Margaret Atwood's “You Come Back” summary and analysis

Margaret Atwood „s “You Come Back”

MORNING IN THE BURNED HOUSE
by Margaret Atwood
Houghton Mifflin Company
215 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10003
ISBN 0-395-75591-3
ISBN 0-395-82521-0 (pbk.)
144 pp., $16.00
www.hmco.com
Margaret Atwood’s collection of poems, Morning in the Burned House, could just as easily have employed morning’s homonym—mourning—in the title. The overriding theme of loss and some of its sources and consequences—aging, grief, death, depression, and anger—permeate this collection and, in particular, Section IV which is a series of elegiac poems about Atwood’s father.
The collection is divided into five sections. Section I opens with the poem “You Come Back.” This poem seems to look back on a life lived in a blur in which much was missed, as evidenced by the lines:
You come back into the room
where you’ve been living
all along. You say:
What’s been going on
while I was away?. . .
. . .You know it was you
who slept, who ate here, though you don’t
believe it. I must have taken
time off, you think, for the buttered
toast and the love. . .
. . . but no,
now you’re certain, someone else
has been here wearing
your clothes and saying
words for you, because there was no time off.
The speaker of this poem seems shocked that he/she has missed so much, has let so much pass him/her by. As this section continues on, we are faced with the speaker’s musing about depression (“Sad Child” and “February”), loneliness (“In the Secular Night”), and aging and/or death (“Waiting” and “Asparagus.”) In the final poem in this section, “Red Fox,” the speaker has no illusions about humanity and how far people will go to get what they need and want. There is also a particularly feminine quality to this form of survival, as evidenced by the use of “vixen” and the references to mothers and children. In this way, “Red Fox” prepares us for what is to come in Section II.
Sections II and III explore the speaker’s anger created by different forms of loss: aging, exploitation, chances not taken, destruction and violence, and, ultimately, death. Many of these poems showcase the speaker’s feminist sensibilities, especially the opening poems of Section II—“Miss July Grows Older,” “Cressida to Troilus: A Gift,” and “Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing.” The latter poem in particular echoes the last poem in Section I, “Red Fox”:
The world is full of women
who’d tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they’d say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I’ve a choice
of how, and I’ll take the money.
Again, we see the lack of illusion regarding what we would do to survive, as well as the speaker’s awareness of how women have been exploited and oppressed by both genders.
As the volume moves into Section III, the speaker’s anger becomes more diffuse, encompassing subjects such as the environment, language, and war. However, there is still an overall tone of cynicism, sometimes laced with guilt, regarding humankind. These feelings are particularly evident in the opening poem in Section III, “Romantic,” in which the speaker lays the blame for women’s oppression and exploitation squarely on women. In “Cell,” a poem in which the speaker compares humans to a cancer cell, the speaker’s cynicism is evident:
. . .The lab technician
says, It has forgotten
how to die. But why remember? All it wants is more
amnesia. More life, and more abundantly. To take
more. To eat more. To replicate itself. To keep on
doing those things forever. Such desires
are not unknown. Look in the mirror.
Section II and III maintain the hard veneer of bargains made and humankind’s denial of its effect on the world around it and on one another. The tone of these sections only softens (and just a bit, at that) in the last poem of Section III, “A Pink Hotel in California.” This poem leads us into Section IV and a series of elegiac poems about Atwood’s/the speaker’s father.
Throughout Section IV, the speaker deals with her feelings of loss: her father’s slipping away into old age and Alzheimer’s and his eventual death. The final poem in Section IV “The Ottawa River by Night,” segues smoothly into Section V. “The Ottawa River by Night” begins hinting at the speaker’s sense of mortality, and Section V continues to explore and strengthen that sense.
The collection ends with “Morning in the Burned House,” in which the speaker mourns a life that has slipped by, sometimes barely noticed, and nearing its end:
I can’t see my own arms and legs
or know if this is a trap or blessing,
finding myself back here, where everything
in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,
including my own body,
including the body I had then,
including the body I have now
as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy, . . .
In this way, Atwood circles back to the beginning of the volume and “You Come Back,” lamenting the tunnel vision we as humans can have while living our lives and mourning the loss of opportunities for awareness, connection, and something more.
If the entire collection of 45 poems becomes the 46th poem, we can see how this collection comes together to create a speaker who is going through the classic seven stages of grief: shock, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, depression, and hope. It is grief that permeates this volume, whether it is the grief over the loss of a parent, the grief over our own mortality, or the grief over our own cruelty and violence. In the end, the grief in our lives circles back to our own awareness, which is what the speaker/Atwood is trying to tell us: Pay attention. Don’t let it all slip away.

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John Milton's On His Blindness 1673

John Milton‟s “On His Blindness” (1673)

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Summary

The first seven and a half lines of this poem are one big, long, confusing sentence. Here's our summary: "When I think of how I have lost my vision even before middle age, and how I am unable to use my best talent to serve God, I want to ask if God requires his servants to work for him even if they don't have vision."

But before he can speak up, a figure called Patience answers his question. Patience is like, "You think God needs your work? No, man. His best servants are the ones who bear life's burden the best. He already has thousands of people running around across land and sea to serve him. You can just stand right there and wait on him, and that's enough."

