Extra Questions on Ode on Melancholy

What?

• continue with your blog work, making sure you have updated blog entries in as much detail as possible
• f you finish early, you can answer these questions on my poem for EXTRA credits

Apologies for my absence today. It was a heavy weekend: the boys came round, Byron (hate that guy) and Shelley; we went to Lethe; we did some rosary-making with yew berries; we mucked around with beetles and owls. (I know, I know, I told you guys not to do that stuff. I'm sorry!) I'm a bit ill. I will return tomorrow with a new poem for us to devour.


Extra Questions on Ode on Melancholy

1) Some critics have condemned my poem as both "decadent" and "unhealthy". How could you support such a view? Write at least a paragraph and make sure you refer to the language I use.

2) Check out the original first stanza of the poem reproduced here. Why do you think I deleted it? How would it change your reading of the poem if it were included in the final version?

3) What's up with all the metaphors of tasting, eating, and feeding? What ideas are they helping me illustrate? Make sure you quote some of them to answer this...

4) There are a lot of images and metaphors to do with change, transience and impermanence in this poem—some of them are more obvious than others. How many can you find? What do they seem to have in common?