Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter is written by the famous poet and New Critic John Crowe Ransom in an elegy form lamenting the death of a lively small girl of his neighbourhood. The PPT can provide a brief outline and analysis of the poem.

2. Bells For John Whiteside’s Daughter
There was such speed in her little body,
And such lightness in her footfall,
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all.
Her wars were bruited in our high window.
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
Where she took arms against her shadow,
Or harried unto the pond.
The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
Dripping their snow on the green grass,
Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,
Who cried in goose, Alas,
For the tireless heart within the little
Lady with rod that made them rise
From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle
Goose-fashion under the skies!
But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,
Lying so primly propped.

3. 1) John Crowe Ransom was born 30 April
1888 in Pulaski, 3rd of 5 children of Methodist
minister John James Ransom and Ella Crowe
Ransom.
2) John Crowe attended the Bowen preparatory
school in Nashville, completing a rigorous
program in classical languages, English,
history, mathematics, and German.
3) Entering Vanderbilt University at 15, he
continued his classical studies.
4) He was a Rhodes Scholar at University
College, Oxford, from 1910 to 1912.
5) In 1914 he accepted an instructorship in
English at Vanderbilt and teaching literature
in American colleges and universities for
nearly 30 years. Cleanth Brooks and Robert
Penn Warren are his former students.
6) His first volume of poetry, Poems about God,
appeared in 1919.
7) In the fall of 1919, Ransom began meeting
with the group that would, in 1922, begin to
publish The Fugitive.

4. 1) Ransom, was sought out for advice and judgment by such younger
members of the group as Donald Davidson and Allen Tate and later
Warren, Andrew Lytle, Jesse Wills, and others.
2) The Fugitive, which lasted 19 issues, from 1922 to 1925. Published
the bulk of Ransom’s mature poetry, collected in the volumes
Grace after Meat (1924) and Chills and Fever (1924).
3) In 1927 Two Gentlemen in Bonds was published, containing some
of Ransom’s best poems Dead Boy, Blue Girls, Janet Waking,
Vision by Sweetwater, Antique Harvesters, and The Equilibrists.
4) Ransom accepted a teaching position at Kenyon College in
Gambier, Ohio, in 1937 and founded the Kenyon Review two years
later.
5) During his editorship of the Kenyon Review (1939-59), he
published important works by such southern writers as Andrew
Lytle, Randall Jarrell, Caroline Gordon, and Flannery O’Connor.
6) He remained a staunch spokesman for the aesthetic and ethical
values formulated in the essays and poems of his Vanderbilt period.
7) He died 2 July 1974 in Gambier, Ohio.

5. Summary and Analysis
1) Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter is written by the famous poet and New
Critic John Crowe Ransom in an elegy form lamenting the death of a lively
small girl of his neighborhood.
2) As this poem is an elegy, it dominates the traditional form of elegy where
we find the nostalgic description of the past.
3) The speaker recalls the speed in her little body, the lightness, the quarrel at
home that used to resonate everywhere. And she used to play like the goose
in her world. She used to make noise that attracted the attention of the
neighbors. Her play with her own shadow was funny and childish.
4) All this description seems to remind the beauty of the little girl who is now
lying senseless and energy-less. She has gone forever with the dead.
5) The unexpected toll of bells on the death of the little girl angers the
neighbors.
6) All the elegies end with consolation or acceptance of the truth.
7) The speaker recalling the beauty of the dead girl feels sad. He becomes
ready to offer the bells for her.
8) This readiness for the bells is nothing more than the acceptance of the
undeniable.

6. Summary and Analysis…
1) The theme of the poem is a confrontation of a human being with death.
2) Death is unavoidable and it is the ultimate truth of life. When someone
unexpectedly faces the bells on the funeral, then they feel that they too
are mortal and are near to death all the time.
3) Death is the loss of the beauty of vibrant life.
4) Ransom uses elegy as an opportunity to represent southern culture. Bells
are the parts of the southern culture in the poem.
5) This poem is interpreted not as an elegy on the death of a girl, but as an
elegy for the passing of the beauty.
6) Every beautiful thing is subject to decay and this poem is lamentation on
the decay of the beauty.
7) In the historical point of view, this poem may have a different
interpretation until World War II.
8) The South was almost defeated; its beauty had gone now. Some of the
people accept what has gone, but commit to reenergize the lost beauty of
the South.
9) This poem can be interpreted as the southern voice.