Lines 1-2

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

• The speaker thinks about how all of his light has been used up ("spent") before even half his life is over. As a man without light, he now lives in a world that is both "dark and wide."
• The first word of the poem, "When," gives us an idea of the structure of the sentence that will follow. The structure is, "When this happens, that happens." As in, "When I broke the glass, I had to find a broom to sweep it up."
• But be careful – the second part of the sentence doesn't come until lines 7 and 8. Milton's audience was more used to reading dense and complicated sentences, so you'll want to take the first seven lines slowly. (That's OK, we also think Milton's audience would have had a doozy of a time figuring out text messaging.)
• Most readers believe that the poem is clearly about Milton's blindness, but the poem never directly refers to blindness or even vision. Instead, we think that "light" is a metaphor for vision.
• The metaphor is complicated. The speaker says that his light can be "spent," and this word suggests that he is thinking of something like an oil lamp. The light is "spent" when the oil in the lamp runs out. To make a contemporary comparison, it would be like someone comparing his vision to a flashlight that runs out of batteries before it is supposed to. Milton is suggesting that he got a bad deal.
• The word "spent" also makes us think of money. Milton is reflecting on how he has used or "spent" his vision, now that it is gone. Has he used it wisely, or did he fritter it away because he thought it would never run out?
• The word "ere" means "before." How does Milton know that he became blind before his life was halfway over? For this to be true, wouldn't he have to be some kind of psychic who knew when he was going to die? The usual explanation of this line is that Milton guesses roughly how long he will live. Milton went completely blind at the age of 42.
• Finally, calling the world "dark and wide" makes it sound like a scary place, doesn't it? Interestingly, Milton makes it seem as if the world has run out of light, rather than growing dark because of any blindness on his part.

Lines 3-4

And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, […]

• These lines are the trickiest in the entire poem, because they appear to be simpler then they are.
• The key word is "talent." You probably read "talent" and think of skills like throwing a perfect spiral or being a piano prodigy. But there's a double meaning intended for people who know history or Biblical scripture. In the ancient world, a "talent" was also a standard of weight used to measure money, just as a "pound" is a measure of both weight and currency.
• You can read Matthew 25 (it's short), but here's our brief summary of "The Parable of Talents." A lord gives three of his servants some money ("talents") to hold on to when he leaves for a trip. Two of the servants use the money to gain more money for their master. (In contemporary language, we'd call this 'investment.') But the third servant just buries the money, the ancient equivalent of hiding it under your mattress. When the lord returns, he's happy with the first two servants and gives them more responsibilities, but furious with the third servant. He exiles the third servant into the "darkness," which is the equivalent of "death."
• When Milton says that talent is "death to hide," he is referring to the money in the Biblical story and also to his own "talent," in the sense of a skill or trade.
• There is no way to tell what specific talent he means, but our guess would be his intelligence and his writing and reading skills, which he had used in service of Oliver Cromwell's government. This "talent" is "lodged" or buried within the speaker just like the money in the story. It cannot be used to make greater profit.

Lines 4-6

[…] though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;

• The speaker has just told us that his talent is as useless as money buried in the desert, but now he says that his uselessness has nothing to do with a lack of will. To the contrary, his soul desires (is "bent") to use his skills in the service of his "Maker," God.
• When he is faced with God, he wants to have a record of accomplishment to show Him.
• God is being compared with the lord from the "Parable of the Talents" in Matthew 25. When God "returns" to him like the master in the parable, the speaker wants to show that he has used his talents profitably.
• The word "account" here means both" story" and "a record of activities with money."
• If the speaker turns out to have wasted his profits, he worries that God will scold or "chide" him. And if God is anything like the lord from the parable, the speaker could get cast into a darkness even more fearful than the one created by his blindness.

Lines 7-8

"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. […]

• It has taken the speaker six lines to get through the part of the sentence that begins "When." Now he goes on to say what happens "when" he thinks about all the stuff he has described above. Namely, he wonders if God demands that people undertake hard, physical work, or "day-labour," when they don't have any light.
• The speaker doesn't have any light because he's blind, but in Milton's metaphor he compares this condition to having to do work at night that you would normally do during the day – like, say, building a house or plowing a field.
• The word "exact" means something like "charge," "claim," or "demand." You can "exact" a toll or a fee, for example. So the speaker wants to know if God demands work as a kind of payment that is due to Him.
• The first section of the poem is completed by the words "I fondly ask." The word "fondly" means "foolishly," not "lovingly." The speaker accuses himself of being a idiot for even thinking this question.
• Fortunately, "patience" steps in to prevent his foolishness. More on that in the next section.

Lines 8-10

[…] But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best

• "Patience" to the rescue! Patience is personified as someone who can talk sense into the speaker. Patience is often personified in Christian art because of its role in helping one to achieve important virtues like courage and wisdom.
• The speaker is about to "murmur" his foolish question about whether God would be so cruel as to make impossible demands of work, but then his patience steps in to stop him. The rest of the poem is the reply made by patience.
• First, patience points out that God does not need anything. God is complete and perfect. He doesn't need work or talents ("gifts") of any kind.

