Algernon Charles Swinburne

"The Triumph of Time"

1. How does this poem seem different from some of the others we've read? What can you discern about the speaker's character and situation? What topics seem to preoccupy him?

2. What are some striking features of the poem's use of sounds? What are its stanza form, rime scheme and rhythm? What types of metaphors keep recurring?

3. What are some features of the poem's diction? Can you discern contraditions or paradoxes in some of its formulations? What kinds of literary references does it offer?

4. Please pick one favorite stanza and pick out metaphors, oxymoronos, patterns of line and sound balance, alliteration and assonance, and any other poetic features you can discern.

5. What seems to be the speaker's main problem? What does he most regret? Does he seem to blame the person from whom his life has been forever divided?

What for him was the most important experience in life? Why can't he now stand "with the souls that stand/In the sun's light, clothed with the light of the sun"?

6. What experience seems to comfort him most? What symbolism is associated with his return to the sea?

7. What does he mean in speaking of the woven raiment of nights and days being cast off from him? What should be the result? Is this a death wish, and if not, why?

8. Which literary figure has attained the poet's ideal? What is the effect of recounting this story (rather than, say, his own)? What is the speaker's relation to him?

9. Why will the poet "hate sweet music my whole life long? What are some implications of his desire for his loved one to feel his heart trod to dust and death?

10. What seem the answers, if any, to the poet's final questions? Does the poem end with any sense of comfort or consolation?

11. What seem to be the poem's main subjects? Swinburne was highly popular in the generation that succeeded the Victorians. Can you reconstruct why this may have been the case?

"Lake of Gaube"

1. According to the notes, what legend was associated with the Lake of Gaube? With the salamander?

2. What scene does the poet describe? What changes in rhythm occur in the different sections, and what effect is created by these changes?

3. What are features of Swinburne's language? What is striking about lines such as "Flowers dense and keen as midnight stars aflame"? What are some examples of onomatopoeia?

4. What comparison does the poet make between the salamander and the swimmer? Why does he choose the image of the swimmer to convey his pont?

5. What happens to the swimmer as he dives? What kind of spiritual/mental state is the poet attempting to convey?

6. What does the poet mean when he says, "Might life be as this is and death be as life that casts off time as a robe,/ The likeness of infinite heaven were a symbol revealed of the lake of Gaube"?

7. What is the purpose of the poem's final section? Why does it begin with a series of questions? What resolution is offered by the poet in the final lines?

8. What is meant by the claim that we should never fear "For aught that a lie saith"? Might the final statement be a paradox? What is the "lie" that we must transcend through courage?

9. Did you like this poem? How might you compare it to Tennyson's "In Memoriam" or Arnold's "Dover Beach"?