Anonymous: The Song of Summer

The Song of Summer is, "...not silent, with its chatter takes possession of the heights beneath the elms." It basically is a lively boisterous event of which birds sing and call to one another. However, at the very end there seems to be a strange reference of the chastity of a bee being relative to the Virgin Mary being inviolate.
A bee can be morally pure in the sense that it keeps quiet in its dedication to its work. The birds being morally disrupt, or lacking chastity is represented in their wild can uncontrolled calls. "...the nightingale...pours out a long warbling through the breeze...the kite causes the sky to echo...thus birds everywhere celebrate for everyone the song of summer." In the middle of all this the strange reference of the bee was purposed to give perspective to the reader that somewhere deep within this celebration, or sinful ways, there is someone doing what they are supposed to.
"...if not she who bore Christ in her womb inviolate." If the Virgin Mary had not been that bee who kept her chastity and-and I want to add- worked at her relationship with God as a bee works, then how could have God used her to give birth to his manifestation? Mary kept herself away from temptation and humbled herself before God as his child and he chose her. Otherwise, she would be inviolate, or untouchable to God.

Anonymous. "The Song of Summer." 2012. The Norton Anthology World Literature. 3rd ed. Vol. B. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. 322-23. Print.

Anonymous: The Ruin

Upon reading the Ruin, I felt there was some negative connotation towards the builders of the city in ruin, but I feel as though the ending leaves a proud temperance to the reader and reveals the builders were of no relevance.
The author describes the city falling apart, the makers in their graves, and how men who were once great and how the city in general was once great, but it is in ruin. Based on the last sentence, "it is still a fitting thing for this city," we can see that the author believed that even though it lies in ruin it was still deserving of its past glory. Even though its makers were long gone in their graves; even though the town people lay in bones on the ground, the city's majesty remains to be worthy of riches.
After, "[outlasting] one kingdom after another, [standing] upright after storms, lofty and broad, [the wall] has fallen." The deterioration of the structures is the deterioration of any human influence and presence. As the human creation leaves, the rubble that is left is what the true city is. It becomes its own body and essence; without any human influence. The city, being evermore present in it's ruin, deserves riches.

Anonymous. "The Ruin." 2012. The Norton Anthology World Literature. 3rd ed. Vol. B. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. 321-22. Print.