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 Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the character assertively articulates one of the play's most crucial themes: the complexities of love. ... In lines 3-4, the speaker describes the night as "empathy", and Duffy personifies the stars as tears in the eyes of the dark evening sky. ... The metaphorics associated with th...

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

The poem follows the effects of the storm on various objects observable from the house, starting with a metaphor comparing the house with a ship far out at sea at night and stuck in a storm. ... The poem follows a very well structured timeline beginning with the fact that the poet has already been facing the storm for one night then how dawn breaks, how from the noon to the evening the wind again picks up speed and once again starts destroying everything in its path, finally at night it reaches a level where it seems that it will tear the house apart at which point the poet ends the poem. ...

• Word Count: 788
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Furthermore, the trees are further personified when Hardy states the trees "succumbs to the crawl of the night." The word 'succumbs' refers to the trees slowing down as night time sets in. ...

• Word Count: 545
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The fire of the tiger's eyes in the dark night forest shows a contrast between light and dark. ... The movement of the moon in the night sky, which the narrator constantly tracks, mirrors the movement of the poet towards the dread emotion revealed at the end of the poem: the fear of the death of his love. The natural path of the moon rising and falling each night also mirrors the organic cycle of birth and growth, decay and death in the world. ...

• Word Count: 1115
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the first stanza, we're greeted with a "lantern that wouldn't burn" (1), which Frost could have used to foreshadow that the poem, or 'night' is not off to a good start – and that things will get infinitely worse from here. ... However, in the second sentence of the stanza – the interpretation of 'the night [drawing] through the trees" (11) could have been read as its' literal meaning: where the end of day is the night, or on the other hand, for its' metaphorical meaning – where the end of the event is compared to the end...

• Word Count: 943
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

He describes "heaven" as having prepared the "powders to enrich [her] hair" (lines 7 and 8) and that the golden atoms "doth stray" (line 5) to her hair when it becomes night. ... Where stanza two talked about the light of day, stanza four talks about the lights of the night- the lights being the stars. Carew writes: Ask me no more where those stars light That downwards fall in dead of night; For in your eyes they sit, and there, Fixed become as in their sphere. ...

• Word Count: 1528
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

With the second and third line, it is revealed that the fishermen have "Netted an infant last night/Along with the salmon" (2-3). ... The infant is also framed to be less of a human being and similar or equal to the fish caught the night before because they are mentioned together with "Along". ...

• Word Count: 1097
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

When "the sun is gone down, and the dews of night arise" (Lines 5-6), both nurses addressed the children to come home. ... She lectures the children, "Your spring & your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise." (Lines 7-8) In this context, the words "spring" and "day" refer to childhood, and "winter" and "night" suggest adulthood. ...

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

In the final stanza, death's chill is described with great effect by Dickinson; "everyone pays attention when death comes (the landscape listens), and its passing is just like the passing of day into night" (line 13). ...

• Word Count: 562
• Approx Pages: 2
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Kenneth Slessor is commonly regarded by many to be the best Australian poet of his generation, perhaps all time. His poem "Sleep" can be interpreted mainly in one of two ways. One could see it as a personification of sleep, or depiction of childbirth. The poem's textual integrity allows for both ...

• Word Count: 684
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Myth plays an extremely essential role in modern literature. It is used by poets, novelists and playwrights in varying degrees to indirectly draw attention to given situations in their societies, criticize and seek correcting them so as to improve their communities' conditions of life. Sometimes, it...

• Word Count: 1102
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), in his Essays, wrote that "Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance." He failed to go on to explain his point, but his meaning is clear. Poetry differs from prose and other genres by that has form...

• Word Count: 1399
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Gerard Manley Hopkins - To what extent do you agree with Robert Bridges view that his poetry is "some of the most musical ever written" Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of the greatest 19th-century poets of religion, of nature, and of inner anguish. In his view of nature, the world is like a book ...

• Word Count: 1414
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Essay Topic: An analysis of the ideological implication of Andrew Marvell's poem, "To His Coy Mistress", in respect to similar themes in William Shakespeare's Sonnets "18" and "73". There is an uncomfortable shallowness of the contextual nature of Andrew Marvell's poem, "To His Coy Mistress" t...

• Word Count: 1243
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Unlike the nurse of Innocence, she does not encourage the children to enjoy the pleasures of their youth, but seeks to shatter their joy with the sour comment: Your spring and your day are wasted in play, And your winter and night in disguise. ...

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