(See my Notes and Questions in my Engl. 1102 materials on my ASU website for Chapters 13-23 of Roberts' and Jacobs' textbook Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing for further material about the components of poetry.)

"My sweetest Lesbia"

1. (A) How does this poem (as with some of the poems of the great lyric Roman poets Horace and Catullus) exemplify the carpe diem motif or genre? (B) How does this poem compare or contrast in regard to the carpe diem motif or genre with the famous examples by the early seventeenth-century poet Robert Herrick (in "Corinna's Going A-Maying" and "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" -- in NAEL) or Andrew Marvell ("To His Coy Mistress")?

2. (A1) How is the explicit or implicit imagery of light used as a continuing motif relative to the dominant image or metaphor of each of the three stanzas (astronomy in stanza 1, war in stanza 2, and funeral in stanza 3)? (A2) How might the various periods of life --- youth, young adulthood, and old age --- be implied by the dominant image of each of the three stanzas? (B1) How do the continuing elements of the refrain at the end of each stanza help convey theme, idea, aspects of characterization, or tone? (B2) How do the changing elements of the refrain at the end of each stanza help convey theme, idea, aspects of characterization, or tone through incremental repetition* (that is, repetition of a refrain that gains incrementally in meaning with repetition, sometimes by small differences or changes in the refrain lines)?

"I care not for these ladies"

1. (A) How does this poem represent a parallel and contrast to John Skelton's "Mannerly Margery milk and ale"? (B) How is the continuing subject in the Renaissance of the relation between art and nature manifested or implied in the poem (both socially and aesthetically)?

2. How do the short lines of this poem and lyric help convey its theme, characterization, and tone?

3. (A) What pun exactly do the NAEL editors note in line 4? (Compare Hamlet's punning in his reference to "country matters" in the exchange between Hamlet and Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet 3.2, beginning with Hamlet's words to Ophelia, "Lady, shall I lie in your lap?" [about lines 99-108].) (B) What punning, creating two different main meanings, occurs in the last two lines of the refrain of each stanza? (C) What thematic wordplay on the verb give occurs in lines 14-16? (D) Applicability to this poem of question B2 on "My sweetest Lesbia"?

"When to her lute Corinna sings"

1. (A) How are the subjects of music, romantic love, literature, and the interrelation of these manifested or implied in the poem? (B) How do puns on "die" (secondary meaning, recurrent in the English Renaissance, of experiencing sexual climax), "passion," "spring," and "strings" relate to part A of this study question? (C) How is the concept in music of "word painting" -- discussed in the chapter on secular music in the Renaissance, to be found in any of the standard general histories of music, including the abridged editions by Jean Ferris and Roger Kamien used in our Humanities courses at ASU -- broached in this poem?

2. (A) How do the short lines of this poem and lyric help convey its theme, characterization, and tone? (B) How might rhymed couplets be more appropriate to this poem than the rhyme scheme of the stanzas in "I care not for these ladies"?

3. How do the lyrics of Campion's song or poem compare with the early 1960's classic sung by Ray Peterson?

"Rose-Cheeked Laura"

1. Look up quantitative verse versus accentual verse in PDLT or HTL; how is the former illustrated in the poem, as indicated by the NAEL footnote?

2. (A) How are the subjects of aesthetics, music, physical beauty, Platonism, and Christian religion -- and their interrelation -- manifested in the poem? (B) How do the puns on "gracing" and "grace" (including a technical musical sense), "forms," "divinely framed," "discord" and "discords," and "moves" relate to part A of this study question?

3. (A) How does "do flow" (stanza 2) connect with stanza 4? (B) What is the logic in the figurative comparison in stanza 4?

4. How are line length, assonance, consonance, and the expressiveness of certain consonants or vowels all used thematically in the poem?
 

