英米の現代詩を読む。現代詩とはどんなものかという関心があり、その世界を覗いてみたい人向け。授業方針は講義第一回目に説明するので、受講希望者は必ず出席のこと。テキスト：『現代詩を楽しく』(朝日出版社、1992)
[
詳細] どんな詩でも、まずその
音に耳を傾ける。音のうえの技巧については、知らない場合は韻律の解説書に当たる。つぎに、ピリオド（
'.'）を探し、どこからどこまでがセンテンスをなしているかを頭に入れ、その構文を読み解く。構文上、通常の英語構文と違うところがあれば、音の必要上ではないかと疑ってみる。
意味の解釈は考えぬくほかない。手助けとなりそうなものは何でも活用する。たとえば、語源欄のくわしい辞書（できれば
OED）、註釈、インターネット上の各種資源（私の
ウェブサイトにも手がかりがある）等々。一行の解釈に時間がかかることがあっても不思議ではない。詩の全体、その音、テーマ、場面等を思いめぐらし、詩の像が前景化されてくるのを静かに待つ。詩は、特に難解な現代詩は、急いで読むことは無理。
[
韻律の解説書] 何か一冊というなら、
Philip Hobsbaum: Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form (The New Critical Idiom. London:Routledge, 1996) を薦める。日本語では『英語の発音と英詩の韻律』（英潮社、1991）が参考になる。
[
後期の最初に読む詩] 次の詩を読むので予習しておくこと。
Fern Hill
Dylan Thomas
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
