In “To Autumn,” John Keats uses visual, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory imagery of the transition from autumn to winter to symbolize the cycle of life, starting with the jubilant period of birth and ending with the somber stillness of death. In the first stanza, Keats uses the images of ripening fruit and blooming flowers to show pregnancy and the creation of life. In the second stanza, Keats skips to the harvest of these fruits, demonstrating with the reaper and the granary store the lethargy of old age and the lurking threat of death. In the final stanza, Keats portrays death and the subsequent promise of new life once more. In the first stanza, the poem opens by portraying the warm days of early autumn in their finest, representing a mother’s pregnancy and the birth of a new life.
“Tell me” is another line that is used throughout the poem. Also, the breaking of the lines into stanzas make this song more poem-like. The next poetic device addressed in the song is alliteration. “Shooting star and scar” (stanza 3, line 1-2) are put together for sound and to help emphasize the message of the song. A simile is also used in Train’s song when it says, “Acts like summer and walks like rain” (Stanza 1, Line 3).
The Scarlet Ibis" James Hurst effectively uses symbolism in the first paragraphs of his short stories to create a mood filled with despair, gloominess, life, and death. To create a gloomy feeling, James Hurst used the changing of seasons. In "The Scarlet Ibis," he wrote that summer was now dead, but autumn had not yet been born. Also, in "The Summer of Two Figs," James Hurst created the statement: a summer born of fulsome promise faded into falling leaves unfulfilled. A feeling of desolation was presented here when Hurst implied that summer was born with great promise that eventually evanesced without being fulfilled.
The metaphor can be extended to represent a late stage in the poet's life. This reading is supported by the opening of the third stanza: 'Twilight and evening bell, / And after that the dark!' Time is progressing as the poem develops, and after each reference to physical time Tennyson makes a personal reference to his future. Tennyson's words 'moving on' enables us to interpret the image of evening as representing old age. The notion of passing time, evident in the physical darkening of the sky from 'sunset' to 'twilight' to 'dark' is echoed in the rhythm of the poem.
Lorelei Armstrong Journal 2 In 1951, Langston Hughes wrote the poem "Harlem" (Abcarian pp. 406). The main theme of his poem is about what happens when people put off their dreams too long. He says, "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
An Explication of Sharon Thesen’s “Summer Twilight” “Summer Twilight” is a short poem, and thus I will be using the linear model to convey its meaning. Sharon Thesen uses vivid imagery, deep feelings and recollection of the narrators past to bring meaning. As you read the title “Summer Twilight”, the first thing that came to mind was a sunset; this thought is confirmed as you read the first word of the poem, being ‘sunset’. The overall tone and attitude of the narrator is calm and relaxed like a sunset. We see the poem starts and finishes with a two-line stanza, with the middle stanzas containing three lines.
The speaker kneels to pick violets at dusk; she recalls a childhood experience which also featured these flowers. We are then taken back to the poet’s childhood with the child (being the poet) woken up from an afternoon sleep. The child assumes it is morning, and feels cheated of “the thing I could not grasp or name that, while I slept, had stolen from me”, only to discover it is almost night. The child’s parents attempt to comfort her with the sight and scent of the “spring violets”, and in the right circumstances these flowers are able to summon back comforting memories. The poem is symbolic of a safe and happy childhood, in which “years cannot move”.
However in this poem she cannot find a happier memory and recalls a dream instead, “I dreamed once long ago, that we walked among day-bright flowers.” Her use of positive imagery such as the “day-bright flowers” lightens the mood and achieves the same effect of the memories in The Violets, as she stops thinking of death and causes the reader to forget the unhappy nature of the initial memory and be emotionally moved by the warmth of the following memory where she is “secure in my father’s arms.” In her poems The Violets, Father and Child and At Mornington Gwen Harwood demonstrates through her use of memories, her loss of innocence, the love for her parents and how quickly time moves. Her memories also serve to engage the reader and make us feel her sense of happiness, sorrow and
Reading Response to the poem, We Real Cool Samantha M. Lavoie English 125 Benzon Barbin July 6, 2013 Ashford University Reading Response to the poem, We Real Cool The Pool Players We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin.
Brooks use irony to convey the true meaning of the poem. The first line of the poem reads "we real cool" and the last line reads "we die soon." Brooks uses connotations such as “jazzing June” and “die soon”, to convey deep meaning about the players dyeing young as a result of there choice. Many of the lines in Brooks’ poem begin with words that start with the same consonant letter; this is an example of alliteration. The (l) sound in lurk-late, the (str) sound in strike-straight, and the (j) sound in jazz-June.