7. Bells for John
Whiteside’s Daughter is
an elegy, that reflects on
a person’s death or on
death in general.
It consists of five
stanzas, each with four
lines. Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., published the poem
in New York in 1924 in a
collection of Ransom's
poems, Chills and Fever.
Setting
The action probably
takes place in the rural
South. (Ransom was
born in the small town of
Pulaski, Tennessee.) The
time is the early 1920s.
Type of Work and Date of Publication

8. Brief Summary of the
Poem
1. The death of a lively little girl
shocks neighbors who used to
observe her while she was
outdoors.
2. She was always so energetic and
so full of noise and mischief.
Playfully, she would make war
against her shadow and
sometimes rouse sleepy geese –
which were no doubt dreaming
of eating apples from a nearby
orchard – and chase them across
the green grass and into a pond.
3. When the toll, the
neighbors are “vexed” (line 19)
that a child who was only
recently so full of life is now a
silent, “primly propped” (line
20) corpse.

9. Theme
The theme of the poem is that an unexpected death jolts
people into confronting the fragility of life and the
inscrutability of the forces that end life.
Although they may mourn the loss of the spirited presence
on the grass outdoors, they also mourn for themselves in the
realization that they too are mortal and that they too will one
day become a “brown study” (lines 3, 23).
As John Donne wrote in Meditation 17 of Devotions Upon
Emergent Occasions.
What is a Brown Study?
“Brown study” (lines 3 and 23) is a term that means a state
of deep thought, like that of the figure depicted in Rodin’s most
famous sculpture, The Thinker.

10. Rhyme Scheme and Meter
In each stanza, the first line rhymes with the third, and the second
rhymes with the fourth. Note, however, that only the last two letters rhyme in
each of the following pairs: lines 1 and 3, 13 and 15, and 17 and 19.
The meter and line length vary.
Allusions
Took arms against (line 7): These words appear to allude to those used
by Shakespeare’s Hamlet when, in his famous soliloquy, he considers
whether to “take arms against a sea of troubles or, by opposing, end them.”
Hamlet's main flaw was his indecisiveness. The little girl, by contrast, does
not deliberate; she acts.
Now go the bells (line 17): These words may allude to the following
famous lines from Meditation 17 of John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent
Occasions:
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

11. Symbols
The green grass appears to symbolize life. The sleepy geese – and
the comparison of their feathers to snow – may symbolize death.
The little girl, who is full of life, chases the geese into the pond.
Her action suggests that she, like most children, does not dwell on
death and does not exhibit any fear of it.
Figures of Speech
Following are examples of figures of speech from the poem:
Alliteration
Repetition of a Consonant Sound
Lines 1, 2: There was such speed in her little body, /
And such lightness in her footfall
Line 10: green grass
Line 14: rod that made them rise
Line 18: stern stopped
Line 20: primly propped

12. Irony
The expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally
signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
1. The lively little lady is now lifeless.
2. Though she was anything but stiff and formal while alive, she lies
“primly propped” (line 20) at her funeral.
Metaphor
Comparison of Unlike Things Without Using Like, As, or Than.
Line 10: Dripping their snow (comparison of goose feathers to
melting snow)
Simile
Comparison of Unlike Things Using Like, As, or Than.
Line 9: The lazy geese, like a snow cloud (comparison of the geese to
a cloud)

13. Attitude of the Speaker
1. The title suggests that the poem’s speaker was not close to the
little girl and therefore reacts to her death more with shock
than grief.
2. After all, if he had regularly befriended her, he most likely
would have used her first name in the title and in the poem.
3. Instead, he refers to her as “John Whiteside's daughter” in the
title.
4. In the poem, he uses pronouns and “little lady” to refer to her.

14. Universality
The poem can stand as a reflection on how death can affect
anyone in any culture at any time or place. It, therefore, remains
relevant today – and will continue to remain relevant – for all readers
of English-language poetry.
1. https://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides4/Bellsfor.html
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bells_for_John_Whiteside%27s_Daughter
3. https://allpoetry.com/Bells-For-John-Whiteside's-Daughter
4. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/ransom/bells.htm
References:

15. Thank you