Line 11

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. […]

• Patience now scores its second point in the rebuttal to the speaker. Patience argues that those people are the best servants of God who allow their fates to be linked with and controlled by God, as if they were wearing a yoke.
• Essentially, this means accepting things as they come, especially suffering and misfortune.
• A "yoke" is a wood frame that is placed around the necks of farm animals, like oxen, so that they can be directed.
• Patience doesn't want to make God sound like a slave driver, so God's yoke is called "mild," or not-that-bad. It's not how much you have to show for your time on earth that counts, it's how you handle your submission to God.

Lines 11-14

[…] His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

• The final point made by patience is that God is like a king, not a lord, so the "Parable of the Talents" does not strictly apply.
• Lords need everyone on their estates to work for them; they usually don't have the resources to spend on keeping servants just to stand around and wait on them. Kings, on the other hand, have unlimited resources, especially if they control a "state" as large as the entire earth.
• With His kingly status, God has plenty of minions to do His "bidding" by rushing from place to place – that is, doing things that require light and vision. It doesn't make a difference whether one more person fulfills the role or not.
• But kings also have people who "wait" on them, who stand in a state of readiness until their action is needed.
• To summarize, we believe that the sentence, "His state is kingly," is meant to contrast with the "lordly" state of the master of the Biblical parable in Matthew 25.
• This being Milton, of course, "wait" can also have the meaning of waiting for something to happen, as in, "I waited for the bus."
• What would the speaker be waiting for? The Second Coming of Jesus? The end of history? We don't know because the poem only suggests this meaning oh-so-vaguely.
• The word "post" here just means "to travel quickly." That's why the mail is often referred to as the "post," because you're supposed to travel quickly to deliver it.
• The poem ends with a vindication of the speaker's passivity, which has been forced on him by his blindness.

Vision, Light, and Darkness

Symbol Analysis

This poem is sometimes called "On His Blindness," but the speaker might respond, "Blindness? What blindness? I'm not the one who's blind. It's the world that has run out of light." This argument is like saying that you aren't really running – it's the world that is rolling beneath you like a treadmill. As you can see, Milton uses complicated wordplay to describe why the speaker has a hard time serving God. His "blindness" is like a lamp that runs out of fuel, like the daylight that turns to night, and like a currency that hasn't been used to maximum effect.

• Line 1: Vision is not same thing as "light," although vision requires light. So, we can't just substitute one word for the other. Milton is using a metaphor to compare his vision to a light source that could run out, like an old-fashioned lamp that burns through its oil.
• Line 2: "Ere half my days" is a way of saying, "Before my life is through." But "days" also introduces the idea of daylight. The speaker's "days" are now more like nights. He uses another metaphor to compare his lack of vision to an imagined world that does not have light. The phrase "this dark world and wide" is also an example of alliteration.
• Line 7: The speaker compares God – again using metaphor – to a master who makes his servants work in darkness. He "denies" them light, which sounds heartless.

The Parable of the Talents

Symbol Analysis

The poem hinges on a pun on "talent" in the sense of "skill" and "talent" as a unit of monetary measurement in Biblical times. The parable of talents occurs in chapter 25 of the Gospel of Matthew, and it tells the story of two servants improving their own lot by increasing the bounty of their master. In the first section, the speaker compares God to the "lord" in the parable who goes away on a trip and returns to ask what his servants have done with their money. In the second section of the poem, "patience" explains that God is more like a king who does not need all his servants to actively work for him.

• Line 1: The word "spent" becomes a pun when we read it in light of the discussion of money and currency in the next few lines. The speaker's ability to see is like a currency, and he has unfortunately burned through it too soon. That "light" was supposed to last him all the way through his retirement!
• Lines 3-5: The word "Talent" has a double meaning, as described above. The whole Biblical parable about hiding the talent and not turning the master's currency into a profit is used as an extended metaphor in which God is compared to the lord, while the speaker is the third servant who has buried the money.
• Line 6: The word "account" is also a double-entendre that works on both sides of the extended metaphor. In one sense, "account" is a story of justification for how the speaker has used his time on earth. In another sense, the "account" is the amount of money the servant in the parable is able to show to his lord. The servant must give this account after his lord has "returned" from traveling.
• Lines 11-12: We think that the observation that God's "state is Kingly" is meant to contrast God with the lord from the parable.

Patience, Please

Symbol Analysis

"Patience" is an important virtue in Christianity. It allows people to work toward other "theological" virtues like hope and faith. When the speaker begins to question whether God might be kind of a cruel figure for demanding work from people who can't perform it, patience steps in to correct him. The twist, of course, is that the speaker must already have patience in order for the personified figure called "patience" to come on the scene.

• Line 7: The speaker is about to ask a rhetorical question about God's justice before patience interrupts him.
• Line 8: The virtue of patience is personified as "patience," the amazing advice giver. In the second half of the poem, patience replies to the speaker's question.
• Line 11: The metaphor in the first half of this line compares God's rule over men to the wooden yoke that guides farm animals.
• Lines 12-13: These lines present an image of servants rushing all over the world, by land and by sea, to serve God. These "servants" are Christian soldiers, merchants, politicians, clergy, etc. Lines 11-14 form an extended metaphor comparing service to God with service to the most powerful king in the world.
• Line 14: The word "wait" is a pun. It means "wait" in the sense that the speaker will wait until the end of his life to meet his ultimate fate, and also in the sense that a person "waits" on a more powerful person simply by standing there until he is needed.

