The title could also be about Greenwich Mean Time - it could be a metaphor for when the clocks go back and we lose an hour of our daytime; darkness comes quicker (like the darkness had come into the poets life since she lost her lover) and what should be the ‘right’ time (GMT) is suddenly ‘lost’, like her lover was lost. The line ‘The clocks slid back an hour’ reiterates my previous thoughts; autumn time is when nature starts to die and fall away, much like the relationship in the poem; it has died and decayed and left the person to mourn the death of their lost love. Duffy then carries on in the second line to personify the clocks ‘...and stole light from my life’ which makes it more personal, as if someone physically ‘stole’ the writers partner. The use of the word stole is powerful. It is a dramatic word that implies that the narrator had been personally attacked.
“Compare the ways in which Larkin and Abse write about time and it’s passing.” In your response, you must include detailed critical discussion of Love Songs In Age and one other poem by Larkin. Many poems in Philip Larkin’s ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ are connected through one common factor: Larkin’s rather dismal attitude towards time and the passing of it. In many of his poems Larkin presents time as a menial entity resulting in an inevitable mortality. However, on further examination Larkin reflects back on time in a nostalgic manner. In order to emphasise Larkin’s outlooks onto time and it’s passing, one can highlight the similarities and differences between Larkin and Abse’s poetry.
Along with inspiration, Longfellow also used another aspect of romanticism in his poem, imagination. “Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, a forlorn and shipwrecked brother, seeing, shall take heart again”(Longfellow page 259). This passage relates to imagination, because Longfellow uses his imagination to visualize death. By stating that when you are buried in the earth, you are in a palace full of fallen heroes, explorers, kings and etc., Longfellow stays true to the ways of fireside poets. The second example of imagination in “A Psalm of Life” can be found as Longfellow imagines when you are dead, the rocks, flowers, plants and trees are all your brothers.
In his essay "The Poet," Ralph Waldo Emerson called for a poet who could move beyond artistic trivialities and capture the true essence of the American spirit. Heavily influenced both by Emerson and the Transcendentalist movement, Walt Whitman answered this call in his poetry collection entitled "Leaves of Grass." Though it was the source of much controversy during its time, "Leaves of Grass" has had a foundational impact on modern American poetry and continues to shape the poetic form to this very day. Whitman's early career can be quite frankly described as inconsequential. From his late teens to his mid-thirties, Whitman worked at various editing and teaching jobs while dabbling in freelance fiction and poetry.
Edgar Allen Poe demonstrates in his written works of “Lenore”, “Annabel Lee”, and “To Helen” an element that seemingly attempts to give the reader exceptional emotional sadness. Poe does this by telling the poem in a point of view where a man tells the story of the death or remembrance of a young love or woman. He also puts a sense of gloom in each of his poems. This allows for the reader to create a mental image if the setting, without him having to directly point it out. As well, the gloominess of his poetry could also be due to his longing effect of sadness that he attempts to express.
Although Robert Frost appeals to the common man, he gives a deeper meaning in most of his poems. In the poem there are many sound devices such as a rhyme scheme, consonance, and alliteration. In line one, Frost says “world will.” The repeating of the W sound gives alliteration. He also gives another example at the end of line four when he ends it with “favor fire.” In line six, Frost shows consonance by saying, “think I know enough” with the repeating sound of the consonant N. Along with his poetic devices, he also has a rhyme scheme which appeals to the reader and makes it easy to read and connect to the narrator. Frost’s poem centralizes around the metaphors of fire and ice.
Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Raven because his wife, Virginia, was dying of tuberculosis. To me I think the poem is about self torture and about being consumed by the past. The raven symbolizes the protagonist’s subconscious, trying to send him a message that pain and misery in which he has deluded himself into will never go away. It isn’t until nearly at the end of the poem that the
The poem’s theme appears to be about unrequited love and a man wooing his “coy mistress” to sleep with him, but this poem does has a deeper meaning, which is really impressive and therefore is striking. The theme of mortality is highlighted in this poem through word choice and by using imagery which reinforces the idea of death. Words relating to death such as “ ashes” and “grave” are used to emphasise the lack of time that we have and the stark contrast between the slow, idyllic first stanza and the sped up, heavier second stanza shows the difference between the idealistic eternity and the reality that we are all mortal and have to die at some point. Another deeper theme introduced is the idea of “carpe diem” which is shown through the lustier language in the poem, word choice such as “time devour”, and also through the quickened pace of the second stanza. The speaker is not simply asking the “coy mistress” to sleep with him, what he is saying is if there was all the time in the world then life would be ideal but there is not so they have to live for the moment.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud A. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud is a poem written by the very well known poet William Wordsworth. The poem is written in 1804 which is in the Romantic period. In poetry Romanticism was a period where the nature was valued as a contrast to the industrial society. All aspects of nature were used as a source of inspiration by the poets, as it made them think about human nature and activities. A typical Romantic poem often starts with a description of nature, and then slowly moves on to a human emotional problem which is a result of the observation of nature.
Many of his poems have very dark and daunting themes at face value, but may have a deeper meaning when pondered upon. I have looked into two of these poems and appreciated the bizarre ambiguity that comes with his poetry. The first poem I read was of twenty lines and named “My November Guest” by Robert Frost. In the first line of the poem, Frost personifies a feeling by saying “My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,” (1) He further describes, in the same first stanza, how certain things, such as “dark days of autumn rain” (2) and “the bare, the withered tree” (4), seem pleasing when the feeling of sorrow is present. The second stanza is devoted to how the narrator of the poem feels uncomfortable in a state of grief.