... also believed that humans had to stop focusing on what we think the world is, and start noticing the truth: Yes, the springtimes have needed you. There've been stars To solicit your seeing. In the past, perhaps, Waves rose to greet you, or out an open window, As you passed, a violin was giving itself To someone. This was a different commandment. But could you obey ... it? Weren't you always Anxiously peering past them, as though They announced a sweetheart's coming? (Reading Rilke, The First Elegy, p.190) The difference, however, is that Whitman offers a way to achieve this "golden sile...

• Word Count: 2891
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: High School

... , of eye, of brow"). But in Chaucer's time, some 250 years before Shakespeare, this method of description was standard and considered poetic. Describing a nearly inhuman perfection of the lady-love was also a convention of the time. While giving an alarmingly realistic description of Lady White's physical qualities (such as her lack of a visible collarbone ("canel-boon," line 943), he also speaks of ... has become illusory to him (12 ­13); similarly, the knight has removed himself from court and is caught in "his owne thoght" (504). He remains impervious to the beauty of the garden arou...

• Word Count: 5753
• Approx Pages: 23
• Grade Level: High School

... of his character. For example, first, he is a lesser angel; then he is a cherub when he communicates to Uriel; after that he is a voracious cormorant in the tree of life with an animal nature but able to fly, a tiger and a lion who are preying beasts; and, finally, he is a toad and a snake. Satan tempts Adam and Eve only ... for Stella and hopes that the lover will be able to cope with the pains of love and the sympathy may turn into love in line 3-5. This means that he is only interested in winning the sympathy of Stella. In lines 12-13, the poet becomes emotional and tortured at the ...

• Word Count: 4910
• Approx Pages: 20
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... at this point, that Christian doctrine enters most overtly into the poem. The poem concludes with a reference to an old Catholic tradition that the Cross was made from wood that grew from the Edenic Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil. The dying man becomes a meeting-place for both the First and Last Adam: his fevered grow shows the curse of Adam, while his soul is embraced by ... irregular Personification: Evident in apostrophe with capital "Busie old foole, unruly Sunne."œ Rhetoric: The poet asserts his indignation, whilst he scorns the sun, giving the impression of outrage. Must ...

• Word Count: 7662
• Approx Pages: 31
• Grade Level: High School