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness): Rhyme, Form & Meter

We’ll show you the poem’s blueprints, and we’ll listen for the music behind the words.

Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet in Iambic Pentameter

Milton loved the classics, and in the 17th century, "classic" meant anything associated with Ancient Greece or Rome. The heart of the Roman Empire was located in what is now modern-day Italy, and the sonnet was invented in Italy, so it was not a surprise that Milton would favor the original Italian form of the sonnet. This form is divided up into two sections, one with eight lines and one with six. Shakespeare, on the other hand, used a sonnet form that ended with a rhyming two-line couplet. The Italian sonnet form was made popular by the Italian poet Petrarch, who was to the literary Renaissance what The Temptations were to Motown.

The rhyme scheme of this sonnet is ABBAABBAC CDECDE. So, you can see that lines 1, 4, 5, and 8 all rhyme with each other. Unlike a classic Italian sonnet, "When I consider how my light is spent" does not divide cleanly into eight lines and six lines, however. The first section of the poem consists of the speaker trying to frame his foolish question, and the second consists of the response to the question by a figure named "patience." Most Italian sonnets have a sharp thematic turn or "volta" between the two sections, but in this poem the turn is a bit muddled between lines 8 and 9. If you think about it, the confusion makes perfect sense, as it conveys the awkwardness of someone (patience) interrupting someone else (the speaker) before the speaker can say something stupid.

The meter of the poem is classic iambic pentameter, with five iambs (an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable). Some of the lines do not fit the pattern exactly, but the pattern itself is clear:

"Doth God ex-act day-la-bor, light de-nied?"

Finally, this poem features a lot of enjambment, which is when one line runs over into the next without a pause. Just check out the end of each line, and you'll find that over half lack punctuation markers like periods or semi-colons.

Speaker Point of View

Who is the speaker, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

Though the speaker may be seething with frustration and even anger at God, he knows that he must tread very carefully if he wants to express himself. He has the skills and intelligence to do great things out in the world, but he has been tripped up by a seemingly trivial problem: his light has run out. Unfortunately, this unlucky event throws a big wrench in his plans to be useful. The speaker imagines that he could have become a famous politician or even, say, the author of one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. (Cough, cough). But now he can't possibly do any of that, right? (Cough, cough, cough.) He's a hard worker, and he can't just sit still! Can he?

You get the impression from reading the first section of the poem that the speaker just wants to shout, "You can't seriously expect me to do my Christian duty without vision. This is a joke, right?" Fortunately, the speaker has a little guy in his shirt pocket named "patience," capable of popping out and delivering a pep talk whenever it looks like the speaker is about to lose his cool. The important thing to remember is that "patience" belongs to the speaker.

Finally, we can see why the speaker thinks he would be so useful to God and to society: he is incredibly smart. With his ability to pack complicated arguments into a few brief lines, he would make an amazing lawyer. Also, he probably knows the Gospels inside and out because the "Parable of the Talents" is one of the least frequently quoted stories from the New Testament. On the other hand, the speaker still has "half [his] days" left to live, so maybe, just maybe, he'll still get around to doing great things.

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Setting

Where It All Goes Down

The poem reminds us of those scenes from horror movies where the hero is walking through some dark and dangerous place – chased by monsters or something – and his flashlight/torch/lamp suddenly flickers and goes out. You hear heavy breathing and…what's that?! Did you hear a branch break?!

OK, the speaker is not in mortal danger, but he feels like his soul is endangered. He is left to navigate a "dark" and "wide" world without his vision. What's more, his demanding "Maker" has gone on a trip, and he worries he will be cast into further darkness if he can't make use of his "Talent." That "Talent" is buried deep within him, like a gold coin that has been thrown in a hole and covered up with soil.

In the second half of the poem, "patience" presents a different view of the world. In this view, the world is a huge kingdom with thousands and thousands of servants working to achieve God's will. Some of them speed from continent to continent like the characters in an Indiana Jones movie. Others just stand around until the king calls for them.

Sound Check

Read this poem aloud. What do you hear?

If you ever wanted to know what walking on eggshells sounded like in a poem, this sonnet is a prime example. The speaker buries the climax of the first part of the poem – the question of whether God demands "day-labour, light denied" – inside all these other delicate expressions of why light is so important to him. The poem has a lot of short phrases separated by commas and which seemingly bring us further and further from the point, as if Milton is worried that the whole sonnet might crack open into a steaming mass of resentment. It's like if you had a classmate who said, "When I think about how my pencil just broke, I can't finish my math problem, and I like math so much, but you really need an eraser to do it, or else you might be stuck with a wrong answer, which would lead to a bad grade; 'Can I borrow a pencil?' I would want to ask you." Just ask for the darned pencil already!

