... had a strong desire to "link the lowly blues to formal poetry," locking him into the poem ignores its efficacy as cultural commentary. Given the increasing number of whites traveling to Harlem to be entertained in clubs like The Cotton Club, the poem can be seen as an attempt on Hughes's part to warn the community that African American expression was being appropriated ... lyrics, but never allows his own voice to give way to them. Moreover, the speaker is "Down on Lenox Avenue. . . " which also, interestingly enough, marks the location of the Cotton Club and thus implies travel from do...

• Word Count: 547
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... beauty rather than the urbanity that dominated the Restoration period. It is unsurprising that several of the poems of the Lyrical Ballads provide direct commentary on poetry itself and how poetic experience relates to nature. Both Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree and The Nightingale, ... its own "immortality", freed from the inaccurately projected human feeling that would "profane" it. Nature is joyous and should be used to inspire joy, rather than the gloomy emotions inherent in previous poetry and poetics. Furthermore, he rejects the Greek myth that describes the nightingale as a...

• Word Count: 1487
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... through a sense of parallels, which reflects upon the expression "there is no progression without contraries". In the three sets of poems, "Infant Joy" and "Infant Sorrow", "The Chimney Sweeper", and "Nurse's Song", Blake explores the two disparate but connected perspectives ... poems have different perspectives and diction, they are also constructed differently. Although both poems have two stanzas, the rhyme schemes are different. In "Infant Joy", Blake uses a rhyme scheme of ABCDAC for the first stanza and ABCDDC for the second. On the other hand, Blake uses a regular AABB ... rhyme ...

• Word Count: 1939
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... ' "The Widow's Lament in Springtime- Death is an insatiable force that mercilessly alienates individuals from their passions and from that which they have derived joy; it brings with it great despair and uncertainty. It creates in some a despair so vast that they can long for nothing more than relief. ... very well. It is ironic that a woman is lamenting, or crying out in grief, in a season typically associated with birth, renewal, beauty, and joy. He has created a free verse lyric full of emotion and imagery that aids the reader in truly understanding the widow's despair in spite of her ...

• Word Count: 978
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... wilt, remember, if thou wilt, forget." The second theme, which is much more subtle, is the speakers exploration of the thin divide between pain and joy. The speaker addresses her lover as "my dearest", suggesting a deep and genuine love between them. Therefore, when the speaker goes onto list in detail ... speaker, it's results will be completely irrevocably, and the reader can sympathise with the lover, who has suddenly found himself alone. This theme of intransient joy is beautifully emphasised by Rosetti's image of the nightingale: "I shall not hear the nightingale, sing on, as if in ...

• Word Count: 2526
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... poetic devices, thus creating a tone and atmosphere to put across their point. For The Soldier, Rupert Brooke, uses a tone of controlled patriotic fervour, and one of joy, hope and laughter, to create an atmosphere that is calm, reflective and soothing. While in Dulce Et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen, uses a bitter, depressive and slightly ... England, or what natural England looked like at that time. The words he used, also gives the reader the impression of a fantasy place, where everywhere was joy and laughter, with no sadness or darkness to be seen. While in the second stanza, he uses ...

• Word Count: 1482
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... in time cannot be eternal. Keats's preoccupation with the escapism he pursues is always tinged with the actuality of life, with the unmoveable and steady awareness of the "inextricable mixed joy and sorrow of human experience" (Pettet 1957:355). In stanza three there follows a contrasted vision where Keats leaves behind all of mankind's tribulations in favour of this transient place of ... , And be among her cloudy trophies hung." This complex and paradoxical nature leads to the determination in stanza three of what is revealed to be a "close kinship between melancholy and joy, pain and ...

• Word Count: 2837
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... to the trade in children makes it something of a paradox. On the simplest level however, it does hold out to those who do their duty' the hope of release and joy, even though this happiness is deferred to the future, leaving the present unchanged. Tom is also promised that he'd have God for his father, and never want ... joy'. This hope and promise, flimsy and even unhelpful though they may be, contrast with the complete lack of comfort offered in Experience's version. Here the sweep's unfeeling sanctimonious parents have ... with the children into envy, even hatred. Unlike the nurse ...

• Word Count: 1564
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... the right amount of air circulating them. This growth is being stunted by man's interference. This artificiality described by the Mower continues throughout the collection. There seems to be a satirical commentary by Marvell on the 17th century society's obsession with their gardens. The Mower frowns upon those who use their gardens for pleasure-seeking purposes. The Mower's description of the flowers ... ...

• Word Count: 1808
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The poet, John Tobias, explores the tension between a highly blissful and idealized childhood and the harsh realities of a far more corrupt present in the poem 'Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickles Received From a Friend Called Felicity.' Alongside the character's loss of innocence, other supporting themes are present, such as drug abuse, the passage of time, and violence. Through immensely detailed description in imagery of the author's childhood memories and present day, we witness the personal growth and nostalgic recollection of memories of a character. Tobias builds the founda...

