English poetry: shakespeare, byron, j.Donne, wordsworth, milton, eliot, r.Burns, browning

English is also the language of education. Throughout the third world most secondary education and virtually all university lectures are in English. Even in Europe in countries as small as Sweden and as large as Russia, scientists and scholars of all kinds write their most important research and theses in English to guarantee the largest possible audience. And since the formation of NATO forces, English has also be­come the language of the western military establishment - the soldiers of all NATO countries being trained and taught in English. In addition, the English language can claim the most extensive and richest poetical literature of any language in the world:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed,

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,

Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

(William Shakespeare. Sonnet)

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!

Where burning Sappho loved and sung,

Where grew the arts of war and peace,

Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!

Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all, except their sun, is set.

(Lord Byron. The Isles of Greece)

No man is an Island, entire of itself,

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am

involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to

know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

(John Donne. Devotions)

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.

(William Wordsworth. Daffodils)

When I consider how my light is spent

E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent, which is death to hide,

Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He returning chide;

'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?^’

I fondly ask; But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best

Bear his mild yoke; they serve him “best, his State

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.”

(John Milton. On his blindness)

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky,

Like a patient etherized upon a table,

Let us go through certain half deserted streets,

The muttering retreats of one night cheap hotels.

(T.S.Eliot. Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock)

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;

My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;

Chasing the wild deer and following the roe,

My heart is in the Highlands, wherever I go.

(Robert Burns. My Heart's in the Highlands)

Oh, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While tine chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England – now!

(Robert Browning. Home-thoughts, from abroad)

HISTORY: OLD ENGLISH AND MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIODS

English as a separate identifiable language is over 1.200 years old. It all began with the invasion of the island of Britain by three Germanic tribes from northern Europe – the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, in the year 499 A.D. – Anno Domini. Although the Island has been inhabited since pre-historic times – indeed Stonehenge was built by ancient Britons some 3.500 years ago – the beginning of English dates from this invasion, when the pagan adventurers from Denmark and the lowlands of the Continent drove the native Celts and Romans out of what is now England, into the mountains and protective regions of Wales, and Scotland. From the tribe of Angles comes the name Englalond, Land of the Angles, and the name of the language – but it was primarily the dialect of the West Saxons which became the standard Speech, and developed into Old English. The first written records in English date from 700 A.D. and about this time Britain was invaded yet again by Scandinavian adventures – the Vikings.

After some 200 years of fighting with the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings came to an agreement with the Saxon King, Alfred the Great, to divide the island – the Saxons in the west – the Scandinavians, who were Norse speaking, in the east. England was therefore bi-lingual until the two groups, through intermarriage, became one people. The linguistic blend of Saxon and Norse was also a marriage. In the verb “to be”, for example, the third person singular “he is” is pure Saxon, but the plural “they are” is pure Norse. The word “wife” is Saxon, but the word “husband” came from the Norse – “arm” from the Saxon, but “leg” from the Norse. “Duru” was the Saxon word for “door”, but “vindu” was the Norse word which gave us “window” – so from this marriage, one language which we call Old English.

It was a very complicated language compared to modern English: it was highly inflected – that is, it had many different endings for all words as in Latin or modern German and Russian. It also gave grammatical gender to nouns – masculine, feminine and neuter – like modern German – and not only did it have singular and plural, but a third form called the dual form to indicate precisely two – no more and no less. For example, in addition to the pronoun “I” and “We” in the first person, Old English had “wit” which means “the two of us…, both of us…, you and me”, but not “them”.

Many words in Old English are still close enough to modern English for us to understand them. See if you can guess what these Old English words mean: thencan, cild, wifman, muth, nosu, god niht.

Perhaps you could hear that “thencan” is the verb “to think”, “cild” in modern English is “child”, “wifman” became “woman”, “muth” – “mouth”, “nosu” – “nose”, “god niht” – “good night”.

But most of Old English is unintelligible today without studying it as a separate language. From the 10^th century we have a manuscript of what is probably the first considerable poem written in any modern language. It is the epic poem “Beowulf”, which is over 3.000 lines long. Here are a few lines from it, read in authentic Old English for you to hear what it sounded like:

Beowulf mathelode, bearn Ecghheowes: No sorga

snotor guma, selre bith aeghwaem thaet he his

freond wrece, thonne he fela murne. Ure

aeghwylc sceal ende gebidan. Worolde lifes:

wyrce se mote domes aer deather; thaet

birth driht guman unlif gendum aefter selest.

And this what these lines mean in modern English:

Beowulf, the son of Ecgtheow, answered:

“Do not grieve, wise Hrothgar! Better each

man should avenge his friend than deeply

mourn. The days on earth for every one of us are

numbered; he who may should win renown before

his death; that is a warrior’s best memorial when he has

departed from this world.”