However, when we consider that the speaker is about to talk to God, we can understand his desire to be cautious. The decision to questioning God's judgment is not to be taken lightly. The speaker is so cautious that he says, "I fondly ask" after he asks the question, which serves to take the sting of arrogance and insubordination out of it. Put another way, the time it takes you as reader to figure out what the speaker is trying to get across lessens the direct force of his statements.

"Patience," by contrast, is more direct. It uses shorter, more declarative sentences like, "His state is kingly." Because they are making complex arguments, both the speaker and "patience" use frequent enjambment, where one lines carries over into the next without a pause. This gives the poem a prose-like and slightly evasive sound (the eggshell thing, again). The entire poem builds to the final line, which does not carry over from the previous line and sounds remarkably clear and straightforward: "They also serve who only stand and wait." And we breathe a sigh of relief that the speaker has managed to hold things together until the end.

What’s Up With the Title?

This sonnet first appeared in Milton's 1673 collection of Poems simply as the nineteenth sonnet in the collection, or Sonnet XIX. Many readers, including us, refer to it by the first line, "When I consider how my light is spent." Identifying a poem by the first line is standard practice in the poetry world.

But, many more readers refer to the poem as, "On His Blindness." The problem with this title is that it didn't come from Milton. It was given almost a hundred years later by Bishop Newton, a writer and clergyman (source). Now, almost everyone agrees that the poem is most likely about Milton's blindness, but Milton never says so up front, leaving the door open for some interesting ambiguity. If Milton had wanted to say, "Hey, guys, this poem is about my blindness!" he could easily have done so. Newton's invented title changes the way you read the poem, which is why we prefer to use the first line of the poem.

John Milton’s Calling Card

What is the poet’s signature style?

"Light" in Darkness

Some critics think that Milton's blindness gave him an uncanny ability to depict light, darkness, and shadow. This sonnet offers pretty strong evidence for that claim. The central extended metaphor combines the concepts of light and money into symbolism as dense as seven-layer cake. Light and darkness interact in strange ways in Milton's poems. One of the most famous sections in Paradise Lost describes the interior of Hell as having:

No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,

"Darkness visible." Wow. Milton's blindness proved to him that one can "see" even without light. We should also point out that the distinction between light and darkness is central to Christian theology.

Tough-O-Meter

We’ve got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you’ll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)

(7) Snow Line

For a short, 14-line sonnet, this poem is pretty hard. That's Milton for you. Few poets display so much religious and literary knowledge as Mr. Milton, and this poem is no exception. Most people today don't memorize the Gospels like they did back in 17th-century England, but if you don't know the "Parable of the Talents" from Matthew 25, you miss a lot of the context for the poem's symbolism. It would be like reading a poem about "The Rumble in the Jungle" if you had never heard of the legendary boxers Mohammed Ali and George Foreman. Also, there are a lot of double-entendres in this sonnet, and some words like "fondly" have unexpected meanings. In short, this is a poem where Shmoop makes an excellent Sherpa to take you to the top of the mountain. The view is unquestionably worth it.

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Theme of Guilt and Blame

The speaker's mind is a big ball of guilt and confusion. He takes pride in his vast intelligence, but worries that he failed to use his "light" when he had it. You can imagine him saying, "How could I have known my vision was going to run out?!" His soul "bends" toward service of God like a flower bends toward the sun, but he is no longer fit for the kinds of intensive work that he might have done. He hopes that God does not blame him like the angry lord from the "Parable of the Talents" in the Bible.

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Theme of Dreams, Hopes, and Plans

Before going blind, the speaker has high hopes for what he might accomplish in the future. He says he would have been a supremely useful servant of God. But we can't know if his motives are truly selfless, or if he is an ambitious guy who now struggles to come to terms with a personal upheaval. As he looks to the future, he compares his situation to the third servant from the New Testament "Parable of the Talents" in Matthew 25. Because he has not increased his master's wealth, this servant is cast into the darkness. Considering that the speaker already feels he lives in the darkness, what further punishment does he expect? At the end of the poem, patience gives him a new plan: he should wait until God calls on him to serve

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Theme of Principles

We've all heard the homespun wisdom "Patience is a virtue," which sounds almost mystical but is really like saying, "Blue is a color." The more interesting question is, what's a virtue? A virtue is a character trait that helps you achieve some desired good or outcome. Virtues are central to Christian theology. The speaker desires to serve God, but his impatience and sense of wounded pride threaten to get in his way by leading him to rashly criticize his "Maker." The virtue of patience helps him to remember that it's not all about him. Just because he thinks he has something to offer doesn't mean that God needs him to act right away.

When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) Theme of Religion

John Milton was a Puritan who supported Oliver Cromwell's republican commonwealth after the execution of King Charles I of England. During this period, politics and religion were tied closely together, so that being "useful" to the government meant being "useful" to God, at least for Milton. The poem displays Milton's encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible but also his reforming instincts. Milton is not afraid to challenge the supposed moral of the New Testament "Parable of the Talents" by pointing out the difference between God and the lord from the story. The sonnet gives expression to intense religious emotions, but its rational and rhetorical qualities are equally important.

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VERB FORMS – WHEN DO YOU USE THAT ONE ?

