3rd year THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES by Charles Lamb

Hi, there!

Here we go again...remember to read the title of the poem and predict...What could this mean? Why "old"? Why "familiar"? What could have prompted the poet or the speaker to write about "faces"? Jot down some ideas first...

Read the poem once. Here´s some help with vocabulary :

Line 4: carousing: merry making (usually involving drinking and lively talking).
Line 14: traverse: cross.
Line 17: wert: were (archaic).

Now work on the following ideas or suggestions individually. Next Tuesday you´ll work in groups to share your conclusions...

*Look at the effect of the repetition, by taking the first two stanzas and reading them out aloud. How do the repetitions affect the way you speak the lines? What light does this shed on the poet’s state of mind?

The use of the present perfect continuous (2nd stanza) suggests this was not a long time ago, so the persona is a young adult.

• In stanza 3, how is the agony of his being parted from his “love” expressed?
Look at how the words are arranged as well as the content of those words. Discuss together.
Is she dead? Married? Must implies moral obligation, why mustn’t he see her? … a mystifying line…
The pull of the past is enormously strong. Why is the past so much more attractive than the present?
*In stanzas 4 and 5, the last line of the verse is modified a little. In what ways do you feel that this modifies the meaning? Is he being critical of his own behaviour? If so, how?
Why can’t he communicate with his friend? Can’t share with him sth. vital?

• Read stanza 5 out aloud, and notice the way the first syllable in each line is accented. What is the effect of this?

• Spend some time pondering the full meanings of the following words and consider their impact: ghost, paced, desert, bound, seeking.

• The second person is used for the first time in the sixth stanza. Drastic change: there’s a dramatic addresseeImagine this being spoken to you. What is the effect of this direct appeal? What is the impact of the question in the second line? .
Is he clinging to the past because the present is too awful? Has he gone through sth. very gruesome? What can lead to such despair? Loss of hope? He may be clinging to a past he is idealizing.

• The last stanza in some respects recalls the style of the first verse with its repetitions and reversion to the same last line. What is the effect on you of the way it is written?

This is an elegy: a song or poem that expresses sorrow for one who has died.
Tempus fugit motif: Time flees/flies.
Ubi Sunt motif: The name comes from a longer Latin phrase :”Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerent?” (Where are those who were before us?), a phrase that begins several medieval poems in Latin. The phrase evokes the transience of life, youth, beauty and human endeavour (an earnest attempt).

Thematic links with set poems
Mortality: Rising Five; She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Memories of childhood: Plenty;


Now I´d like to share the poet´s background with you:

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) was born in London, England, and became famous as an essayist and critic. This poem sounds as though it might have been written by an old man, who had outlived his contemporaries – it is often quoted as such. The actual truth is that Lamb was only 23 when he wrote it. Lamb was very attached to his sister, Mary, but a year or two before this poem was written, in a fit of insanity, she killed their mother with a kitchen knife. She was confined to a mental institution and later Charles, who always stood by her, had her transferred to a private house where he arranged for her to be looked after. Later, according to his letters to his friend the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, she recovered her sanity and became aware of the
enormity of what she had done. After 1799 they lived together, and wrote the Tales from Shakespeare.
Charles was a great essayist.
This poem was written right after his mother’s death. In its 1798 form the poem began with this stanza:
Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?
I had a mother, but she died, and left me
Died prematurely in a day of horrors- -
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Who are the old familiar faces?
7 stanzas, 3-line long, one identical shorter line. Like in a refrain, in what is repeated we are to find the major idea. The poem might be interpreted in the light of this.

Mind you, I have included this important biographical detail at the end of your discussion because I do not want you to get too bogged down in biographical details. It is far more important for you to look at the universality of the emotion expressed in the poem, of regrets for the passing of shared pleasures and the care freeness and innocence of childhood.

In fact all the poems in this anthology share this quality of universality and you should bear this in mind all the time.