"There Is a Garden in Her Face"

1. (a) How do the various metaphors* and similes* both accurately and suggestively (conveying something additional about the lady's physical, emotional, or moral qualities) describe the lady's various anatomical parts? How is vehicle* suited to tenor* in each instance? (b) How might some negative qualities be hinted, as well as positive ones? For example, how does the vehicle* for the tenor* of the lady's teeth in line 10 suggest not only positive things through color, but negative, through temperature? (c) Besides the visual suggestions of the vehicle* for the lady's lips (5-6, 7, 12, 17-18), what tactile and especially gustatory suggestions are evoked? Why are the gustatory suggestions appropriate for the vehicle to describe the tenor?

2. (a) How might the poem's rhyme scheme or use of rhyme (e.g., lines 13 and 15) help express any or all of the poem's content? (b) How might various rhythmical* or metrical* (prosodic*) or sound effects be expressive (e.g., the alliteration* in line 11, the cacophony* of consonants in line 15, technically [in a collegiate dictionary] called "plosives")? (c) Possible suggestions of an octosyllabic line rather than decasyllabic, Alexandrine*, or fourteener* (cf. "Think'st Thou to Seduce Me Then" and "Fain Would I Wed")?

3. (a1) What particular garden(1) might be suggested, given line 3, with both positive and negative implications in the allusion*? (a2) How does the metaphor and allusion in lines 13-16 connect to the latent allusion in lines 1-3? (b) What might be suggested by the prevalence of floral imagery in the poem? (c) How does the poem in any way exemplify the pastoral* genre? (d) How does a sort of mixed metaphor* occur in line 8 (what here doesn't belong in a garden)? How does this sort of mixed metaphor suggest that the garden isn't an ordinary one? What sort is it?

4. (a) How does the refrain* suggest Campion's other main interest besides literature? (b) How does the refrain suggest something negative, as well as positive, about the lady, given the footnote to the refrain in NAEL?

5. (a) What is Campion's mixed tone in the poem? (b) How does this poem by Campion compare or contrast or both with Spenser's Amoretti 64?

6. (a) What potential problem with antecedents might there be in the pronouns themselves(6), them(13), and themselves(18)? (b) What lexical (word meaning) problem is there in orient(8), which does not have its primary modern sense of Asian? (c) What lexical problem is there in peer(11), which does not have its primary modern sense of ordinary person (rather, a more usual British sense)? (d) What lexical problem is there in the English Renaissance use of the correlative conjunctions nor . . . nor(11); what correlative conjunctions are used, instead, in modern English? (e) What problem in elucidation of figurative language (or lexical problem) is there in bows(14)? Does the word mean postural bendings from the waist? Decorative ribbons tying up a package? Tree branches? How does piercing(15) help suggest the answer?

7. How does this romantic anatomical catalog poem by Campion compare and contrast with Sidney's Astrophil and Stella No. 9 and Spenser's Amoretti No. 64 ("Comming to kisse her lyps")?
 

"Think'st thou to seduce me then"

1. How does this poem as well as Campion's "Fain would I wed" compare and contrast with John Skelton's "Mannerly Margery milk and ale," Henry Howard Earl of Surrey's "O happy dames, that may embrace," Sir Walter Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," and John Donne's "Break of Day" on the issue broached by the first NAEL footnote to Campion's "Think'st thou to seduce me then"?

2. How is the issue of the relationship of art and nature treated or explored in this poem?

3. How are the long length of lines (fourteeners* or poulter's measure*) and stanzas made up of triplets* used thematically or expressively in the poem?
 

"Fain would I wed"

1. What serious issues of psychology, romantic love, courtship, and women's roles (including the "biological imperative") and men's roles are manifested and explored in the poem?

2. How does "quickness" (line 4) have a pun relating to the name of the character Mistress Quickly in Shakespeare's 1-2 Henry IV, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor? That is, how may "quick" and other versions of this word refer to the sexual act and pregnancy, and how would such meanings be relevant in the line, and in the poem?

3. (A) How are the long length of lines (fourteeners* or poulter's measure*) and rhymed couplets* used thematically or expressively in the poem? (B) What can be learned about pronunciation of English during the period by the rhyming of lines 9-10?