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The Formalistic Approach o I. READING A POEM: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FORMALISTIC APPROACH Here is the situation: The reader is to be presented with a short but complete poem.Its author and its era of composition are unknown.Its lan-guage, however, is English; it is not a translation.Here is the poem: A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears; She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years.No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.The poem seems quite simple, easy to grasp and to understand.

The Formalistic Approach
• I. READING A POEM: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FORMALISTIC APPROACH
Here is the situation:
The reader is to be presented with a short but complete poem.
Its author and its era of composition are unknown. Its lan-guage, however, is English; it is not a translation.
Here is the poem:
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears;
She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.
The poem seems quite simple, easy to grasp and to understand.
The speaker—a persona, not necessarily the poet-recalls a frame of mind sometime in the past, when "she" (the female fig-ure) was so active and alive that the speaker (mother? father? lover?) could hardly comprehend any earthly touch to the living female figure. Now, in the present, the speaker tells the