The next invasion of Britain – and incidentally the last foreign invasion of the island in English history – was in the year 1066. The invading forces were again Scandinavians, but with a difference – these Norsemen, called Normans – came from the north coast of France and were French speaking. Their leader William, known as the Conqueror, had a claim on the throne of England, and his forces were victorious. William established himself as king and set about building London’s two greatest tourists’ attractions: the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. Norman French became the language of the court, the aristocracy of England, and the country once again became bi-lingual. We often say “history repeats itself” and this is just what happened to the language: in the course of 300 years, Old English absorbed Norman French and emerged as one language, much as happened with Saxon and Norse before.

Norman French enriched the language and gave English its unique blend of Germanic and Latinate structures and vocabulary. This is why today we san say “the world’s population” or “the population of the world” and why only English has different words to distinguish the names of animals from their flesh which we eat: from the cow we get beef; from the calf we get veal, from

the sheep, mutton, from the pig, pork and from the deer, venison. The names of the animals are Saxon, and the words for the meat are from French. This is not only interesting as a point of language, but as a point of sociology, because it reflects that the animals were raised by farmers who spoke Old English, but eaten by the aristocrats who spoke French.

Because England was bi-lingual, many phrases appeared in the language which contained one word of Saxon origin coupled with a word of the same meaning, coming from French – such as “law and order”. This way everybody knew the meaning, whether they only understood the old English word “law” or they only understood the French “ordre” – order. Many of these set phrases, dating from the Middle Ages, are just as common today in Modern English. How many politicians in Britain and in the USA call for more “law and order” at election time! In the US Senate, as in the British Parliament, there is a “ways and means” committee to find the methods of achieving a goal. The word “ways” from the Saxon – the word “means” from the French – the phrase “ways and means” still common after some seven or eight hundred years in the language. This merge of Saxon and Norman French we call Middle English. The first great English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote in Middle English in the 14^th century – about the same time as Dante Alighieri and Boccaccio.

His best known work, “The Canterbury Tales”, was written in 1386 and its vocabulary reflects the blend of a two language sources. Here is a bit from the prologue of “The Canterbury Tales”, read as it was written and pronounced as we assume Middle English sounded:

A good wyf was ther of bisyde Bathe.

But she was som-del deef, and that was scathe.

Of clooth-making she hadde swiche an haunt,

She passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt.

In al the parisshe wyf ne was ther noon

That to th’ooffring before hir sholde geon;

And if ther dide, certeyn, so wroth was she,

That she was out of elle charitee.

Could you understand any words or phrases? Probably not.

Here’s the same passage in Modern English:

A worthy woman from beside Bath city

Was with us, somewhat deaf, which was a pity.

In making cloth she showed so great a bent

She bettered those of Ypres and of Ghent.

In all the perish not a dame dared stir

Towards the altar steps in front of her.

And if indeed they did, so wrath was she

As to be quite put out of charity.

In the following century, the printing press arrived in England and libraries were founded at Oxford, Cambridge and in London. The first printer, William Caxton, began to stabilize the written language and its spelling, when he set up his printing press in the precinct of Westminster Abbey. Even by the 15^th century, Old English seemed a foreign language to him and he commented on how rapidly the language was changing even in his lifetime. Here is what he wrote in 1490:

“my lorde abbot of Westminster ded do shew me

late certain evydenses wryton in olde englysshe

for to reduce it in-to our englysshe now usid.

And certainly it was wreten in suche wyse that

it was more lyke to dutche than englysshe;

I coude not reduce ne brynge it to be understonden.

And certainly our language now used varyeth

ferre from that whiche was usid and spoke when

I was borne.”

(Modern English)

My Lord Abbot of Westminster has recently shown me

certain passages written in Old English to translate into

the English now used. Certainly it was written in such

a way that it was more like Dutch than English; I

could not translate it nor even understand it. And

certainly our language is now very different from that

which was used and spoken when I was born.

The Renaissance in 1500 brought the rediscovery of the classics, and English was greatly enriched by a profusion of words directly taken from Latin and Ancient Greek. It has been said that the greater part of the classical dictionaries was poured into the English language at this time – from Latin, words like “accommodate”, “capable”, “persecute”, “investigate” – and from Greek, words like “apology”, “climax”, “physical”, “emphasis” and so on. The flood of words from Latin and Greek did not end with the Renaissance and whenever we have needed a new word or name, we have tended to look to the classics to provide it – from Greek: “aerodrome”, “telegraph” and “telephone”; from Latin: “escalator”, “penicillin” and the prefix “mini-“ for cars and skirts, for example.