Barter Explication Essay

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Barter Explication This poem is about admiring all that life has to give you. Teasdale uses formal language in this poem. I feel that there is a clear speaker and it is Teasdale sending us a message in her poem telling us to enjoy life for the loveliness. Teasdale used imagery and personification in the first stanza to give nature human like qualities, “Soaring fire that sways and sings.” The first two stanzas have a calm and peaceful mood but in the third stanza the mood shifts to persuasive or assertive where the speaker tells us to “spend all you have for loveliness”. In the first stanza the speaker gives examples of “beautiful and splendid things” and goes on to refer to them in the last line of the first stanza “Children’s faces looking up holding wonder in a cup”. I think that “wonder” refers to the beautiful things said in the stanza. In the second stanza the speaker uses the same idea as the first giving examples of loveliness. The speaker compares music to gold and pine trees to rain. Both are examples of loveliness. The speaker says ‘and for your spirits still delight, Holy thoughts that star the night” this brings in an element of something grater in the stars the speaker is referring to heaven. I think the speaker believes that we are taking nature for granted and spending too much time on technology. I think that the poem is titled Barter to reinforce that we take nature for granted and barter nature. “Life has loveliness to sell” means that life is beautiful and we should cherish everything our life has given to us. All the images are peaceful because beauty is a peaceful tone. The speaker says that music is like gold because so many people value it through out the world. The speaker uses human body parts that are beautiful and we should be thankful for. “Eyes that love you, arms that hold.” The eyes help us see beauty and the arms help us feel it.
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