Walt Whitman: "When Lilacs last in the dooryard Bloom’d” , O Captain! My Captain!

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) is widely regarded as one of the most influential poets in American history. He is considered as an early modern poet and a pioneer of free verse style of poetry. His work is like a cornerstone of American poetry that continues to influence modern poetry, and he remains one of the most widely read and studied poets in the world. He regarded himself, his country, his age, as the most perfect as he always believed that all creation is constantly advancing and progressing.

Number in English Grammar

English Grammar: Singular and Plural Nouns

Number is a grammatical category that indicates whether a noun, pronoun, or verb is singular (one) or plural (more than one)[cite: 1].

1. Singular and Plural Numbers

• Singular Number: When a noun refers to just one person, animal, place, thing, or quality, it is singular (e.g., student, tiger, street, apple)[cite: 1].
• Plural Number: When a noun refers to two or more people, animals, places, things, or qualities, it is plural (e.g., students, tigers, streets, apples)[cite: 1].

---

2. Standard Rules for Forming Plurals

Adding '-s' (Basic Method): The standard way to form a plural is by adding -s to the end of the noun[cite: 1].

• Boy → Boys[cite: 1]
• Girl → Girls[cite: 1]
• Pencil → Pencils[cite: 1]
• Price → Prices[cite: 1]

Nouns Ending in '-s', '-sh', '-ch', '-x', or '-z': Add -es to the end of the noun[cite: 1]. (Note: Words with a hard 'ch' sound, like monarch, take only an -s → monarchs)[cite: 1].

• Box → Boxes | Miss → Misses | Dish → Dishes[cite: 1]
• Match → Matches | Coach → Coaches | Witch → Witches[cite: 1]
• Bus → Buses | Bush → Bushes | Brush → Brushes[cite: 1]

Nouns Ending in '-y':

• Consonant + 'y': Change 'y' to 'i' and add -es[cite: 1].
  • Country → Countries | City → Cities | Enemy → Enemies[cite: 1]
  • Melody → Melodies | Lady → Ladies | Reality → Realities[cite: 1]
  • Fly → Flies | Cherry → Cherries | Story → Stories | Army → Armies[cite: 1]
• Vowel + 'y': Simply add -s[cite: 1].
  • Valley → Valleys | Donkey → Donkeys | Kidney → Kidneys[cite: 1]
  • Journey → Journeys | Toy → Toys | Key → Keys | Guy → Guys[cite: 1]

Nouns Ending in '-f', '-fe', '-ff', or '-ffe':

• Change '-f'/'-fe' to '-ves': Loaf → Loaves, Shelf → Shelves, Thief → Thieves, Calf → Calves, Wolf → Wolves, Half → Halves, Life → Lives, Knife → Knives, Wife → Wives[cite: 1].
• Simply add '-s': Chief → Chiefs, Brief → Briefs, Gulf → Gulfs, Safe → Safes, Roof → Roofs, Belief → Beliefs[cite: 1].
• Accepts both '-s' and '-ves': Handkerchief → Handkerchiefs/Handkerchieves, Hoof → Hoofs/Hooves, Scarf → Scarfs/Scarves[cite: 1].
• Words ending in '-ff' or '-ffe': Simply add -s (e.g., Cliff → Cliffs, Bailiff → Bailiffs, Giraffe → Giraffes, Gaffe → Gaffes)[cite: 1].

Nouns Ending in '-o': Most nouns ending in '-o' take -s (e.g., Piano → Pianos, Photo → Photos)[cite: 1].

---

3. Irregular Plurals & Unchanging Nouns

• Vowels/Internal Changes: Man → Men, Woman → Women, Person → People*, Mouse → Mice, Goose → Geese, Tooth → Teeth, Child → Children, Foot → Feet[cite: 1].

*Note: "Persons" is also an acceptable plural form of "person," but in modern English, it is generally reserved for formal, legal, or bureaucratic contexts (e.g., "Any persons found guilty of shoplifting will be prosecuted")[cite: 1].

• Identical Singular & Plural Forms: Fish → Fish, Sheep → Sheep, Bison → Bison, Aircraft → Aircraft[cite: 1].

---

4. Uncountable Nouns

Uncountable nouns refer to substances, concepts, or quantities that cannot be divided into individual units, meaning they do not have a plural form[cite: 1] (e.g., rice, butter, milk, advice, news)[cite: 1].

To quantify uncountable nouns, use units of measurement or counter words (e.g., a pound of rice, a bottle of milk, a piece of advice)[cite: 1].

---

5. Nouns Derived from Latin and Greek

English often retains classical pluralization rules for Latin and Greek loanwords, though anglicized forms are also widely accepted in modern usage[cite: 1].