VERB FORMS – WHEN DO YOU USE THAT ONE

When you use the base form:                                               Examples

1.  As basic present in 1^st and 2^nd person                                I work              You work

2. As a second verb after “do” or modals                               I didn’t go       She will go

3.  In imperatives (commands)                                                Turn right        Stand up

4.  As a second verb in causatives (make, let, help, have)      I made her do it    Let me go

5.  As a second verb after suggest, recommend, insist, demand        I insist that she be there.

When you use the –s form:

1.  As a first verb only                                                                        She works        She doesn’t work

2.  In all present tenses when

 the subject is 3^rd person singular                                That store sells good stuff.

                                                                                    The bird is singing right now.

                                                                                    My son has gone to the store.

When you use the present participle/gerund/-ing form

1.  As a second verb only                                                        I am talking     She likes cooking

2.  In a progressive tenses after “be”                                      I was driving when I heard it.

3.  When the meaning is “in process”                                     I saw it falling

4.  As a noun subject or object – name of activity                  Writing is hard.  My hobby is sewing.

5.  After certain verbs: admit, avoid, can’t stand, consider, deny, dislike, enjoy, feel like, finish, give up, imagine, keep (continue), mind (object to), miss, practice, prevent, prohibit, quit, recommend, resent, risk.

When you use the past form:

1.  As a first verb only                                                                        I didn’t go       She liked to swim

2.  When you mean a past finished event                               I worked yesterday

When you use the past participle form:

1.  As a second verb only

2.  In present perfect tense after “have”                                 I have eaten     I haven’t done it yet

3.  As an adjective                                                                  The broken window

4.  In passive voice after “be”                                                 I was born       My car was stolen

5.  In past and future perfect after “have”                              I had finished   I will have eaten

When you use the infinitive form:

1.  As a second verb only                                                        I plan to go      I learned to swim

2.  When you tell why (“infinitive of purpose”)                     Why did you go?  To see the doctor.

3.  As the name of the verb                                                     The verb “to be” is very difficult.

4.  As a noun subject or object                                                To eat right is very important.

                                                                                                            My fear is to die alone.

5.  After verbs: agree, ask, arrange, can’t afford, can’t wait, choose, decide, deserve, expect, fail, hesitate, hope, intend, learn, manage, mean, need, offer, plan, prefer, prepare, pretend, promise, refuse, seem, want, wish, would like

EXCEPTIONS

Note:  there are a few verbs that can be followed by either a gerund or infinitive with no major change in meaning.  These are:    begin, continue, like, love, hate, start and try.

I like cooking, I like to cook.  I start studying, I start to study.

A few verbs change meaning when you change from gerund to infinitive:

forget, remember, stop

Example:  I stop smoking (no more)               I stop to smoke (I take a break and go smoke)

            I remember locking the door (I did it and can remember it still.)   

I remember to lock the door (I think about it before I leave, so I always do it)

            I forgot locking the door (I did it, but didn’t remember that I did)

            I forgot to lock the door (I forgot first, so I didn’t lock it.

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SONNET 18 PARAPHRASE + analysis + ترجمة للعربي

SONNET 18	PARAPHRASE
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?	Shall I compare you to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:	You are more lovely and more constant:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,	Rough winds shake the beloved buds of May
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:	And summer is far too short:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,	At times the sun is too hot,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;	Or often goes behind the clouds;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,	And everything beautiful sometime will lose its beauty,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;	By misfortune or by nature's planned out course.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade	But your youth shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;	Nor will you lose the beauty that you possess;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,	Nor will death claim you for his own,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:	Because in my eternal verse you will live forever.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,	So long as there are people on this earth,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.	So long will this poem live on, making you immortal.

