There were many describing words and was very detailed. I felt in a way calm reading this poem.| She walks in beauty like the night| Figurative Language:What poetic devices were used in this poem?What did these poetic devices do for the poem? Did these devices help create imagery or communicate the author's feelings?The poetic device that was used in this poem is a simile. In the phrase “She walks in beauty, like the night”, the phrase states like or as, which is a simile. The poetic device helped express the authors feelings because he compairs beauty and night so you can get a better understanding of where the author is coming from.| She walks in beauty like the night| Emotion:What emotion was the author trying to express?I think the authour was trying to express love and therefore was at peace.| She walks in beauty like the night| Structure:How is the poem organized (lines, stanzas, etc.)?
A Valediction, Poem cleverly used situation of separation to explore power of memories and differences between youth and maturity. Begins with persona looking for comfort after parting with a friend (assumed husband), commonly seeks reassurance through John Donne’s poetry that are “inked with aches from adolescence” showing collection is full of past memories. Title Valediction directly links to his poem about not having to worry about parting with his wife b/c love shared between them is so powerful. H. then talks about her turbulent youth with comment about not needing drugs; “who needs drugs is she has enough uppers and downers in her head”. She refers to novelist Lou Salome and her loathing in giving up intellectualism for love and sex, portrayed through her inability to recall details of kissing a famous philosopher.
Both The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls and A Psalm of Life share similar philosophies: Death is a part of life. However they differ in the moods of the writing; The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls portrays the philosophy in a dark and pessimistic mood while A Psalm of Life is more optimistic and sanguine. Both poems share the philosophy that death is a part of life. Longfellow states that life is a cycle. He says this in A Psalm of Life: “…the grave is not its goal."
Carol Ann Duffy’s poems often have the theme of childhood and loss of innocence. It is rare for her poems to take on the voice of perspective of a child, so Duffy explores her theme by referring to a child’s imagination or memory. ‘In Mrs Tilsher’s Class’ is a prime example of using an adult perspective in order to explore childhood. In this poem Duffy presents a nostalgic view of childhood which enhances the reader’s enjoyment as it allows the reader to think back to their own personal memories. Both ‘Lizzie, Six’ and ‘Sweet 18’ also explore childhood and the loss of innocence through the perspective of a character who is not the child, however in Pugh’s poem ‘Sweet 18’ the poem is dominated by the idea of growing up ahead of time, therefore portraying a rushed childhood.
‘Blackberry Picking’ is a poem which explores the childhood experience of the narrator, Seamus Heaney. The poem starts off with an atmosphere of anticipation and excitement as he and his friends go blackberry-picking. However, the poem slowly goes on to show the change of expectations the boy had when he realises that the blackberries are rotting, and at the end we are left with the narrator’s thoughts and feelings of this change. At the beginning of the poem, we can get a vivid idea of the positive atmosphere, before the change occurs. This slowly leads to a clear understanding of the poem’s theme, further on in the text; “Late August, given heavy rain and sun for a full week, the blackberries would ripen.” This emphasizes that the poet, as a young boy, is aware that they need these conditions of ‘rain and sun’ for the blackberries to ripen.
Heaney masterfully intertwines the poetic elements of time and setting to provide an accurate description of the characters' thoughts. He deliberately picks spring, la saison de l'amour, to emphasize the thrilling experience that the two kids undergo. The twilight dusk of March comes out as a "vacuum of need" and at the same time also mocks the vacillating flux of emotions that occur in the hearts of the two lovers. Throughout the poem, we are led to see a confluence of sentiment through the characters' bodies and minds; this is specifically referred to in line 7: "traffic holding its breath." The flimsiness of the sky is denoted by labelling it a "tense
When late at night the child's body is returned Heaney sees this as “the corpse” (not a person). Back to top This contrasts wonderfully with the final section of the poem, where he is alone with his brother. Note the personal pronouns “him”, “his”, “he” - as opposed to “the corpse”. The calm mood is beautifully shown in the transferred epithet (“Snowdrops/And candles soothed the bedside” - literally they soothed the young Heaney). The flowers are a symbol in the poem, but also in reality for the family (a symbol of new life, after death).
In giving death characteristics of being mortal it diminishes the effect of fear that death is associated with. Donne then goes on to personify death, giving the entity human characteristics, in line two, “Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so” and line nine, “Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men”, these characteristics make death appear defenseless and less fearsome. Throughout the poem metaphors are also present, he frequently compares sleep to death, and “From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow” lines 5-6. The metaphor suggests that since we derive pleasure from sleep, death should be more pleasurable. Also by referring to line five the “pictures” of death, is implied that sleep is just a short resemblance of death, making death seem effortless and comprehensible, removing the fear of the unknown.
Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” is a metaphoric account of an attitude and acceptance of death. In the poem, the land, though unmentioned, is life, ocean is a representation of death, and the bar, or sandbar is the borderline between life and death. The speaker seems to hope that “which drew from out the boundless deep/ turns again home “ (Lines 7-8), which represents how he will be taken to death. The “dark” that is mentioned in Line 10 refers to the state of being after the speaker passes on, but he hopes that there will “be no sadness of farewell/ when I embark” (Lines 11-12), meaning the he hopes no one will be sad when he dies. The speaker knows that he will be taken beyond “Time and Place” (Line 13), meaning beyond life as everyone knows it, but he hopes that when he gets there, he will see his “Pilot face to face”, meaning God, the leader of his life.
He had also proposed to her daughter but had been rejected again. In the modern age, however, his works became more realistic and free from the mystic beliefs of his early years. Summary: Yeats’ poem “When You Are Old” demonstrates that you won’t notice the real value of the things you have until you don’t have them anymore. The speaker of the poem addresses his beloved saying that when she is aged she should read a particular book which will remind her of her youth. She will remember the people who had loved her grace and her beauty with either real or fake sentiments in the past, and also that one man who had loved her soul unconditionally as she grew old and the way she looked changed.