understanding of his father. This is supported by the moments that they have shared on the way to the top of the hill – when the speaker was ahead of his father (and thus further apart), he was able to look back and have the perspective to observe that his father is growing old (bent head the colour of rocks). Also, by putting his camera on his camera stand, the speaker is out of touch with his father’s intentions to just enjoy the scenery – but by leaving the camera in place on the stand, the speaker is able to capture the moment (ie. take a photo of) him and his father sharing this moment of scenery.

To note:
There are alternating patterns in the poem – of:
(1) human interaction VS setting
Human interaction: 1-2, 9-11, 15-21, 24-27, 29-32
Everything between these lines describes the setting.
In other words, the speaker, his father and the Welsh setting are interwoven tightly. The relationship between the son and father and the Welsh setting are inseparable.
(2) The relationship between son and father oscillates between distance and closeness. (Use a highlighter and you can see they alternate:)
Closeness:
‘but it was then we climbed the Skirrid again,’
‘We stopped there at an altar of rock and rested’
‘and you are with me again, so together we climbed to the top’
‘before joining you and waiting for the shutter’s blink’
‘us standing on the edge of the world, together against the view’
‘that with every step apart, I’m another closer to you’
Distance:
‘split they say by a father’s grief…’
‘and again I felt the tipping in the scales of us…’
‘and leant my cheek against the stone to find you in its frame’
‘or at least a shallow handhold in the thought…’

Morning Song by Sylvia Plath

The OCR GCSE poetry anthology has the poem in full at this link: http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/171147-poetry-anthology-towards-a-world-unknown.pdf

After the poem is a rough analysis of the Morning Song.

Love set you going like a fat gold watch,
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statute.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

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The poem details the speaker coming to terms with motherhood and her relationship with the newborn baby. The speaker, who we assume to be the mother (‘and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy – the image of a clumsy post-birth mother), begins with mixed senses of both wonder and detachment which seems to turn into a positive attitude towards the end of the poem. The mother progresses from increasing detachment in the first three stanzas, to increasing responsiveness in the fourth and fifth, and finally to excitement at what the future will bring for her and the baby.

The famous opening line ‘Love set you going like a fat gold watch.’ has been analysed countless times. It makes for an uncomfortable comparison between a newborn baby and a ‘fat gold watch’. The simile is awkward for many reasons: as often pointed out, a watch is an inanimate object whereas a baby is obviously a living being. Also, ‘gold’ is a precious metal that one would associate with valuable and treasured possessions. But is life precious in the same way as gold is? Is it not quite crude to compare a baby to a gold watch, and thus implying the value of the newborn life is quantifiable just as the value of gold is quantifiable? In general, this simile sets a tone of detachment – the mother is viewing the baby as something lifeless and unrelated to her.

However, in the first stanza, we also see that the mother also regards the newborn baby with a sense of wonder. ‘and your bald cry/Took its place among the elements.’ – this line immediately elevates the baby’s status as on par with the essential elements of this planet – earth, water, air, fire. It lends a sense of grandeur to the baby’s cry. The adjective ‘bald’ to describe the baby’s cry intensifies this as it makes it seem as if even an effortless, naked cry from the baby has an equal status to the elements. The enjambment of the line ‘…cry/Took its place…’ causes the reader to emphasise the word ‘Took’. The effect is again a sense of grandeur/ as if the speaker is stressing that the baby’s cry is entitled to take its place among the elements.

Second stanza: The detached attitude continues. The newborn baby is viewed as a ‘new statute’. From the very first line, the speaker sets a unfriendly and awkward scene. The caesura after ‘our voices echo’ draws out the vowel sound ‘o’ and imitates the sound of voices echoing around a museum hall. Generally, one can only hear echoes in an empty hallway, and so simply from the first phrase, readers are left with an impression of an unfriendly, empty museum. In addition, the comparison of a baby with a ‘statute’ is once again troublesome in the same way as the comparison with the gold watch. Both are lifeless, inanimate objects. The phrase ‘New statute.’ also stands alone after the first sentence in the first line. It is an incomplete sentence and departs from the grammatical structure of the rest of sentences in the stanza, adding an extra lawyer of awkwardness to the presentation of the baby as a ‘statute’. Finally, in museums, you appreciate art but you (generally) do not have a personal bond with each piece of art – the mother is viewing the baby with a detached attitude.

