A Nocturnal upon st. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day
- Created by: eleanorfarnold
- Created on: 20-02-15 09:12
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- A nocturnal upon st. Lucy's Day, being the shortest day
- stanza 1 - starts by setting the scene of darkness/misery contrast between normal association with light
- "'Tis the the year's midnight"
- opens to darkness/sadness
- takes a day of celebration and fills it with darkness
- winter solstice is the shortest night of the year - 12th of Dec. Patron st of the blind. reported to be the day Anne died
- opens to darkness/sadness
- "the sun is spent, and now his flasks/ Send forth light squibs, no constant rays:"
- broken light - even the sun is floundering beaten. general, extended beyond his own experience
- "The world's whole sap is sunk;"
- life is gone.
- "whither, as to the bed's feet"
- winter solstice is the shortest night of the year - 12th of Dec. Patron st of the blind. reported to be the day Anne died
- believed that a dead's person's soul disappeared to the end of the bed when they died
- "whither, as to the bed's feet"
- life is gone.
- "yet all these seem to laugh/ Compared with me, who am their epitaph"
- life is gone.
- "whither, as to the bed's feet"
- believed that a dead's person's soul disappeared to the end of the bed when they died
- "whither, as to the bed's feet"
- the whole world is facing death, and darkness, everything appears bleak in comparrissonto former life, but what he is feeling is worse than this.
- life is gone.
- "The world's whole sap is sunk;"
- broken light - even the sun is floundering beaten. general, extended beyond his own experience
- shrinking stresses (7, 5, 4, 4, 3). first stanza is one sentence. ABBACCCDD - gives heavy lumbering feeling in the centre
- "'Tis the the year's midnight"
- stanza 2 - I am an example of what the end of love looks like
- "study me then"
- aggressive, petulant. His feeling will be universal
- complete comparisson to the individualised joy of: The Good Morrow, The Sun Rising, A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
- "'Twere a profanation of our joys/ to tell the laity of our love"
- complete comparisson to the individualised joy of: The Good Morrow, The Sun Rising, A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
- "I am every dead thing,/ In whom love wrought new alchemy."
- Love is a God, the Sun is a good. removal from Christianity
- The Good Morrow " What ever dies was not mixed equally"
- "a quintessenceof nothingness,/ From dull privations, and lean emptiness"
- even alchemy has become changed and ended. reversed, there is no love - no possibility for new things
- The Expiration: "this last lamenting kiss,/ Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away"
- "I am re-begot/ Of absence, darkness, death, things which are not"
- "I am re-begot/ Of absence, darkness, death, things which are not"
- Love is a God, the Sun is a good. removal from Christianity
- "study me then"
- Stanza 3 - continued focus on nothingness and comparison to others
- "All others, from all things, draw all that's good,/ Life, soul, form, spirit"
- "i, by love's limbeck, am the grave/ of all that's nothing"
- he has been made into more than nothingness, he is the container of the death of nothingness. there is no salvation - movement beyond this pain
- " we two wept, and so/ Drowned the whole world...oft we did grow to be two chaoses...absences withdrew our souls and made us carcasses"
- can no longer use stock petrarchan love imagery
- God created the world from chaos. again idea of ends and beginnings
- we were so united. one of the same. The Expiration
- Stanza 4 clearly refers to the change the brought this. Continues to lament at his nothingness
- "I am by her death"
- "the first nothing"
- God created the world from chaos. again idea of ends and beginnings
- "If I were any beast,/ Some ends, some means; yea plants/ yea stones, detest"
- Donne used to preach about how everything was made of something, great chain of being reversed.
- even a shadow requires "a light and body"
- stanza 5 - conclusion. returns to other lovers, warns them
- "I am none, nor will my sun renew"
- starts by reminding us there is no hope
- "the lesser sun/ At this time the Goat is run"
- everyday love and lust
- Capricorn begins at the solstice. goat was associated with lust. new cycle, innevitability of life which he is now separate from.
- the "lesser sun" is believed to either refer to a lesser beloved. or could be seen as a lesser love, a lesser experience
- "enjoy your summer all: As she enjoys her long night's festival,"
- St Lucy is removed from her usual positive associations
- "this hour her vigil, and her eve"
- night before a body departs. it is her end and her beginning also.
- night before a body departs. it is her end and her beginning also.
- "both the year's and the day's deep midnight"
- takes a day of celebration and fills it with darkness
- "this hour her vigil, and her eve"
- rest
- St Lucy is removed from her usual positive associations
- "I am none, nor will my sun renew"
- stanza 1 - starts by setting the scene of darkness/misery contrast between normal association with light
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