A Sad Tale

Reading Myself

Robert Lowell

[Note: Parnassus is a mountain in Greece and, according to Greek myth, the seat of music and poetry.]

Like thousands, I took pride and more than just,

struck matches that brought my blood to a boil;

I memorized the tricks to set the river on fire—

Somehow never wrote something to go back to.

Can I suppose I am finished with wax flowers

And have earned my grass on the minor slopes of

Parnassus. . .

No honeycomb is built without a bee

adding circle to circle, cell to cell,

the wax and honey of a mausoleum—

this round dome proves its maker is alive;

the corpse of the insect lives embalmed in honey,

prays that its perishable work lives long

enough for the sweet-tooth bear to desecrate—

this open book . . . my coffin.

To begin, I first notice things such as “pride,” “more than just,” and “never wrote something to go back to.” Now none of the these things are something that brings cheer and joy to our hearts, they are simply the “perishable work(s).” In the seven lines, the author tells about how he has, in his life, done exciting things (line 2), mastered impossible tasks (line 3), yet still is nothing is so important that he might go back and do it again (line 4). He has earned nothing more than fake flowers and a single blade of grass on the massive mountain of poetry.

Now the allusion to the bee in the 2^nd half of the poem simply tells how a bee works his whole life, making a hive to prove its existence-because things that are made must have a maker, but it dies in its work (line 12) and its life’s work is destroyed by something beyond its control (line 14).

Overall I think the purpose to this poem is to say life is meaning less and insignificant. …Sorry