To The Memory of Mr. Oldham Essay Questions

How does Dryden establish and break sound patterns in this work?

This poem as a whole follows a strict form: it consists of heroic couplets, meaning that lines are laid out in rhyming pairs and written in iambic pentameter. The neatness and consistency of Dryden's style contrast with the "rugged" style that Oldham is said to exhibit in his own work. However, while he describes that ruggedness, Dryden actually introduces some unexpected and unharmonious elements into his own work, as if demonstrating Oldham's style. He briefly alters his poem's stress patterns, and even breaks the pattern of couplets, introducing a third rhyming line. In doing so he both pays tribute to Oldham and evokes, in his poetic form, the emotional instability created by grief.

Analyze the poem's final two lines.

The last couplet of this poem contains a juxtaposition between Oldham's lively legacy and his lifeless state, and in doing so summarizes the speaker's own troubles in memorializing him. By first referring to the laurel and ivy adorning Oldham, Dryden makes a metaphorical reference to the respect he commands, suggesting that his poetry will become even more beloved after his death. At the same time, Oldham himself can benefit from none of this, and his friends can gain little comfort from his flourishing reputation, given that he now exists in "fate and gloomy night." The difficult task of the elegy-writer, Dryden implies, is to bridge this divide between a person's legacy among the living and their new existence among the dead.