How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear

       He is ill tempered and queer however his mind is concrete and fastidious. He has big nose and his beard is like a wig. Mr. Lear is an odd man when I read the poem called “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear” written by Edward Lear. Edward Lear is famous for his nonsense verse poems and he is actually a famous humor cartoonist in England. When he was a child, his father was sent into jail. He had to draw for living. Later on, he always drew for famous people that he had enough money to travel abroad. He drew and wrote poems during traveling. I chose this poem to explore how Lear used division of stanza to construct his nonsense poem. How did imagery affect the meaning of this poem?

       “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear” is divided into eight stanzas and each stanza has four lines. The rhyme of this poem is ABAB and it is in iambic pentameter. From the Website Music and Text of Gary Bachlund, This poem was written into a song. The rhyme makes the reader more comfortable when they read it because it creates the feeling of singing. The sixth stanza uses broken rhyme to divide a word between two lines to end the line with a same rhyme as the first line provided.

       From third line, the poem begins to describe characters about Mr. Lear and his appearance. Lear used metaphor to explain Mr. Lear’s beard compare to a wig. Then the poem use simple words to demonstrates what Mr. Lear does. For instance, the fifth line explains that Mr. Lear sit in the parlor and drink marsala:

“He sits in a beautiful parlour,

      With hundreds of books on the wall;

He drinks a great deal of Marsala,

But never gets tipsy at all.”

The imagery of these four lines makes audience feel that they are sitting in this parlour and smell of Marsala.

       The poem begins by saying that how pleasant to know Mr. Lear, however the next line said that he is ill-tempered and queer. The contradiction of his characters is full of this poem. The contradiction explain the irony meanings in this poem that make audience confuse that whether Mr. Lear is pleasant or not. This poem is in third person that it seems that someone try to describe Mr. Lear. However, in my opinion, this poem seems to be a poem to write about him when I read about the wig-like beard. The description about he weeps by the side of ocean and he weeps on the top of hill. It seems to write about his experiences about his traveling.   Since the sixth stanza, the atmosphere expressed sad feelings that he is a crazy old English travels abroad.

“He weeps by the side of the ocean,

      He weeps on the top of the hill;

He purchases pancakes and lotion,

And chocolate shrimps from the mill.”

From the Oxford English Dictionary, “weep” is to manifest the combination of bodily symptoms (instinctive cries or moans, sobs, and shedding of tears), which is the natural, audible, and visible expression of painful (and sometimes of intensely pleasurable) emotion. Weep emphasizes the painful feelings about Lear. However, the nonsense style changes the atmosphere that he purchases pancakes and lotion.  The insignificance description was added into the upset sentences. Moreover, the poem was ended by “How pleasant to know Mr. Lear” which was repeated to the first sentence and title of this poem. The irony atmosphere of these repeated sentence show both positive and negative characters about Lear to audience. 

       From the structure of this poem, audience could know Mr. Lear is concrete and fastidious and also know he is ill-tempered and queer. The irony title is repeated at the front and end of this poem to emphasize that Mr. Lear’s positive and negative characters. Although he is odd, he has many friends. However, he felt upset when he travelled around. The nonsense verse style enhances the contradiction atmosphere in this poem.