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英詩 中 的 聲 響The Echoing Sound in English Poetry

董 崇 選中山醫大應用外語系教授

「懂更懂學習英文網站」負責人網址： http://dgdel.nchu.edu.tw

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I. The Four Creative Spaces of Poetry:

詩的 四個 創作空間1. Sense: 意義

“The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” Gray, “Elegy”

“To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower;

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.” Blake, “To See a World...”

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2. Sound: 聲音 “One equal temper of heroic hearts

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Tennyson, “Ulysses”

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3. Shape: 形狀 l(a

le af loneliness fa (a leaf falls) ll s) l-one-l-iness one (a le-af fa-ll-s) l iness e. e. cummings

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4. Situation: 場合And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Shelley, “Ozymandias”

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II. The Sound Elements in Poetry:

詩的 聲音要素1. Rhythm: 節奏 foot ( 音步 ) & meter ( 韻律 )

• iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, spondaic. ( 抑揚輕重 )

• monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, octometer. ( 行中音步數 )

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Rhythm: foot ( 音步 ) & meter ( 韻律 )

When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, “Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.” But I was one-and-twenty No use to talk to me. Housman, “When ...”

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2. Rhyme( 尾韻 ), Alliteration( 頭韻 ), Assonance( 母音韻 ), Consonance( 子音韻 ):

“It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.” Hopkins, “Spring and Fall: to a Young Child”

“For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee, And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.” Poe, “Annabel Lee”

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3. Musicality( 音樂性 ): refrain( 重出 ), onomatopoeia( 擬聲 ), euphony( 悅音 ), cacophony( 噪音 ),

pause( 休止 ), etc. “It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.” Whitman, “A Noiseless Patient Spider”

Hark, hark! Bow-wow. The watch-dogs bark! Bow-wow. Hark, hark! I hear The strain of strutting chanticleer Cry, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” Shakespeare, “Song”

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3. Musicality( 音樂性 ): refrain( 重出 ), onomatopoeia( 擬聲 ), euphony( 悅音 ), cacophony( 噪音 ), paus

e( 休止 ), etc “I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.” Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

“A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match.” Browning, “Meeting at Night”

“He clasps the crag with crooked hands ... ...And like a thunderbolt, he falls.” Tennyson, “The Eagle”

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4. Tone( 語氣 ): paronomasia (pun 雙關語 ),etc.

“I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

Swear by Thy self, that at my death Thy Son

Shall shine as he shines now and heretofore;

And, having done that, Thou hast done;

I fear no more.

Donne, “Hymn to God the Father”

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III. From Verse( 韻文 ) to Poetry( 詩 ):

• Metrical ( 有韻律 ) language is called verse; non-metrical language is prose.

• Prosody ( 造韻律 ) is an essential part of poetry in almost all cultures:

based on number of syllables, syllabic length, heavier or lighter pulses, even or non-even tones, etc.

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From Verse to Poetry:

• “Poetry, therefore, we will call musical thought.” (Carlyle)

• “...speech framed ... to be heard for its own sake and interest even over and above its interest of meaning.” (Hopkins)

• “The most artful and economic arrangement of words to express true feelings or thoughts.” (Tung)

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From Verse to Poetry:

Thirty days hath September,

April, June, and November;

All the rest have thirty-one,

Excepting February alone,

And that has twenty-eight days clear

And twenty-nine in each leap year.

Anonymous

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From Verse to Poetry:

‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense:

Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;

But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;

When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,

The line too labors, and the words move slow. Pope, “Essay on Criticism”

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IV. Some Poems with Echoing Sounds:

No motion has she now, no force:

She neither hears nor sees;

Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,

With rocks, and stones, and trees.

Wordsworth, “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”

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O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves deadAre driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,Each like a corpse within its grave, untilThine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere:Destroyer and preserver: hear, oh, hear! Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”

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Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge is withered from the lake, And no birds sing.

******I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long;For sideways would she lean, and sing

A fairy’s song.******

She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept and sighed full sore;

And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four.

******And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is withered from the lake, And no birds sing.

Keats, “La Belle Dame sans Merci”

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“Courage!” he said, and pointed toward the land, “This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.” In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. ****** Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, “we will return no more”; And all at once they sang, “Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.” Tennyson, “The Lotus Eaters”

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Listen! You hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in. Arnold, “Dover Beach”

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I like to see it lap the miles,And lick the valleys up,And stop to feed itself at tanks;And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,And, supercilious, peerIn shanties by the sides of roads;And then a quarry pare

To fit its ribs,And crawl between,Complaining all the whileIn horrid, hooting stanza;Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges;Then, punctual as a star,Stop—docile and omnipotent—At its own stable door. Emily Dickinson

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--I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying To make you hear. Your ears are soft and small And listen to an old man not at all; They want the young men’s whispering and sighing. But see the roses on your trellis dying And hear the spectral singing of the moon-- For I must have my lovely lady soon. I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying.

--I am a lady young in beauty waiting Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss. But what gray man among the vines is this Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream? Back from my trellis, sir, before I scream! I am a lady young in beauty waiting. Ransom, “Piazza Piece”