ANALYSIS temperate (1): i.e., evenly-tempered; not overcome by passion. the eye of heaven (5): i.e., the sun. every fair from fair sometime declines (7): i.e., the beauty (fair) of everything beautiful (fair) will fade (declines). Compare to Sonnet 116: "rosy lips and cheeks/Within his bending sickle's compass come." nature's changing course (8): i.e., the natural changes age brings. that fair thou ow'st (10): i.e., that beauty you possess. in eternal lines...growest (12): The poet is using a grafting metaphor in this line. Grafting is a technique used to join parts from two plants with cords so that they grow as one. Thus the beloved becomes immortal, grafted to time with the poet's cords (his "eternal lines"). For commentary on whether this sonnet is really "one long exercise in self-glorification", please see below. Sonnet 18 is the best known and most well-loved of all 154 sonnets. It is also one of the most straightforward in language and intent. The stability of love and its power to immortalize the poetry and the subject of that poetry is the theme. The poet starts the praise of his dear friend without ostentation, but he slowly builds the image of his friend into that of a perfect being. His friend is first compared to summer in the octave, but, at the start of the third quatrain (9), he is summer, and thus, he has metamorphosed into the standard by which true beauty can and should be judged. من موقع : http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/18detail.html شرح اخر 1. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? This is taken usually to mean 'What if I were to compare thee etc?' The stock comparisons of the loved one to all the beauteous things in nature hover in the background throughout. One also remembers Wordsworth's lines:  We'll talk of sunshine and of song, And summer days when we were young,  Sweet childish days which were as long As twenty days are now. Such reminiscences are indeed anachronistic, but with the recurrence of words such as 'summer', 'days', 'song', 'sweet', it is not difficult to see the permeating influence of the Sonnets on Wordsworth's verse. 2. Thou art more lovely and more temperate: The youth's beauty is more perfect than the beauty of a summer day. more temperate - more gentle, more restrained, whereas the summer's day might have violent excesses in store, such as are about to be described. 3. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, May was a summer month in Shakespeare's time, because the calendar in use lagged behind the true sidereal calendar by at least a fortnight.  darling buds of May - the beautiful, much loved buds of the early summer; favourite flowers. 4. And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Legal terminology. The summer holds a lease on part of the year, but the lease is too short, and has an early termination (date). 5. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, Sometime = on occasion, sometimes;  the eye of heaven = the sun. 6. And often is his gold complexion dimmed, his gold complexion = his (the sun's) golden face. It would be dimmed by clouds and on overcast days generally. 7. And every fair from fair sometime declines, All beautiful things (every fair) occasionally become inferior in comparison with their essential previous state of beauty (from fair). They all decline from perfection. 8. By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: By chance accidents, or by the fluctuating tides of nature, which are not subject to control, nature's changing course untrimmed.  untrimmed - this can refer to the ballast (trimming) on a ship which keeps it stable; or to a lack of ornament and decoration. The greater difficulty however is to decide which noun this adjectival participle should modify. Does it refer to nature, or chance, or every fair in the line above, or to the effect of nature's changing course? KDJ adds a comma after course, which probably has the effect of directing the word towards all possible antecedents. She points out that nature's changing course could refer to women's monthly courses, or menstruation, in which case every fair in the previous line would refer to every fair woman, with the implication that the youth is free of this cyclical curse, and is therefore more perfect. 9. But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Referring forwards to the eternity promised by the ever living poet in the next few lines, through his verse. 10. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall it (your eternal summer) lose its hold on that beauty which you so richly possess. ow'st = ownest, possess.  By metonymy we understand 'nor shall you lose any of your beauty'. 11. Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, Several half echoes here. The biblical ones are probably 'Oh death where is thy sting? Or grave thy victory?' implying that death normally boasts of his conquests over life. And Psalms 23.3.: 'Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil ' In classical literature the shades flitted helplessly in the underworld like gibbering ghosts. Shakespeare would have been familiar with this through Virgil's account of Aeneas' descent into the underworld in Aeneid Bk. VI. 12. When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, in eternal lines = in the undying lines of my verse. Perhaps with a reference to progeny, and lines of descent, but it seems that the procreation theme has already been abandoned.  to time thou grow'st - you keep pace with time, you grow as time grows. 13. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, For as long as humans live and breathe upon the earth, for as long as there are seeing eyes on the eart. 14. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. That is how long these verses will live, celebrating you, and continually renewing your life. But one is left with a slight residual feeling that perhaps the youth's beauty will last no longer than a summer's day, despite the poet's proud boast.  