Paradise Lost Grey's Elegy Analysis

Poet of Pensive Senescence - Vasudeva Reddy Poet Vasudeva Reddy (b.1943) published eight collections of his poems. All need a quick look to trace the poet’s achievement of poetic imagination. Students of English literature are enthused by what they studied in their undergraduate courses and what they read later. Milton’s Paradise Lost, Grey’s Elegy, the poems of veteran romanticists, Tennyson and Eliot and the memories of their poems lay down a sort of foundation for their creative poetic imagination. Indian English poets are basically lovers of English poetry. When Grief Rains was published in 1982. Vasudeva Reddy dedicated his first collection to his father who, he tells us, taught him English and instilled in him the love of poetry.

Caesar’s conspirators pale feebly here
Like an oil lamp before the eclipsed sun
Their panchayat is a crafty cobweb
Pregnant with potent potion.(p.11)
The Swamiji’ is a scathing satire on the growing category of god-men. In decadent times faith would be surely in the hearts of the affluent but it is only outward and not either hart-felt or deep. Here is the portrait of the right worshipful:
For he ate only apples, cashew nuts and dried grapes
Drank pure milk and juice brought by fair-sex
His holiness, left leaving his fragrance behind.(P.13)
‘Child’ is a short but very fine poem. For the avid learner a playing child would be a teacher.
It grabbed a pinch of dust between the fingers looked stealthily before and behind put it in the tiny mouth
A few quick steps all is earth and dust.(p.15)
In our motherland, rural life goes on in different rhythms, broken, tumultuous, some times stolid and some times somber, sedate or squalid. Faith wavers – virtue is considered weakness. The poem ‘Existence’ is a prayer:
Oh Lord! Give me