Reflections by Rina Joy Jose Julian

I laugh at the the things that aren't funny.

I dance to the music that shouldn't be danced to.

And I smile at the things that don't matter.

But these are the things that set me apart

from everyone else. :)

REFLECTIONS

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud is a poem by William Wordsworth, this is also commonly known as "Daffodils" or "The Daffodils". It is usually considered Wordsworth's most famous work. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud is commonly seen as a classic of English Romanticism within poetry.
The poem recaptures a moment on April 15, 1802, when Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, were walking near a lake at Grasmere, Cumbria Country, England, and came upon a shore lined with daffodils.
In the "Nation's Favourite Poems", a poll carried out by the BBC'S Bookworm, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" came fifth.
The poeam is 24 lines long, consisting of four six-line stanzas. Each stanza is formed by a quatrain, then a couplet, to form a sestet and a ABABCC rhyme scheme. The fourth and third last lines were not composed by Wordsworth, but by his wife, Mary. Wordsworth considered them the best lines of the whole poem.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud is romantic in nature, it is a lyric poem focusing on the poet's response to beauty of nature, unkept by humanity, and a reconciliation of man with his environment.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

The plot of the poem is simple. William Wordsworth believed it as an elementary feeling and a simple impression.
In the first stanza, the speaker is wandering as if among the clouds, viewing a belt of daffodils on the shore of a lake beneath the trees. Daffodils are those plants in the lily family with yellow flowers and a crown shaped like a trumpet.
In the second stanza, daffodils are compared to the stars because they are so many of them.
In the third verse, the speaker humanizes that daffodils are engaging in a dance with the rippling waves of the lake.
In the last stanza, it was revealed that the scene was only a memory of the pensive speaker that muses the when he saw daffodils, he then appreciate cheerful sight which mirros sadness to blissfulness.

SiLAS MARNER: THE WEAVER OF RAVELOE

Silas Marner is a dramatic novel by George Eliot. It was first published in 1861. It is an outwardly simple tale of a reclusive weaver, in its strong realism, it represents one of Eliot's most sophisticated treatments of her attitude to religion.
For most critics, it stands apart from her other novels in the perceived thinness of its characterizations, the arbitrariness of its plot and the simplicity of its conclusions. This is commonly known as "Moral Fable". The issues of class, industrialization and religion are realistically addressed in the context of author's time.

The Characters

Silas Marner- the protagonist, a weaver and miser who is cast out of Lantern Yard by his treacherous friend William Dane.

Godfrey Cass- eldest son of the local squire who is blackmailed by his dissolute brother Dunstan over his secret marriage to Molly.

Dunstan Cass- Godfrey's greedy brother.

Molly Farren- Godfrey's first and secret wife, who has a child by him.

Eppie- child of Molly and Godfrey, who is cared for by Silas after the death of her mother. She grows into a radiant young girl devoted to her adoptive father.

Nancy Lammeter- Godfrey Cass' second wife, a morally and socially respectable young woman.

Aaron Winthrop- son of Dolly, who marries Eppie at the end of the novel.

Dolly Winthrop- mother to Aaron; godmother to Eppie.

William Dane- Sila's former bestfriend, who looked after and respected Silas in Lantern Yard. William ultimately betrays Silas by framing him for theft and marrying Silas' fiancée Sarah after Silas is exiled from Lantern Yard.

