Essay Questions

“The Scrutiny” takes the form of a one-sided argument presented by the speaker that ends with a promise. What is that promise?

Fair warning: men should approach this poem at great risk of taking its argument to heart as their own as that argument presented in stripped down modern vernacular is unlikely to convince. Fair warning, part two: it is pretty unlikely the argument was ever convincing. What the speaker is arguing is essentially this: it would be the height of unfairness to settle down with the woman whom he is making the argument to since there are so many other fish in the sea. Before making a lifelong commitment to each other, other men should experience the pleasure of her brunette locks while he should be free to experience the pleasure of a multitude of non-brunettes. The promise he makes is really one any rational man wants to avoid making to a woman who sincerely seems to be in love with him: if after trying out all the various other women showing interest in him he should reach the conclusion that she—the one to whom he is speaking—turns out to be the most beautiful, then he promises to be fully satisfied with testing the variety and shall commit his affections singularly to her.

Though mentioned just once, what ultimately must be identified in ‘To Lucasta, Going to the Wars’’ as the speaker’s single greatest love?

The poem begins with the speaker addressing Lucasta as his “Sweet’ but by the beginning of the second stanza is confessing to cheating on her: “True, I new mistress now I chase.” The poem’s title, however complicates the meaning of this confession: is the poem a “Dear Jane” letter written by a soldier going off to war and filled with guilt that he may die having been unfaithful to his sweetheart? That would be one direction the poem could take though it would be an unusual choice for a member of the Cavaliers, a group notorious for rejecting monogamy. No, the confession of the second stanza is answered by the end of the third stanza with the revelation by the speaker of why he is leaving sweet Lucast behind to go off to war:

“I could not love thee, Dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.”

“To Althea, From Prison” is a solid example of a poem built around the literary device of a conceit. What is that conceit?

Each of the poem’s stanzas end with the idea of enjoying liberty. Since the very title situates the speaker as being in a position where liberty is denied, it is obvious that liberty is to be enjoyed only as a metaphor rather literally. The conceit at work in the poem, therefore, is through the comparison of ideas normally unrelated to a metaphorical concept of liberty since that is the only means by which he can possibly enjoy such freedom. The first stanza compares the love that Althea feels toward him to the liberty enjoyed by the freedom of birds in flight. The dream of sharing an endless bounty of wine to deal with the grief of separation is juxtaposed with the liberty afforded fish swimming in the endless bounty of the waters of the Thames. The speaker has been jailed for supporting the exiled King and the liberty he feels in singing the glory of the monarch is compared to the liberty of the wind. And finally, the poem ends with a symbolic connection between the freedom of the mind to think what it wants even when in prison to the liberty experienced by the angels soaring above.