Springtime - O Henry

Springtime - O Henry

A famous American short story writer William Sydney Porter is known to the literary world as O. Henry. When he was 22, he moved to New York and published over three hundred short stories under the pen name of O. Henry. His short stories are marked with realistic details culminated with effective surprising endings.

“Springtime” is a beautiful romantic love story between Sarah, a typist at a restaurant in New York and Walter Franklin, a farmer in the country. Sarah, a beautiful young lady with fine figure working as a typist in Schulenberg Home Restaurant. It was just next door to the red-brick building where she had a living room. Sarah has to type menu cards and bills of fare every day for 21 tables of Schulenberg Home Restaurant.  

Sarah, an intelligent young lady, chose to work on a typewriter. Though she did not type very quickly yet she did her work skillfully and pleasantly. Mr. Schulenberg was delighted at her work and willingly agreed to send her room three meals a day. Sarah had to prepare menu cards for 21 tables of the restaurant every day.  She listed the dishes so temptingly in each of the menu to catch the eye of the costumer. However, she did not feel quite happy despite her comfortable life.

In the summer of the last year, Sarah had gone into the country and had fallen in love with a young farmer, Walter Franklin. Together they sat and wove a crown of dandelions to her nut brown hair. He praised the effect of those yellow flowers against to her nut brown hair. They decided to marry at the very signs of the next spring.

Sarah returned to New York to hit the typewriter. One afternoon she was shaking with cold in her room. A waiter came to her and handed the list of the menu written in unreadable hand writing. There were many changes in the menu than usual. She classified all dishes properly. When she was typing the list of fruits she reminded the arrival of the spring. Tears welled up in her eyes by remembering her lover, Walter. She had not received any letter from him for more than two weeks. The lonely time proves to be depressing for Sarah. The memories of Walter tormenting her ceaselessly.

One-day, as Sarah began her typing work for the day, one item among the list of menu that read Dandelions with Eggs.  This upset her as she remembered Walter’s offer of the crown made of dandelions. Immediately tears welled up in her eyes by the memory of dandelions. Sarah tried to force back her tears to type the menu cards.

At six O’clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the typewritten menu. She ate her food sadly and after a while she sat for reading. As settled down for reading the front-door bell rang. The landlady answered it. Sarah left her book and listened. The farmer Walter Franklin had come there in search of Sarah.  Listening to this Sarah rushed to meet him and cried “Why haven’t you written?”

Franklin had come to New York a week ago and went to her old address. But she had left that house. He searched for her. She told him that she had written to him but that had not reached him. In the course of his search for her he had somehow come to the restaurant that evening. When he saw the typewritten menu-card, he observed certain clues in it and instantly he shouted for the owner and got her address.

The capital letter ‘W’ in the menu card was above the line. In the upper right-hand corner a tear had fallen between two titles of dishes on the list was description: ‘Dearest Walter, with hard-boiled Egg’. It was the surest sign that the lovelorn Sarah had typed it. Through the owner’s help, he lands in Sarah’s room. For Sarah and Walter, it is a God-sent gift.

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If You Are True To Your Gift – Irakli Abashidaze

If You Are True to Your Gift - Irakli Abashidaze

Irakli Abashidaze was a Georgian poet, a literary scholar and a politician born in 1909. Most of his poems were patriotic but normally loyal to Soviet Union. In this poem ‘If Your Are True To Your Gift’, the poet expresses his true feelings about life and its importance. The poet says that if a person is true to the gift i.e. ‘life’ given to us by the God and if that gift is true, then such a gift opens the radiant and dazzling gates of the dawn. If a person is true to his life and has some moral values in his life, nothing can harm his life (gift). The three beasts or the three plagues i.e. neither ‘Old Age’, nor ‘Time’ nor ‘Space’ can do anything to the gift of life.

The Poet says that the bells will toll and the old age which is like a bandit (thief) would come creeping. Man will not be known that his worn out face in his own old age when it comes to him.  As time passes old age comes to a person, his knees are bent and crippled but his daily life goes on through ages till the end of his life.

Man has to face the physical changes that are brought about the Time but his ethical (moral) values should be retained as it is till the end. His screen (vision) grows dimmer and greyer. The charm of a person will be faded away by the Time day by day. Man is not the same next day even though he is clad in precious stone from ‘Eklari’; he is unaware of the sudden movement of the swift wings of the bats.

The bells will toll as long as man lives then he says a few sundry words and leads his life after sometime he makes room for the new generation. He is uprooted from this Earth just leaving his outline in this world. Some other person will soon fill his place. They say that the voice of a person leaves a visible phrase of him. Hence the poet says that if we are true to our lives and led a worthy life properly and morally that itself is a gift to us. Each and every person should know – what you are? What is the purpose of life? And use this gift of life in a most perfect way as it is required. Then they wouldn’t have any fear for man about his life because the Time, Old Age and Space will spare him and do not harm.

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WINDHOVER--To Christ our Lord

WINDHOVER--To Christ our Lord

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889)

I caught this morning morning's minion, Kingdom

Of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding:

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! Then off forth on swing,

As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird,--- the achieve of, the mastery of the thing

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue --bleak embers, ah my dear,

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Glossary:

The windhover: a kestrel, a small hawk that hovers in the wind

minion : wings of a pet bird

dauphin: heir (figuratively)

rolling level underneath him steady air : this refers to the buoyancy of the air to lift up the bird while flying.

how he rung :  the line brings out the poet's joy and surprise

'rung upon the rein' : checked at the rein's end i.e., the speed of flying.

