The selected sonnets from Aurora Leigh and Other Poems simultaneously conform with and challenge Barrett Browning’s context through the theme of mortality, and the notion that love transcends death. The concept of death is prominent throughout Barrett Browning’s sonnet sequence, and draws parallels to the excessive mortality that occurred within both the Victorian era and Barrett Browning’s personal context. However, Barrett Browning challenges her time by contrasting death and love, and overcoming the Victorian era’s fear of death by suggesting that love transcends death. In Sonnet I, Barrett Browning depicts conflict between death and love, setting up this theme for the remainder of the sonnet sequence and foreshadowing that death is to be conquered by love. Barrett Browning manipulates direct speech and colour symbolism in the passage “Guess now who holds thee?
Even the landscape described in the poem reflects his loss. I find that Hardy creates very vivid imagery and sounds which make for an involving poem that causes a reader to sympathise for him. The idea of communication, or lack thereof, between Hardy and his departed wife in this poem is key in his representation of grief and loss. Right from the first line, Hardy hears her ‘call to me’. The specific use of the words ‘to me’ make the communication seem one-sided; he is unable to reply.
This is shown within Barrett Browning’s first sonnet as she ponders on Theocritus, who sings about love as Elizabeth Barrett Browning considers her own hopeless and worthless existence. The poem mentions in abundance of mortality in the societal context of that time. Death is personified as a reflection of how death was so common it was domesticated. The volte brings vivid movement and energy to the sonnet as death is revived in the form of “A shadow across me”. The “mystic shape did move” as it draws Elizabeth Barrett Browning “backward by the hair”.
Comparative essay of “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop and “Tears, Idle Tears” by Alfred “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop and “Tears, Idle Tears” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson are both poems which present the subject of loss. In “One Art”, Bishop hold the optimistic view that loss is normal, common, and can be overcome-though she is unsure at the end and presents an element of self denial. In “Tears, Idle Tears”, Tennyson presents true loss whose meaning is so deep he cannot quite fathom, and yet Tennyson presents a different view in that he does not try to resist the loss. “One Art” is a Villanelle by Elizabeth Bishop in which the poet tries to convince herself that loss is a normal process. She denies the seriousness of loss and the sadness it brings by highlighting the commoness of loss and depicting its nature not as a process but as an “art”, evading its disastrous nature.
This poem treats the grave as inconsequential, death as not having mastery and immortality and eternity as the victors; Dickinson’s speaker conveys the journey of life as a cycle characterized by childhood, maturity, and death. Life and the grave are but paths to eternity and therefore are less important when viewed in the context of eternity. Dickinson's poem consists of five stanzas of four lines. Each stanza displays a different view or group of perceptions. The first stanza is when Death stops for her; the second, she is observing Death as a person; the third, she sees the passages of life; the fourth, the grave; and the last stanza is a glimpse of an existence without time.
How does the exploration of the connections between two texts from different times deepen our understanding of what is constant in human nature? The comparative study of the poetry of John Donne and Margaret Edson’s play, W;t, reveals changes in context inform what we value in human nature, specifically in regards to finitude, relationships and humanity. John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, ‘Death be not proud’, ‘This is my playes last scene’ and ‘If poysonous mineralls’ explore the fear of death and the need to belittle it, whereas ‘Hymne to God my God, in my Sicknesse’ (‘Hymne’) and ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ (‘Valediction’) deal with the idealised, spiritual aspects of love and relationships. The need to undermine the power of death is reflected, though expressed differently, in both ‘Death be not proud’ and W;t. In ‘Death be not proud’, the personification of death, the logical argumentative structure and tone of the sonnet cohesively highlight the idea that death is not the absolute end, and can be transcended through a religious belief in salvation. In the concluding couplet, Donne affirms that after “one short sleepe” imposed upon us by death, we wake to the eternal life of salvation and in that life of the soul, “death shall be no more”.
Poetry As Muse In Dead Poets Society Poetry, which is a branch of literature, is the embodiment of words filled with vital elements directly infusing into human beings. With the realization of the motivating and illuminating power of poetry, in N.H. Kleinbaum’s Dead Poets Society, a radical change of view and perception of life is witnessed through the characters. A wide range of poetry from John Dryden to E. E. Cummings works as a magical instrument in experiencing a kind of rebirth for the leading characters of the novel. Neil Perry, Todd Anderson, Knox Overstreet, Charlie Dalton, Richard Cameron and Steven Meeks are the primary characters captivated by the wind of poetry. These characters are the students of Welton Academy, which has adopted a conventional, strict education system.
The speaker seemingly cannot help but reflect in this season on “the days that are no more.” Where the poem takes place also reinforces the sense that the speaker is painfully cut off from the past. The speaker weeps while “looking on the happy autumn-fields.” Seeing them and remembering the past triggers a series of revealing reveries about “the days that are no more.” The first image associated with the past is light on a sail. First, the sail seems “fresh” and dawn-like—bringing “our friends up from the underworld.” The last word of that line, underworld, explicitly brings death into the poem. Any reassuring image of the dead returning to us, however, is quickly reversed as the ship sinks “with all we love below the verge.” The death imagery becomes more explicit in stanza 3 when the dawn song of the birds falls on “dying ears,” and the sun rises to “dying eyes.” In the final stanza, the intensity of the speaker’s mood heightens appreciably. He speaks explicitly of love—lost love—and the pain of remembering the beloved.
By analysing the two poems and their complex structures, the reader discovers a similarity on the subject, of spiritual journeys, however a difference in the context of the journey. The difference of representation in each subject is conveyed in different styles and voices, leading to differences and similarities within the style of each poem. The first poem, (Ione, Dead The Long Year), written by Ezra Pound, is composed in a way where the poem portrays the thoughts of the character – the reader receives a ‘head-on’ perspective of the character, thus evoking deep emotion within. Pound’s use of patterns of imagery are used to create a tone and to suggest rather than state, the poet’s theme; his use of personification in describing the flowers, portray his feeling of loss and how that seems to also be reflecting on his surroundings, “And the flowers, Bend over with heavy heads. They bend in vain”.
How does the poet powerfully convey the sorrow of human life in sonnet 29? In 'Sonnet 29' Edna St Vincent Millay uses loss and pain in love and features in the nature as devises to reflect the sorrows of human life. By using multiple metaphors, Millay was able to associate her personal melancholy with certain aspects of nature which helps to emphasize the sorrow in human life. At the start of the poem Millay encapsulates the sorrow of loss in the four starting lines. In the first two lines Millay uses a metaphor to compare young age to the "day" and old age to the "close of day."