The second and third lines continue drawing out a cold, unwelcoming scene. The museum is ‘drafty’ – again reinforcing the image of an empty museum hallway. The sibilance of ‘nakedness’, ‘Shadows’ and ‘safety’ add to a sense of menace in the atmosphere. The last sentence is eerie – the people watching the baby are unemotional, expressionless. (If you’re interested, read my other blog post on ‘The Disquieted Muses’ also by Sylvia Plath – in that poem, the figures that represent depression stand around her, also emotionless and expressionless.) Finally, the use of the word ‘We’ by the speaker signifies that the mother identifies with the audience, and not the baby. (ie. instead of viewing ‘we’ as herself and the baby). Clearly she still does not feel a special bond with the baby.

The third stanza is the climax of the mother’s feeling of detachment. She explicitly states that she feels that she is no more the baby’s mother than a ‘cloud that distills a mirror…’. In terms of style points – notice that the whole stanza is one long sentence, ie. two enjambments. The imagery is also eerie – she talks about a cloud being dispersed by wind – in other words, a cloud being wiped out of existence. This kind of attitude is the opposite of the celebratory attitude towards life that you would expect a mother of a newborn baby to have.

Fourth stanza- In this stanza, there is a turning point – the mother starts to become actively aware of the baby’s presence. Instead of standing around looking at the baby as if it’s a watch or a statute, she ‘wake(s) to listen’ to the baby. The baby’s breathing is conjured up vividly for us through the consonance of the ‘th’ sound in ‘moth-breath’ and the alliteration of ‘flickers’, ‘flat’ and ‘far’. Moreover, the baby, as seen by the mother, begins to gain texture and life. Readers get an impression that the mother thinks the baby is fragile – this is conveyed with the metaphors of the baby’s breath as ‘moth-breath’ and as flames that ‘flicker’ in and out of existence. The mention of the ‘flat pink roses’ on the wall is significant because it brings out a contrast – the roses on the wall are two-dimensional but the baby is breathing and fragile and finally starting to become a three-dimensional living being for the mother. Finally, the mother listens to the baby’s breathing. She compares it to the sound of ‘sea’. This comparison is significant – you could read two layers of meaning into it: 1. the baby is once again compared to nature which lends it a sense of grandeur, 2. the beginning of the mother’s awareness of the baby’s living being is disorientating her – the sound of sea being heard by a person can be interpreted as the sound of ears ringing – which happens when you are dizzy. The adjective ‘far’ reinforces this view – she is also still a bit detached from the baby – she still feels distant from the baby although she now hears its breathing and beings to acknowledge the newborn life.

Fifth stanza – shows the beginning of a bond between mother and baby – the mother has progressed from simply hearing the baby and is now responsive to the baby (‘stumbles from bed’) and observant (‘your open…clean as a cat’s). You could say that the bond between mother and baby can be seen in that both are compared to animals – ‘cow-heavy’ and ‘clean as a cat’s’. In terms of sound, the caesura after ‘One cry’ again lengthens the vowel sound of ‘cry’ and conjures the baby’s wailing vividly. The caesura after ‘I stumble from bed’ however, imitates in grammatical form the awkwardness with which the speaker falls from the bed.

Sixth stanza – Morning arrives. The view outside the white becomes brighter and the stars fade against this brightening sky. The speaker/mother is excited for what the day will bring – describes the nighttime stars as ‘dull’ – she is no longer interested in the night. The poem ends with a playful imagery – the simile shows that the speaker is filled with innocent wonder ‘like balloons’. There is no longer any excessively (and thus forced) grandiose or eerie imagery to be associated with the baby. The mother has bonded with the baby enough to feel excitement for what the future will bring for her and the baby.