... audience and the perplexed critic. As for the urn, it undertakes the role of the heroine, the internal setting_ the stage on stage, and the narrator. As for the action, the only on-stage one is confined to the silent narration, for the narrating urn is mute and silent, and from here springs the first paradox of the scene-stanza 1 the moment the curtain opens: Thou still unravish"d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence ... ", not with their ears, but with their "spirit". In scene-stanza 4, the narrating director stands once more confounded before the playful urn. From the tunel...

• Word Count: 1325
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... with another man before she had "glided in", another sin the "perfectly pure and good" girl committed, giving sex the illusion of being something natural, acceptable and decent, the opposite of the reality in Victorian times. Throughout the poem, the speaker is composed, and poised, even during the murder of his lover. Because of this and the fifth line "I listened with a heart fit to break" there ... reality, as concrete. The speaker appears to be a pessimist, and he sees the world in a negative way. However this perception is not universal truth, which means that another person may see...

• Word Count: 1043
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... stanza. This refers to how politicians lead large masses of people into traps for only their own benefit. The poet also brings up traps and deception in the fifth stanza when inflexible "bureaucrats" bully and nag him for things which only interest the bureaucrat. The "white waves" and the "desert" look tempting, to swim and cool down in or to walk along golden sands and warmth ... going to war, so they are basically forced to murder. The unborn child, the poet, would find it worth living for harmony, friendship, non-violence and peace. An example that the poet gives of disdainful peopl...

• Word Count: 2163
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

... and help her in her quest of life. In the poem "The Bistro Styx- we find Rita Dove working with the ideas of home life. In the beginning the mother sees that her daughter approaches looking different and the mother asks, "What's this?- The first notation of the difference from the child she was used to the woman that she has become. The daughter apologizes for being late, though she wasn't. This ... she is saying that her child has failed in her mother's hopes and ambitions for her. "This wary aristocratic mole- is the mother saying that the daughter is an untrusting mammal of nobility,...

• Word Count: 1294
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... the child laborers of this time I found several notes that the word "weep" may have actually been the word "sweep" - a result of a Cockney lisp which dropped the "s." I find that the word "weep" is more effective to the reader as a true representation of the plight of these children forced into labor. Blake has also exploited the hypocrisy and corruption of the church during this period. In the first poem, the child dreams of salvation; a child ... 's nave hope of something better. The second poem ... Protestant theology is a good god. Blake tells his readers that God did create the "tyg...

• Word Count: 1853
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

Ode to a Grecian Urn THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What ... is unravished) as it sits quietly on a shelf or table. He also calls it a "foster-child of silence and time" because it is has been adopted by silence and time, parents who have conferred on the urn eternal stillness. In addition, Keat...

• Word Count: 1446
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... this poem. The way the setting is portrayed gives the reader a sense of what is going on around the characters at the time the poem is set. Not only does this introduce the story, as the character description does, but it also contributes to an ironic ending. Once Randall introduces the poem in the first four stanzas by establishing characters and the setting, there is a shift in the fifth stanza from the characters speaking ... childlike, very much something a small little girl would do. Purity is presented again in the stanza when the girl's "white gloves" and "white shoes" are descri...

• Word Count: 1170
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... get his head shaved to prevent it from becoming sooty. Had he been the child of wealthy upper-class parents, this would not have been necessary. The image of the lamb is a symbol of new life and, the use of the lamb in the simile that compares Tom's hair with that of the fleece of the lamb, reinforces Blake's contention that poor people are exploited by others and lose ... angry with his father for placing him in such a situation. In the second and third stanzas, I empathized with 'little Tom Darce' and pictured how frightened he must have been because of his Nightmare and he seemed to ...

• Word Count: 1143
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... love of the public by becoming a great knight or a hero. This poem is a struggle between Miniver's wanting of a better life, and his acceptance of his fate as a miserable man. "Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn" (Miniver Cheevy, born into hatred). This first line already sets the tone for the poem being ... that scorn implies disparagement, loathing, and melancholy. "Grew lean while he assailed the seasons"(He got thin as the years went by). The unsatisfied feeling that Miniver has for ... could have been one of those knights, giving his life a whole knew meaning. "The vision of a warrior...

• Word Count: 977
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... situations that would warrant similar reactions. In the fifth stanza, the poem shifts into trochaic meter, as the speaker is reflective in the emotions behind encountering "Nature's People" (17), saying he feels for them "a transport of Cordiality." This gives the reader the impression that the relationship between the snake and the persona is two-way. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "cordiality" means " ... least be scared of it. But the persona is as calm as the lulling nature of the unchanged metrical structure. The peculiar lyrical perspective is equally as ...

• Word Count: 1710
• Approx Pages: 7

... died and come back talk about a bright light that you must walk into when you die in order to go to heaven. Why would the light be associated with the world, and the dark be associated with death. This huge contrast lets us see sort of a pessimistic view on death. Thomas does not want his father ... age if he would just fight death and hold on to life a little while longer. The fourth and fifth stanza's are the most difficult stanza's of the entire poem. These two stanza's are as follows: "Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, D...

• Word Count: 1596
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... with another man before she had "glided in", another sin the "perfectly pure and good" girl committed, giving sex the illusion of being something natural, acceptable and decent, the opposite of the reality in Victorian times. Throughout the poem, the speaker is composed, and poised, even during the murder of his lover. Because of this and the fifth line "I listened with a heart fit to break" there ... reality, as concrete. The speaker appears to be a pessimist, and he sees the world in a negative way. However this perception is not universal truth, which means that another person may see...

• Word Count: 1013
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School