Endings	Pattern	Singular Example	Plural Form(s)
-ex / -ix	-ices	Index Appendix	Indices (or Indexes) Appendices (or Appendixes)[cite: 1]
-us	-i	Fungus Nucleus Focus Cactus Radius	Fungi Nuclei Foci Cacti (or Cactuses) Radii[cite: 1]
-on	-a	Criterion Phenomenon	Criteria Phenomena[cite: 1]
-is	-es	Thesis Crisis Analysis Hypothesis	Theses Crises Analyses Hypotheses[cite: 1]
-um	-a	Datum Stratum Bacterium	Data Strata Bacteria[cite: 1]
-us	-era / -ora	Corpus Genus	Corpora Genera[cite: 1]

The Usage of Determiner

 In English grammar, a determiner is a word that comes before a noun to clarify its meaning by specifying which one, how many, whose, or how much.

Definition

According to A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Randolph Quirk and his co-authors: A determiner is a class of words that limit or determine the reference of a noun phrase.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939) : A Prayer for My Daughter

W.B. Yeats has thought and written much about the theory and practice of his own poetic art. For a full understanding of his poems, it is necessary to have some knowledge of his theory of poetry. He believed in the theory of "Art for art's sake" during the early stage of his poetic career. But actually, his genius was lyrical. It penetrated his essentially lyrical dreams. In the 1919s in his early career, he became the advocate of "art for art's sake". He began writing "pure poetry" under the influence of the French symbolists and the English Aesthetes. He divested such poetry of all the exterior decorations.

A Note on Romanticism "(1798-1832)

 Romanticism was a movement emphasizing emotion, individualism, imagination, and a deep connection with nature, emerging in Europe in the late 18th century.

It is not easy to define romanticism. Like many other literary terms, this word has been used in different ages in widely different senses. Goethe placed it against Classicism: "Romanticism is disease; Classicism is health."

William Wordsworth: A Master of Nature

 William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 at Cockermouth in Cumbria. His boyhood was happy; he could roam among the fields of his beloved countryside, in company with Nature and the books he loved (see The Prelude). Both Wordsworth's parents died before he was 15, and he and his four siblings were left in the care of different relatives. Sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, 1787. As a young man, Wordsworth developed a love of nature, a theme reflected in many of his poems.

Modifier:

 A modifier is a word or phrase or clause which modifies other words in a sentence.  It is either an adjective or an adverb. The adjectives modify the nouns, and the adverbs modify the verbs or the adjectives or the other adverbs.

Edgar Allan Poe's "To Helen"

 Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was one of the most influential figures in American literature, widely recognized for his mastery of Gothic fiction, horror, and detective stories. He was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old. He was taken in by the Allan family (John and Frances Allan) as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia, and adopted the name as his middle name. However, his relationship with his foster father was often strained. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and, later, to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave university when Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts.

Christina Rossetti's "Echo": A brief description

 Christina Rossetti (1830–1894):

Christina Georgina Rossetti was one of the most important Victorian poets of England. She was born on December 5, 1830, in London into a highly literary family. Her father was the poet Gabriele, and her brothers, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti, were founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This artistic movement emphasized emotional sincerity, medieval symbolism, and intense imagery.

Elegy: Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard

 An elegy is a poem of sorrow or mourning for the dead; also, a reflective poem in a solemn or sorrowful mood.  The adjective ‘elegiac’ is used to describe poetry that exhibits the characteristics of an elegy.

Well-known elegies lamenting the death of a particular person include John Milton's Lycidas (Edward King), P.B. Shelley's Adonais (John Keats), Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam (Arthur H. Hallam), and Walt Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (Abraham Lincoln). Perhaps the most famous elegy, Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, is a solemn, meditative poem mourning not the death of a person, but the passing of a way of life. Closely related terms of elegy are monody, threnody, and dirge.

The main characteristics of the

Latin and Foreign Abbreviation and Meaning

 An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase, used to represent the full form. It is a broad term that encompasses acronyms (e.g., NASA, SCUBA) and initialisms (e.g., FBI, CIA), although common usage often uses "abbreviation" to encompass all forms of shortening.

An Introduction to the Sonnets of Shakespeare

 Shakespeare wrote a long sonnet-sequence consisting of 154 pieces. These sonnets were written over a number of years and, though there are several strands to impart to them a unity of sorts, they do not have the kind of continuity which one might expect from a collection which has been called a sequence. These sonnets were written during thé years 1592 and 1597 or 1598; but they were not published until 1609, only seven years before Shakespeare's death. They were not published by Shakespeare himself. The publisher was a man called Thomas Thorpe, a literary-minded man who had previously published a number of famous plays, particularly those written by Ben Jonson and Chapman, and who had also published Marlowe's translation of Lucan. Now, this Thomas Thorpe had obtained the manuscripts of the sonnets from one Mr. W.H. but nobody really knows who this Mr. W.H. was.

From Petrarch to Shakespeare: The Evolution of the Sonnet

 The literary form of 'sonnet' is a foreign importation in English literature. The sonnet, as a literary form, in fact, appeared in England as one of the distinct and immediate effects of the Renaissance. A sonnet is a fixed poetic form that originated in Italy in the 13th century. The word sonnet comes from the Italian sonetto, meaning “a little song.” Traditionally, a sonnet consists of 14 lines written in iambic pentameter and follows a strict rhyme scheme. Despite its brevity, the sonnet is capable of expressing deep emotions, complex ideas, and philosophical reflections.