Beware of Ruins Study Guide & Notes

Beware of Ruins Poem Summary

Preview of Beware of Ruins Summary:

Lines 1-3:

The poet as narrator cautions his reader about ruins, at this point, any ruins. Their "treacherous charm" might, at this point, remind one of a kind of cliche about women since Eve. The ruins' "insidious echoes" make them ghostly as a graveyard, and the "scummy pool" adds a tad of horror to the scene, especially with its echoes of a temporally distant fountain. This may evoke feelings of discomfort, but intrigues one to plunge farther into them, to reconstruct a past that beckons, allures one away from the present.

Lines 4-6:

Near the pool is a seated figure of white marble or plaster, white like bones are, white: the color of survival, the color of ghosts. The seated figure, like the ruins, beckons one as love once dead but come back, white like death in life, like a consumptive paleness sometimes considered beautiful. Perhaps the figure is a woman?

Lines 7-9:

Moonlight...
(read more)