... last few years of their marriage. The array of emotional contexts adds depth as Hardy, as if writing to his deceased wife, asks why they had drifted apart, why didn't they remember the good days of their youth to break the emotional barriers and re-connect. He laments about the simple truth, his wife will no ... he didn't mind and didn't think of her as he was out for a stroll. But now after her death he goes on the same walk and wonders "What difference, then?" To which he answers "Only that underlying sense/ Of the look of a room on returning thence." This implies the only difference ...

• Word Count: 1972
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... line lyric poem, traditionally written in iambic pentameter--that is, in lines ten syllables long, with accents falling on every second syllable, as in: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"" (Spark Notes, Shakespeare). It is one of the most formal poetic devices and usually has an intricate rhyming scheme. Sonnets typically state a problem, ... says "do not mourn for me for soon I will be with the worms." The second says that the reader should not even remember than hand that wrote the line and that if thinking of him makes the reader grieve he would rather be forgotten. "From this...

• Word Count: 2289
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

... forged a rough and unstructured, yet advanced curriculum that consisted of everything from the literary arts (poetry, theatre, and writing) to history to geography. In his early teen years Walt got an apprenticeship with a liberal, blue-collar newspaper called the Long Island Patriot. ... were an all-seeing, ethereal being. This is best described with an allusion to Jesus and his demise. "In vain were nails driven through my hands. / I remember my crucifixion and bloody coronation / I remember the mockers and the buffeting insults / The sepulcher and the white linen have ... "Drum Tap...

• Word Count: 1470
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... speaker's property from his neighbor's. In spring, the two meet to walk the wall and jointly make repairs. The speaker sees no reason for the wall to be kept--there are no cows to be contained, just apple and pine trees. "It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the ... sprites, or the frost and work of nature's invisible hand, the boulders tumble down again. Still, the neighbors persist. The poem, thus, seems to meditate conventionally on three grand themes: barrier-building, the predestined nature of this activity, and our persistence in this activity regardless. The ...

• Word Count: 1699
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... psychologically disturbing image. Troops being torn out of their dead-like walk and surrounded by gas bombs. Everyone, in "an ecstasy of fumbling" (Owen 737-738) forced to run out into the mist, unaware of his or her fate. Anyone wanting to fight in a war would become frightened at the image of ... German mercenaries, he realizes how right his father had been about war. War kills unnecessarily, and when it is all over, no one can remember what it was about. As the youngest brother dies, perhaps he realizes what Owen states in the last line, "the old lie: Dulce ... disturbed at the though...

• Word Count: 1704
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School