• Word Count: 809
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

A mid-autumn night's dream of Love: a critical commentary on one of Carol Anne Duffy's most notable works William Shakespeare once wrote "The course of true love never did run smooth." (I.i. 134) Earnestly professed by Lysander in ... ...

• Word Count: 1990
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... depict such outwardly experiences of the greater culture despite the author's individual intent driving the poem. Emily Dickinson's poem "My life had stood a loaded gun," was a direct response to and commentary on the inequalities and inabilities of the women of her time. Poe's "Annabel Lee," carried with it a sense of potential emotional fulfillment for happiness, brought about only by hope and ... ...

• Word Count: 2199
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

War often sparks a sense of nationalism and honor in those who are blind to its horrors. In Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est, the destructiveness and corruption of war is revealed primarily through imagery of violence and hopelessness. The poem criticizes ignorant people who view war with a romantic perspective, and are sheltered, ,due to lack of experience, from the immense suffering and pain that soldiers must undergo. A helpless tone underscores the downtrodden and mentally feeble condition of the soldiers, who struggle to survive through an arduous battle. Ironic diction is employed to ...

• Word Count: 1389
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... commonly referred to as a "confessional" poet, that is, one who writes of their own experience but in a disguised, rather than overt manner. Celebrated for her fierce imagery and often caustic commentary on relationships, "Black Rook in Rainy Weather" extract two, confronts the topic of death in a more subdued fashion than "Lady Lazarus", for example. In this poem, Plath demonstrates a capacity to ... ...

• Word Count: 636
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... " ("The Hero as Poet": 66) which allowed him/her to govern correctly. For Matthew Arnold (1822 – 1888), however, the main function of poetry was to bring joy. . In the "Preface" to the first edition of Poems (1853), he pleads that poetry should aim for two goals: It is not enough that the Poet should add ... ...

• Word Count: 2449
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... wealthy himself. However, while wealth and money liberate those who possess them, money is also known as "the root of all evil" and brings sorrow as well as joy. Literally, the power of the subject's gaze is to leave objects as if transfigured from base matter into gold; this transformative power recalls the Greek myth of King Midas, who ... ...

• Word Count: 1124
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... walk. He even goes so far as to claim that traveling in one's imagination is better than actually walking in the following quote. "So my Friend struck with weep joy may stand, as I have stood silent with swimming sense; yeah, gazing round on the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem less gross than bodily; and of such hues as ... ...

• Word Count: 1321
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... vibrant red flowers of the flame tree become the "bush of blood", the "fire", the "scarlet breath" and eventually the "fountain of hot joy" which paradoxically is also a "living ghost of death" like the "host" of the communion. Despite the tragedy of the scene, there is a strong sense of ... ...

• Word Count: 1047
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... form of a ballad in which the human child is drawn into the ethereal world of the supernatural as the fairies convince the child that their fantasy world is full of joy while the human world is full of sorrow. There is a sense of a strong hypnotic enchantment in "The Stolen Child" and a desire for escape to a form of sanctuary away from the ... ...

• Word Count: 1144
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... line also exhibits olfactory imagery since it makes the reader almost smell the blood on the bars. In the third stanza Paul Dunbar writes "it is not a carol of joy or glee, but a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core" the line shows how the bird is not singing a joyful tune but rather a prayer to god that ... ...

• Word Count: 692
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... feels that as a result of urbanization the beauty of nature that once many people possessed and saw everyday in their lives is now lost and in its place people find joy in getting and spending. Wordsworth's argument is that, when these elements are considered, it can be seen that the beauty of the universe has a moral, that is, as we are ... ...

• Word Count: 1163
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... being itself and we feel its unbound greed and lust for being" (Nietzsche 81). The true tragedy allows the viewer to peek into this primordial being and feel a kind of joy in engaging ourselves with the suffering of the characters. The anguish of the characters mirrors the agony in ourselves and the world. It is indicative of the destruction that eventually ... ...

• Word Count: 1180
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... his poem entitled "Lines" laments the effect that nature has upon him and states that "with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things." Pasteur also looked into the life of things while conducting his own research. His interest was sparked because of his dissatisfaction with the ... ...

• Word Count: 547
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... "best minds" veering back and forth between extremes, with suddenness and intensity of an electric current leaping between two poles; they adopt the attitudes of defiance, longing, terror, hysteria, anger, joy, tears and exhaustion, culminating in the absolutes of madness and suicide. These "best minds" are exposed and tormented, then cast out into the cold and darkness by stripping their clothes ... ...

• Word Count: 842
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... figurative imagery and personification in such lines as, "No time to turn at Beauty's glance", and, "Enrich that smile her eyes began", further expresses the poet's message. As smiling symbolises joy and happiness, the poet has been able to effectively deliver the message that to be happy and satisfied in life, we must take the time to embrace in nature. When ... ...

• Word Count: 707
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate