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).

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.

Coming home by Owen Sheers

The Poem: 

My mother’s hug is awkward,
As if the space between her open arms
is reserved for a child, not this body of a man.
In the kitchen she kneads the dough,
flipping it and patting before laying in again.
The flour makes her over, dusting
The hairs on her cheek, smoothing out wrinkles.

Dad still goes and soaks himself in the rain.
Up to his elbows in hedge, he works
on a hole that reappears every Winter,
its edges laced with wet wool –
frozen breaths snagged on the blackthorn.
When he comes in again his hair is wild,
and his pockets are filled with filings of hay.

All seated, my grandfather pours the wine.
His unsteady hand makes the neck of the bottle
shiver on the lip of each glass;
it is a tune he plays faster each year.

Summary and Analysis

Sheers’ poem expresses the pain of the speaker on witnessing the inevitable old age of his family on his return to home. Through understanding the speakers’ refusal to come to terms with the cruel effects of old age on his mother, father and grandfather, the poignancy of the situation is intensified for the reader.

The shrinking physical form of the mother is simply interpreted as a neutral trait, as ‘awkwardness’, and as a problem of deliberate design. It is not that old age has forced upon his mother rigidity of limbs and joints that stops her ‘open arms’ from embracing her adult son, but it is simply a natural quirk of his mother’s physical form – it was build to embrace a child, that’s all. The sight of an elderly lady with stiff limbs still kneading dough diligently should be a sad and humbling sight, but instead it is expressed as a scene of youthful make over, as if the scattered flour on the mothers’ face acts like cosmetic products, ‘smoothing out wrinkles’. The tragedy of irrecoverable youth is also drawn out by this last image in the first stanza.

The actions and description of the father is also similarly made poignant through the speakers’ interpretation of the father’s motivation for his actions. Drenched in the rain in his work in maintaining the garden, the speaker chooses instead to interpret his father as voluntarily going out to ‘soak himself in the rain’. The hardship of gardening is also reinforced through the imagery of the father’s frozen breaths as ‘wet wool’. An opaque, white, fluffy material, the comparison of the father’s breath in the air with wool is a testament to the freezing weather that the father is working in, and the romanticizing of such frozen breath as wool ironically draws out the extremely unromantic reality of working on a garden hedge in the rain and cold.

Finally, the grandfather’s arthritis that worsens noticeably every year is understood instead as a musical tune that he plays with more speed, more expertise every year. The irony of such a comparison, that the grandfather does not have choice in the worsening arthritis, and it is far from being a skill that is deliberately cultivated, draws out the cruel of old age, and the speaker’s difficulty in coming to terms with its effects on his family members.

lionheart by Amanda Chong

You came out of the sea,
skin dappled scales of sunlight;
Riding crests, waves of fish in your fists.
Washed up, your gills snapped shut.
Water whipped the first breath of your lungs,
Your lips’ bud teased by morning mists.

You conquered the shore, its ivory coast.
Your legs still rocked with the memory of waves.
Sinews of sand ran across your back-
Rising runes of your oceanic origins.
Your heart thumped- an animal skin drum
heralding the coming of a prince.

In the jungle, amid rasping branches,
trees loosened their shadows to shroud you.
The prince beheld you then, a golden sheen.
Your eyes, two flickers; emerald blaze
You settled back on fluent haunches;
The squall of a beast. your roar, your call.

In crackling boats, seeds arrived, wind-blown,
You summoned their colours to the palm
of your hand, folded them snugly into loam,
watched saplings swaddled in green,
as they sunk roots, spawned shade,
and embraced the land that embraced them.

Centuries, by the sea’s pulmonary,
a vein throbbing humming bumboats –
your trees rise as skyscrapers.
Their ankles lost in swilling water,
as they heave themselves higher
above the mirrored surface.

Remember your self: your raw lion heart,
Each beat a stony echo that washes
through ribbed vaults of buildings.

Remember your keris, iron lightning
ripping through tentacles of waves,
double-edged, curved to a point-

flung high and caught unsheathed, scattering
five stars in the red tapestry of your sky.

Summary and Analysis

The subject of the poem, ‘you’, is the Merlion statute, which stands in this work as a national symbol of Singapore.

First stanza

The first stanza describes the Merlion at the dawn of the creation of Singapore, imbuing the creature with a mythical dimension, as the imagery of it revealing itself from the sea, riding on waves is in line with the behaviour of Greek gods and mythical legends. The image here is a powerful one, as not only is the Merlion portrayed to be mythical, it is at the same time true to its nature as half-fish, half-lion as it is clutching fish in its fists whilst adapting from using gills to using its lungs instead as it approaches land. Chong cleverly conveys the essence of the Merlion here in the same way that all powerful deities are portrayed – mythical, ethereal yet concrete and present in the flesh simultaneously.

The imagery of the Merlion and its appearance on the sea in this stanza is vivid because alliteration of ‘w’ sounds over three lines in the stanza emulates in audio form the physical movement of rising and falling of sea waves, and the sibilance of ‘snapped shut’ gives a sense of the efficiency and rapid adaptation of the Merlion towards its imminent move from the sea to the land. The consistent mixing of ‘w’ and ‘s’ sounds throughout the stanza also evokes, on the plane of the sounds of the words, a sense of the duality of the nature of the Merlion. A gentle introduction to the vast potential of Singapore at the dawn of its creation is captured in the phrase ‘morning mists’, as the dawn of Singapore is compared to the dawn of a new day. All the excitement and possibilities inherent in the idea of a new day is projected onto the idea of the young, new nation of Singapore in this stanza.

Second stanza

The second stanza is about the Merlion’s conquer of the land mass of Singapore and again, the figure of the Merlion is imbued with a mythical dimension. It ‘conquers’ the land of Singapore, like a victorious human army captain, but it also embodies history in its existence, the way only a creature with a mythical dimension could. It lives with the ‘memory of waves’ (ie. memories of where it came from, ‘its oceanic origins’). Describing this origin as inscribed in ‘runes’ gives the creature, or Singapore, a sense of rich and deep history, as runes are usually associated with mysterious, unreadable symbols of writing from ancient times. ‘Your heart thumped’ corresponds to the ‘morning mists’ from the previous stanza, because it evokes the imagery of a heart pumping strongly because of adrenaline, of excitement at the possibilities of the future. ‘animal skin drum/ heralding the coming of a prince’ brings out the juxtaposition of the primal and the royal, as if Singapore was a mix of raw power and regality at the beginning of its creation.

Third stanza

The third stanza is about the land of Singapore embracing the Merlion and softens the image of the Merlion as the forceful ‘conqueror’ of the land. The trees move protectively and welcoming around the Merlion, and the Merlion makes a regal, powerful presence on the land. Its eyes are emerald blazes, it is secure in its own sense of presence enough to ‘settle back’ on its ‘haunches’, and it is comfortable enough in its surroundings to ‘roar’, to call out.

Fourth stanza

This stanza is about the way the Merlion facilitates the beginning of life on the land of Singapore. The overall impression is that Singapore began with the birth of a wild jungle – seeds are ‘wind-blown’ and arrives in ‘crackling boats’, bringing to mind boats made out of dried natural plants or material which would ‘crackle’ as the boat moved. ‘swaddled’ and ‘spawned’ are interesting choices of verbs, bringing to mind the imagery of coddled children and the numerous eggs of frog spawn. It is as if the life in the seeds are precious and loved like human babies are, yet at the same time, they are uncontrollably abundant, numerous as frog spawn. Reciprocity and harmony of land and life (symbolized or represented by the seeds) is conveyed in the repetition of the verb ’embraced’ in the last line of the stanza.

Fifth stanza

The fifth stanza describes the growth of life on Singapore, after the sowing of seeds in the previous stanza. The strong life of the nation is conveyed by the comparison of the sea as a ‘vein’ that is ‘throbbing’, in other words, blood is flowing with powerful beats from the heart of the nation, in the form of crowds of Singapore’s signature ‘bumboats’ moving down the river. The transformation of Singapore from a land of jungle and trees into its modern picture of skyscrapers is smoothly captured in the line ‘your trees rise as skyscrapers’. A subtle but powerful image that enhances the beauty and magnificence of the skyscrapers in Singapore is captured in the description of ‘above the mirrored surface’. If you think of those paintings of a city’s skyline that is reflected on the surface of a sea, each building has two presences – one is its presence on land, the other is its reflection in the water, and on the painting (as well as real life), the reflection is glued at the bottom to the real building on land, and so the building is twice as long, has twice the presence it has, if it is ‘above a mirrored surface’.

Final three stanzas

Perhaps a reminder to the modern, fast-moving ubran metropolitan to remember its grand origins and rich historical roots. (But was Singapore actually steeped in such grand origins, or do we have a Gatsby situation of self-mythologizing a little bit too much here?!)

Personal Opinion 

While this poem is a fair go at communicating the creation of nation through the national symbol of a mythical creature, it reeks of the absorption of the white-washed version of history that the West has propagated.

The specificity to Singaporean culture and history seems to be very limited in this version of Singapore’s mythical origins as a nation. The impression it leaves with me is more of a watered down version of the mythical origins of a city in Europe.

The poem is peppered with words that 1. have a very distinct history/association of meanings in Western culture, 2. are not used in a way that endows them with a new identity, as would befit a poem about a city of such multi ethnic and cultural mix, now or back in history.

Just a few of these are ‘dappled’, ‘washed up’, ‘ivory coast’, ‘sinews of sand’, ‘heralding’, ‘squall of a beast’, ‘crackling boats’, ‘centuries’, ‘ribbed vaults’.

‘ribbed vaults’ particularly bugs me – this is a classic feature of Gothic architecture. Don’t tell me that Singapore absorbed the styles of Gothic architecture from the West back in the 16th to 18th century. If it doesn’t apply to Singapore, then don’t use it.

Trying to hold up the figure of the Merlion as the national symbol and myth of Singapore is also too much. But I will concede that the attempt has good moments – in its clever communication of the Merlion’s nature of half fish half lion in the first stanza.

The other moments of originality worth applauding in the poem is the incorporation of ‘bumboats’ in the imagery of the Singaporean sea, and the smooth linking of the ‘keris’ flung high and the sight of the Singaporean flag, of a red background and yellow stars on it.