The seven ages

Critical Appreciation of “ The Seven Ages of Man" :William Shakespeare, the great dramatist of all ages, presents a unique treatment of human life in this poem. This masterpiece of keen observation, Seven Ages of Man or, All the World's a Stage is in fact a speech delivered by Jacques, a melancholic character from the play "As You Like It". This is the most impressive speech in the play that begins with a familiar set piece in Elizabethan drama. In the poem (speech), the speaker compares the whole globe to a stage, where all the men and women are merely players playing their part. During the course of drama of life the characters appear and disappear on the stage to perform their role. Before the proper analysis of the various ages of a man's life, Jacques offers a clever play on the world stage by claiming "All the world's a stage" and continues the theatre metaphor, stating, "And all the men and women merely players: "They have their exits and their entrances'. According to Jacques, there are seven stages or ages of man. He goes on to describe these seven stages of a man's life, from infancy to death, through his roles as lover and soldier, but Jacques' observations may strike us as untrue or banal. The pessimism of the speaker becomes evident especially as he describes the "school-boy," who goes to school "unwillingly" with his book bag. His estimation that lovers sigh "like furnace, with a woeful ballad / Made to his mistress' eyebrow" is humorous, and it certainly describes the kind of intemperate, undiscriminating affection that an immature lover shows to his beloved. His lack of inspiration is denoted by his focusing on such an inconsequential facial part. Jacques's sullenness blinds him to his own foolishness regarding life. He Unflatteringly describes man's later years, the decline into second childhood and obliviousness, without teeth, eyesight, taste, or anything else. * The point of view of the speech is coloured by Jacques' Cynicism, yet the speech itself has such imaginative power that it transcends Jacques' melancholy and causes one to pause and Contemplate this schematic evaluation of man. Despite Jacques" surface cynicism; Shakespeare's poetry is impressively sensitive and beautiful. This extended philosophical statement has since become one of the most celebrated speeches in the Shakespearean canon. Most learned people in the Western world recognize the lines "All the world’s  a stage / And all the men and women merely players." This is Shakespeare at his most brilliant best .

Critical appreciation of The Daffodils: 'The Daffodils' is one of the most popular of Wordsworth shorter poems. The poem celebrates the beauty of the daffodils. The poem was not written at the spur of the moment. It was write much later when he recollected the rich memory of the daffodils loneliness. So he calls this state of affair as 'bliss of solitude' because the thought of the daffodils provides him immense pleasure.* The poet depicts beautiful images of nature. He compares his wandering by the side of the lake to the lovely cloud that floats aimlessly high over the hills and valleys. The swaying and moving of the daffodils in the breeze is likened to the lively dance performed in delight. The countless daffodils are compared to the numberless stars shining and twinkling in the milky way.*Like the daffodils the waves of the lakes also danced in glee. But the daffodils outdid the waves in dance. In this fascinating natural sight the poet obviously experiences immense pleasure. At the spur of the moment the poet could not realize the benefit the entire scene had brought to him for future. But later, whenever the poet was all alone lying on his couch in vacant or pensive mood, the thought of the daffodils flashed upon his mind. Then his heart was filled with pleasure and began to dance like the daffodils. The recollection of the daffodils revives the earlier scene in his mind and rouses the same feeling and emotional excitement that he experienced at the sight of the daffodils in the past .* The language and diction of the poem is simple as you have seen; there are four stanzas at six lines each. In each stanza the first line rhymes with the third and the second with the fourth, while the fifth and the sixth lines rhymes. We can show the rhyming pattern in this way — a b a cc, de de ff, gh gh ii, jk jk ll. The poem is full of beautiful images of nature and the words are used that create vivid picture in the reader such as — fluttering and dancing in glee, gazed, sparkling waves etc. However, this apparently simple looking poem has much deeper meaning. It embodies Wordsworth's attitude to nature and his theory of poetry. 

  The critical appreciation of “ We Are Seven" : This poem is about the simplicity and innocence of a little girl who has no knowledge of death. The speaker in the poem likes the cottage girl because of her rustic looks and rural background. The speaker stops to talk to her and asks her how many brothers and sisters she has. To his surprise, she replies that they are seven in spite of the fact that two of them are buried under the churchyard tree. She fails to dead list the dead siblings while talking about the total number of children in the family. The speaker repeatedly tries to force his own knowledge of death on the little girl. But she does not allow death to distance her from those who are no longer living. The little girl treats the dead as natural partners in her daily activities. But at the end, the speaker seems to realize that he is wrong to force the knowledge of death on her. Adult perceptions of life and death need not be imposed upon the simple mind of the children. She is so alive and active that the idea of death does not disturb her at all. The knowledge of death would come to every child in course of time but it should not be imposed upon. The little girl is incapable of realizing the real meaning of death. So, she always feels the presence of her dead siblings.*The language and diction of the poem is simple. There are seventeen stanzas of four lines each. Except tenth stanza, all other stanzas have alternate rhyme scheme. i.e. the first line rhymes with the third and the second with the fourth line. Nevertheless, the tenth stanza has slight exception.*The words are simple but highly appealing to the heart. The little girl's look and speech clearly expresses her simplicity and innocence..             

Q. Critically discuss the poem 'Ko€ning of the River' ?Ans : Derek Walcott's poem 'Koening of the River' is an apocalyptic poem on the history of the West Indies. Koening, the ghost of a sailor comes to the West Indies after a few generation of European travellers and enterpreneurs have come and gone. He notices the debris of a colonial outpost. When he muses on the colonial history of the land, he is reminded of the role played by the christian missionaries in sustaining colonization, the exploitation, the tragedy of colonisation and of the coloniser and the colonised.

The poet believes that West Indies itself is rich in this own culture. So no attempts should be made to impose external ideas, or views on it. The people of the land should understand their roots and accept their origins. The poem pleads for understanding the land and its inner rhythms instead of making attempts to adopt and impose foreign ideas on it. The European countries established colonies on the land and christian missionaries fried to  reform its people. But with the death of colonization those events of the past are no longer in practice. The people must come out of their colonial past and march ahead.