من موقع : http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/18 شرح اخر من موقع سبارك نوت : Summary The speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the beloved: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” The next eleven lines are devoted to such a comparison. In line 2, the speaker stipulates what mainly differentiates the young man from the summer’s day: he is “more lovely and more temperate.” Summer’s days tend toward extremes: they are shaken by “rough winds”; in them, the sun (“the eye of heaven”) often shines “too hot,” or too dim. And summer is fleeting: its date is too short, and it leads to the withering of autumn, as “every fair from fair sometime declines.” The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from the summer in that respect: his beauty will last forever (“Thy eternal summer shall not fade...”) and never die. In the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloved’s beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish because it is preserved in the poem, which will last forever; it will live “as long as men can breathe or eyes can see.” Commentary This sonnet is certainly the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeare’s sonnets; it may be the most famous lyric poem in English. Among Shakespeare’s works, only lines such as “To be or not to be” and “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” are better-known. This is not to say that it is at all the best or most interesting or most beautiful of the sonnets; but the simplicity and loveliness of its praise of the beloved has guaranteed its place. On the surface, the poem is simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the beloved; summer tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and heat, but the beloved is always mild and temperate. Summer is incidentally personified as the “eye of heaven” with its “gold complexion”; the imagery throughout is simple and unaffected, with the “darling buds of May” giving way to the “eternal summer”, which the speaker promises the beloved. The language, too, is comparatively unadorned for the sonnets; it is not heavy with alliteration or assonance, and nearly every line is its own self-contained clause—almost every line ends with some punctuation, which effects a pause. Sonnet 18 is the first poem in the sonnets not to explicitly encourage the young man to have children. The “procreation” sequence of the first 17 sonnets ended with the speaker’s realization that the young man might not need children to preserve his beauty; he could also live, the speaker writes at the end of Sonnet 17, “in my rhyme.” Sonnet 18, then, is the first “rhyme”—the speaker’s first attempt to preserve the young man’s beauty for all time. An important theme of the sonnet (as it is an important theme throughout much of the sequence) is the power of the speaker’s poem to defy time and last forever, carrying the beauty of the beloved down to future generations. The beloved’s “eternal summer” shall not fade precisely because it is embodied in the sonnet: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,” the speaker writes in the couplet, “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” من موقع : http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/shakesonnets/section2.rhtml شرح اخر : ::Analysis:: Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet is, perhaps, one of the best-known sonnets contained in the English literary canon. It is a conventional Shakespearean sonnet that explores conventional themes in an original way.  With characteristic skill Shakespeare uses the sonnet to exalt poetry and his beloved. The first quatrain introduces the primary conceit of the sonnet, the comparison of the speaker’s beloved to a summer’s day.  In the first line the speaker introduces the comparison of his beloved to a summer’s day.  The speaker then builds on this comparison when he writes,  “Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (2) because he is describing his beloved in a way that could also describe summer.  When he describes “rough winds [that] do shake the darling buds of May,”  (3) he is using rough winds as a metaphor for capricious chance and change,  and he implies that his beloved does not suffer from these winds as summer does.  The first quatrain, therefore, introduces a comparison that is expanded upon by the remaining two quatrains. The second quatrain strengthens the comparison of the beloved to a summer’s day.  The speaker anthropomorphizes the sky, or “heaven,” (5) by using the metaphor of an “eye” (5) for the sun so that the comparison between a person and a season becomes vivid.  By assigning heaven an “eye,” the speaker invokes the image of his beloved’s eyes.  Similarly, in the next line when the speaker mentions that summer’s “gold complexion” is often “dimmed,” ( 6) he is attempting to compare another human attribute of his beloved with some trait of summer.  The second quatrain presents summer as possessing only mutable beauty. The third quatrain no longer focuses on the mutability of summer, but it speaks of the nearly eternal nature of the memory of the beloved.  When the speaker assures his beloved that her “eternal summer shall not fade,” (9) he is using summer as a metaphor for her beauty. Using the word “fade” facilitates the comparison of the abstract notion of a summer’s day to the concrete person of the beloved because fading is a quality of light.  Similarly, when the speaker writes of the beloved entering the “shade” (10) of death, he is expanding on the use of the metaphor and reinforcing the poem’s primary conceit. When the speaker boasts that his beloved will not suffer the same fate as a summer’s day because he has committed her to “eternal lines,” (12) he adds the theme of poetry itself to a sonnet that had previously been a love poem.  Shakespeare gives his beloved immortality through poetry that God did not give to a summer’s day. The couplet concludes the sonnet by tying together the themes of love and poetry.  In it the speaker starkly contrasts the life spans of his poem and his beloved’s memory to the fleeting nature of a summer’s day.  He boasts that, unlike a summer’s day, his poetry and the memory of his beloved will last “so long as men can breathe or eyes can see” (13).  This last comparison provides a stark contrast to the time period, “a summer’s day,” (1) introduced at the beginning and exalts poetry along with the beloved. Shakespeare used a conventional form of poetry to praise poetry and his beloved. He boasted that both would be preserved nearly eternally. Five hundred years later, no one refutes his boast. ------------------- هذه هى القصيدة رقم 18 الشهيرة التى يبدأ فيها شكسبير بعقد مقارنة بين جمال محبوبته واعتدال الجو فى يوم من أيام الصيفالأنجليزى ثم ينكر هذه المقارنة لأن الصيف فصل متقلب وينتهى الىان محبوبته تكسر حدود الزمن لأن الشاعر قد خلدها فى قصيدته التى لابد أن يكتب لها الخلود فى رأيه وأن ينشدها الناس على مر الزمان.ولتلك القصيدة ترجمتانالترجمة الأولى ألا تشبهين صفاء المصيف بل أنت أحلى وأصفى سماء ففى الصيف تعصف ريح الذبول وتعبث فى برعمات الربيع ولا يلبث الصيف حتى يزول وفى الصيف تسطع عين السماء ويحتدم القيظ مثل الأتون وفى الصيف يحجب عنا السحاب ضيا السما وجمال ذكاء وما من جميل يظل جميلا فشيمة كل البرايا الفناء ولكن صيفك ذا لن يغيب ولن تفتقدى فيه نور الجمال ولن يتباهى الفناء الرهيب بأنك تمشين بين الظلال اذا صغت منك قصيد الأبد فمادام فى الأرض ناس تعيش ومادام فيها عيون ترى فسوف يردد شعرى الزمان وفيه تعيشين بين الورى والترجمة الثانية لفطينه النائب- من كتاب فن الترجمة- للدكتور صفاء خلوصى- 1986 من ذا يقارن حسنك المغرى بصيف قد تجلى وفنون سحرك قد بدت فى ناظرى أسمى وأغلىتجنى الرياح العاتيات على البراعم وهى جذلى والصيف يمضى مسرعا اذ عقده المحدود ولى كم أشرقت عين السماء بحرها تلتهب ولكم خبا فى وجهها الذهبى نور يغرب لابد للحسن البهى عن الجميل سيذهب فالدهر تغير واطوار الطبيعة قلب لكن صيفك سرمدى ما اعتراه ذبول لن يفقد الحسن الذى ملكت فيه بخيل والموت لن يزهو بظلك فى حماه يجول ستعاصرين الدهر فى شعرى وفيه أقول: ما دامت الأنفاس تصعد والعيون تحدق سيظل شعرى خالداً وعليك عمراً يغدق

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