The novel's main body of action takes place at the turn of the 19th century in English rural community of Raveloe. Silas Marner is a member of a small Calvinis congregation in Lantern Yard. Silas was engaged to be married to a female member of the church and though his future happiness assured. However, due to the betrayal of a fellow parishioner, who blamed him for a theft, he did not commit, the woman he was to marry casts him off and later marries his bestfriend, William Dane. With his life shattered and his heart broken, he leaves Lantern Yard and the city.
Bereft and disillusioned, Silas comes to Raveloe and settles for 15 years, where he lives as a recluse, existing only for work. At the commencement of the story, he is robbled by a son of Squire Cass, the town's leading land owner, Sila's despair into seeking help from the villagers.
Godfrey Cass, also harbours a secret. He is married to Molly, an opium-addicted woman of low birth. This secret threatens to destroy Godfrey's relationship with Nancy, a young woman of higher social and moral standing. On a winter's night, Molly with her two-year-old child tries to prove that she is Godfrey's wife. On the way, she becomes disoriented and her child wanders into Silas' house. Upon discovering the child, Silas decides to keep the child and names her Eppie. Eppie changes Silas' life completely.
Sixteen years pass, and Eppie grows up to be the pride of the town. Meanwhile, Godfrey and Nancy mourn their own childless state. Eventually, the skeleton of Dunstan Cass- still clutching Silas' gold- is found at the bottom of the stone quarry near Silas' home, and the money is dully returned to Silas. Because of conscience, Godfrey confesses to Nancy that Molly was his first wife and that Eppie is his child.

The mystery of robbery is never solved. However, Silas accepts that he now leads a happier existence among his family and friends.
In the end of the novel, Eppie married a local boy, Aaron, son of Dolly and both of them move into Silas' new house. Silas is portrayed as a quiet, unassuming man with a loving nature that provided joy for everyone and the extended family celebrates their happiness.
In Silas' Marner, George Eliot combines humour, jealousy, and rich symbolism with a historically precise setting to create an extraordinary tale of love and hope.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTiLUS

This

is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,

Sail the unshadowed main,–

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,

Before thee lies revealed,–

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn;

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:–

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

The chambered Nautilus is a mollusk which live in a spiral-shaped that has an iridescent purple color. These chambers are formed as the mollusk grown. When one chamber becomes too small for the mollusk, it builds a new, larger chamber and closes of the old. This activity is repeated many times, resulting in the spiral shape of the shell.The creature has often been compared to a ship by sailors and others.The term nautilus is derived from the ancient Greek word for sailor.In Holmes poem, The Chambered Nautilus, he himself compared the mollusk and its shell to the behavior of human beings. He viewed that the intellectual growth of humans are represented as the growth of the mollusk and spiral shell.Holmes articulated that humans outgrow their protective shells completely and discard them when they are no longer necessary.

PARADiSE LOST

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th century English poet, John Milton. This poem was originally published in 1667. Some interpreted Paradise Lost as a poem questioning the church's power, which is the common theme during the English Renaissance.
The poem is concerned about the Christian story of the Fall of Man, the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Milton's principal goal in the work is to give a compelling Theodicy. It addresses fate, predestination, the Trinity, death, nature of angels and fallen angels.

Characters

Satan- the first major character introduced in the poem, formerly the most beautiful of all angels in Heaven. He is introduced to Hell after he leads a failed rebellion.

Adam- the first human created by God. Considered as God's prized creation, Adam along with his wife rule over all the creatures of the world and reside in the Garden of Eden.

Eve- the second human created by God, taken from one of Adam's ribs and shaped into a female form of Adam. She is the model of a good wife, graceful and happily submissive to Adam. In her solitude, she is tempted by Satan to sin against God.

The Son of God- Jesus Christ, shares a total union with God. He is the ultimate hero of the epic and infinitely powerful.

God the Father- creator of Heaven, Hell, the World, and of everyone and everything there is. He is an all powerful, all-knowing, infinitely good being.

Raphael- an angel who is sent by God to warn Adam about Satan's infiltration of Eden and to warn him that Satan is going to try to curse Adam and Eve.

Michael- a mighty archangel who fought for God in the Angelic War.

Paradise Lost concerns the Christian story of the Fall of Man. It begins after Satan and the other rebel angels have been defeated and banished to Hell.
It focuses on the story of Adam an Eve's temptation and fall. God gave Adam and Eve total freedom and power to rule over all creation. He gave them one explicit command: not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil on penalty of death.
Satan, disguised in the form of a serpent, successfully tempts Eve to eat from the Tree by preying on her vanity and tricking her with rhetoric.
After eating the fruit, Adam and Eve have lustful sex, and at first, then they've realized that they have committed a terrible act against God.

"I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things 

granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship."

Rina Joy Jose Julian BSEd III- English :D