Buckle: to fasten

chevalier: a knight of the medieval times

sillion: furrow made by ploughing

ah, my dear: refers to Jesus Christ as the subtitle of the poem indicates.

fall …. Vermilion: this is a reference to Christ's bleeding on the crucifix.

Summary:

                           

Gerard Manley Hopkins was the pioneer of the Modern English verse. Like many other poets he too was highly experimental in writing the modern verse. As a poet, he has the originality of thought and style. His poems are capturing at the beauty and splendour of the Nature, which he saw as a manifestation of God's glory. His concepts of inscape, instress and sprung rhythm gave rise to new aesthetic theory and today he is seen as the first of the moderns. But his critics often commented that his poetry was imperfect in many ways.

As a parson G. M. Hopkins glorifies the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in the poem The Windhover. The windhover, the falcon, symbolises the spiritual majesty and the glory of Jesus Christ.

One day, early in the morning Hopkins saw a falcon flying. It seemed the steady air held him up in his flight. The flight of the bird and gliding with its stretched wings was so majestic. He sails smoothly and glided over. It is just a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend.  The majesty of the brute beauty and valorous act appease our eyes and gladden our hearts. The chivalrous heroic deeds are lovely though it sounds dangerous. The furrows made by plough while ploughing reminds us the past activities of Jesus Christ and suffering himself on the Cross.

Jesus Christ suffered the inexplicable pain inflicted on him at the time of crucification was a supreme sacrifice. This indicates the glory and spiritual height he attained. Thus G. M. Hopkins poems are full of religious with pure spiritual experience.

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Channel Firing – Thomas Hardy

Channel Firing – Thomas Hardy

“Channel Firing”; The poem is an illustrative of Thomas Hardy’s view that the pain-inducing flaws in the nature of things are ever present and eternal. This of course is not Hardy’s only view on the war subject. Inconsistently, in some poems, he implies a view that history had degenerated to a condition of endurable suffering and disillusionment, and that time should stop before things get worse.

‘Channel Firing’ is Thomas Hardy’s way of saying that war is pointless. They’ve been around forever, but what was truly been accomplished by it?

The narrator is a dead person awoke from its eternal sleep in its grave by cannons going off out at sea to practise firing just before World War I. At first the narrator believes, it is ‘God’s Judgement Day’. Then Hardy states that the mouse and the worms got scared by the roaring sound of the guns, but the glebe cow, or cow at a church used for keeping the grass short, just drools as if understands too well what is going on thus the guns going off is expected.

Then God tells the narrator that it is not Judgement Day, and that the noises are from gunnery practice at sea. He says the world is just like it used to be. God also tells the dead that those involved in the war do not do anything more than the dead people in their graves as far as forwarding his purposes. He says that most of the living are lucky. It isn’t Judgement Day because they could all being sweeping the floors of Hell for their threats of war. Then one of the dead asks themselves if the world will ever understand what it’s meant for, or if it will always be as confusing as when that dead person was alive. Another one of the dead persons is a preacher who says he wished he would have just smoked and drank instead of preaching. The final stanza mentions avenging, or getting revenge for, at three places Stourton Tower, Camelot and Stonehenge.

The essence of the poem is a criticism of war and of the endless human desire to have war and violence. Hardy points out that though it occurs time and time again, and though it is incredible devastation, people are too crazy to stop, and would always continue to make red war more redder though it displeases and doesn’t honour God(s).

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Channel Firing – Thomas Hardy

Channel Firing, one of the few war poems in the selection, is by far the most savagely critical in its scornful condemnation of man's irredeemable desire for conflict.

The poem is spoken in the first person by one of the dead buried in a church the windows of which have been shattered by the report of guns being fired for "practice" in the English Channel.  So great is the disturbance that the skeletons believe Judgement Day (the resurrection of the dead) has and make all suddenly sitting up in readiness for the great day. Then the poem takes an irreverent turn as Hardy introduces God to the proceedings, reassuring the corpses that it is not time for the Judgement Day but merely "gunnery practice", adding that the world is as it was when the dead men "went below" to their graves.  That is to say, every country is trying to make its methods of destruction more efficient, and shed more blood, making "red war yet redder".  The living are seen as being insane and no more ready to exercise Christian love than are the dead, who are perforce "helpless in such matters".  In other words, they do nothing "for Christ’s sake". 

God continues, observing that those responsible for the "gunnery practice" are fortunate that it is not the day of judgement,  as, if it were, their bellicose threats would be punished by their having to scour the floor of Hell. Hell seems to be the appropriate place for the war-makers.  With a hint of malice God suggests that He will ensure that His judgement day is far hotter, though He concedes that He may not bother as eternal rest seems more suited to the human condition.  The blowing of trumpet signals the end of the world.

God's remarks being at an end, the skeletons voice their own opinions of the gunnery practice, wondering if sanity will ever be achieved by man.  Significantly, while many of the skeletons nod as if to suggest that man will never learn, the parson regrets having spent his life giving sermons which have had no effect on his congregation: "preaching forty year" has made no difference to his hearers.

In the final stanza of the poem Hardy writes of how the threatening sound of the guns, ready "to avenge” resounds far inland, as far as the places he names.  The landmarks to which Hardy refers are not chosen merely to provide authentic local detail. By invoking the dead civilizations of the past, Hardy sets the poem in a far more expansive historical time-scale.  Perhaps he further suggests that civilizations (including his own?) are doomed because man's nature never makes any moral advance.