The Wild Honey Suckle
by Philip Freneau
Fair flower, that dost so comely1 grow,
Hid in this silent,dull retreat,
Untouched thy honeyed blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:
No roving foot shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke a tear.
By Nature's self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun2 the vulger eye,
And planted here the guardian3 shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
Thus quietly thy summer goes,
Thy days declining to repose4.
Smit with those chams,that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom5;
They died--nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
Unpitying frosts,and Autumn's power
Shall leave no vestige6 of this flower.
From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once,you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between,is but an hour,
The frail7 duration of flower.
In this poem the poet expressed a keen awareness8 of the loveliness and transience of nature.1.He not only meditated9 on mortality but also celebrated10 nature.It implies that life and death are inevitable11 law of nature, "the wild honey suckle"is Philip Freneau's most widely read natureal lyric12 with the theme of transience.2.The poem express the poet's view about the writing material of American writors.In the author's opinion, the origin land in America was fiiled with beauty and myth,which could compete with the rilics of Europ.It revealed on the basis of American beauty, the American writor can produce good works.
The central image is a nativewild flower,which makes a drastic difference from elite13 flower images typical of tradition english poems. The poem showed strong feelings for the natural beauty,which was the characteristic of romantic poets.
The poem was written in regular 6-line tetrameter stanzas,rhyming:ababcc .The structure of the poem is regular,so it has the neoclassic quality of proportion and balance. Alliteration14 ,assonance,masculine rhyme used in the poem also produce musical or melodious15 and harmonious,which matches the beautyof the flower,the beauty of poem is partly ambodied in the effects created through changes in the rhythm. The poem contains iambics trochaics and spondee. The arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables16 suggests the transience of the life of the flower and the poet's emotional change.the poem is full of sensuous17 images such as fair flower visual image,comely grow kinasthetic image and honeyed blossoms olfactory18 image.All the images make us feel pity for the beautiful flower which has only a short life. The line"the sapace is but an hour"contains a hyperbole stressing and transience of life. The tone of the poem is both sentimental19 and optimistic.
1 comely [ˈkʌmli] 第11级 | |
adj.漂亮的,合宜的 | |
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2 shun [ʃʌn] 第8级 | |
vt.避开,回避,避免 | |
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3 guardian [ˈgɑ:diən] 第7级 | |
n.监护人;守卫者,保护者 | |
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4 repose [rɪˈpəʊz] 第11级 | |
vt.(使)休息;n.安息 | |
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5 doom [du:m] 第7级 | |
n.厄运,劫数;vt.注定,命定 | |
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6 vestige [ˈvestɪdʒ] 第10级 | |
n.痕迹,遗迹,残余 | |
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7 frail [freɪl] 第7级 | |
adj.身体虚弱的;易损坏的 | |
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8 awareness [əˈweənəs] 第8级 | |
n.意识,觉悟,懂事,明智 | |
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9 meditated [ˈmedɪˌteɪtid] 第8级 | |
深思,沉思,冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 ); 内心策划,考虑 | |
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10 celebrated [ˈselɪbreɪtɪd] 第8级 | |
adj.有名的,声誉卓著的 | |
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11 inevitable [ɪnˈevɪtəbl] 第7级 | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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12 lyric [ˈlɪrɪk] 第8级 | |
n.抒情诗,歌词;adj.抒情的 | |
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13 elite [eɪˈli:t] 第7级 | |
n.精英阶层;实力集团;adj.杰出的,卓越的 | |
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14 alliteration [əˌlɪtəˈreɪʃn] 第11级 | |
n.(诗歌的)头韵 | |
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15 melodious [məˈləʊdiəs] 第10级 | |
adj.旋律美妙的,调子优美的,音乐性的 | |
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16 syllables [ˈsiləblz] 第8级 | |
n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
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17 sensuous [ˈsenʃuəs] 第10级 | |
adj.激发美感的;感官的,感觉上的 | |
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18 olfactory [ɒlˈfæktəri] 第10级 | |
adj.嗅觉的 | |
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19 sentimental [ˌsentɪˈmentl] 第7级 | |
adj.多愁善感的,感伤的 | |
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