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.
They both explore the theme of love or rather painful love. the poet revels the link between the two poems’s through a verity of techniques which is done very effectively but also shows the difference between the obsessive love in “Havisham” and the possessive love of “Valentine”. The pain of love is evident from the beginning in both poems. “Carol Ann Duffy” uses the tone in the first couple of stanzas to show the unorthodox nature of the love. “Not a day since then I haven’t whished him dead”-Havisham This is very effective as the aggressive tone shows “Havisham” has been rejected and her love is causing her pain.
I will discuss Sidney’s “Come sleep!” whose major theme is sleeplessness, Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” whose major theme is the renunciation of love, Spenser’s “Of this World’s Theatre” whose major theme is the fire of the speaker’s feelings versus the ice of the beloved’s feelings, and Spenser’s sonnet 75 “One day I wrote her name upon the Strand” whose major theme is the beauty of his beloved and the eternity of his poetry. In Sidney’s sonnet “Come Sleep”, the speaker unable to get any sleep that will release him from the evil wars inside him, that is from his feelings of despair. After composing sleep to enjoyable things such as a knot of piece, a balm of woe, the wealth of the poor etc., and after saying that sleep comes to all, the speaker asks sleep to come to him and release him from his feelings of despair. He is trying to bribe sleep promising to compensate him with soft pillows, a comfortable bed, a calm and dark room, a festoon, and a tired head. Then in the sestet, there is a turn in the sense in a way that when we are awake, our mind is busy working, so sleep imprisons the mind to free her from her continuous thinking so the mind will enjoy relax and will be able to see Stella’s image livelier than anywhere else.
Throughout the poem, the speaker discusses things about nature and death that gives off a depressing or gloomy mood to the poem. The speaker begins to set the mood and says, “Her early leaf’s a flower./But only so an hour (3-4). Frost’s poem is in no way a happy poem. It has a strong message but it leaves people feeling depressed and fearing death. Making the mood of the poem depressing, Frost is able to get his point across that eventually everything will die.
‘A Valediction’ explores the importance of the balance between physical and spiritual love. Harwood explores the nature of both form of love and how each is needed to develop ultimate love. Harwood suggests that poetry can offer comfort and deepen the human understanding of life and love. In ‘The Sharpness of Death’ Harwood explores the nature of love, life and death, and the relationship between each. Harwood highlights the extreme contrast in ones perception of love, life and death when influenced by either philosophy or poetry.
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. Another kind of Romantic nature-poem personifies nature, so that it ends up expressing human life and passions. The Romantic poet saw himself as “a genius” and placed himself outside society and the rest of humanity. The poet was able to look under the surface of everyday things into what they called the essence. The poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud deals with the speaker’s state of mind.
This is demonstrated in the poem, “Red” by Hughes, where his perspective of Plath as a passionate but tortured individual contradicts the view of her gentle and happy persona. Hughes uses the colour red to symbolise Plath’s torment such as “poppies thin and wrinkle-free as the skin on blood” where Hughes connects Plath to poppies which have connotations of blood and death. The effect of this compounds the symbolism of the colour red, ultimately depicting Plath as a tortured soul. However, in contrast, Hughes reflects that at times Plath was untroubled by her psychological issues, such as when “kingfisher blue silks from San Francisco/ folded your pregnancy”. The poet’s use of the kingfisher uses the bird in flight as a symbol for the freedom which Plath occasionally experienced when separated from her obsession with her father.
She continues, using phrases such as “the rain pattered dismally against the pane”, to create a subdued and hopeless atmosphere. Similarly, towards the end of Chapter 4, Shelley’s use of seasonal imagery, delineating a “divine spring” is representative of Frankenstein’s current state of new hope and revival; although it becomes apparent that he is simply in denial, and that the chapter of his life involving the creature still hasn’t ended. Shelley’s depictions of Frankenstein’s monster are also very detailed and descriptive. The reader is able to build up a clear visual image of the “demoniacal corpse” through Shelley’s characterisation, which highlights physically undesirable features such as his “yellow skin” and “watery eyes”. This is also done with respect to Clerval, however to the opposite effect.
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.
He explains the most popular meaning pertaining to this literary genre is the dark emotional aspect, and that dark romanticism can also be a general ethos related to a person’s individual outlook on life (1). This poem’s first stanza, introduced the Soul as being in a “bandaged” situation. The reader interprets the Soul as being restrained and unable to move: The Soul has Bandaged moments – When too appalled to stir – She feels some ghastly Fright come up, Santos 2 And stop to look at her – (1-4) According to her biography, by the age of 20, Dickinson had begun the path to seclusion that would take control of the rest of her life. Therefore, it is easy for the reader to connect this stanza to Emily’s lifestyle of living isolated from society. Leverkuhn adds, “As a literary genre, dark romanticism tends to be engaged with the idea of darkness in the human soul, the concept of original sin, or a certain dark outlook on society in general” (1).