“A 20th Century Poetry Analysis tied to a Shakespearian Comparison” Edna St. Vincent Millay’s [“I shall forget you presently, my dear”] is an example of masterly composed literature that preserves itself a place in time’s vault of literature classics. The poem immediately creates a sense that the speaker is conversing with a love interest. The audience is quickly provided with a tone of warning. The speaker warns their love interest that they should, “make the most of this” (line 2) as love is an idea that will not last. Love is limited when it comes to time, “your little day, / Your little month, your little half a year” (2,3) it will all eventually come to an end due to both inside and outside factors. This becomes the centric idea that …show more content…
The sonnet displays the Shakespearian rhyme scheme, following this rhyme pattern closely with three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. Another important aspect of this sonnet is the meter, in this case being iambic pentameter. The meter carries throughout the poem, creating a sense of conversation. The iambic pentameter is often used through natural conversation. Thus, essential to this sonnet as the speaker is directly talking to someone. The meter of each line creates that song-like flow which is upheld through conversation “Whether or not we find what we are seeking” (13). This becomes vital to the poems overall meaning; a conversation expressing loves incapability to last. The overall construction of the sonnet itself, is another way Millay uses to convey her underlined meaning. This poem uses end stops, rather than lines with the enjambed style. This is crucial to support the overall feeling of the poem’s narrator speaking to another person. When people talk, it is smooth and not choppy. By using line stops it creates a solid important flow. This allows natural stops to occur, “If you entreat me with your loveliest lie / I will protest you with my favorite vow.” (7,8) by using the end stop structure, closing off the main idea and allowing a new idea to begin. Millay constructs the flow of the sonnet also through the sentence length. The …show more content…
The poem’s narrator begins by asking how is it is possible for beauty, “whose action is no stronger than a flower” (4) to withstand time, when all the strongest structures and natural elements on earth are of no match. The speaker understands that time is the creator of all that is beautiful, acknowledging time is the taker as well. Finally, the speaker resolves this problem and understands that the beauty of his love can withstand time through the ink of his sonnet “in black ink my love may still shine bright.” (14). The aspects of romantic love that the speaker is representing is that of providing his love with a way to maintain her eternal beauty forever. Throughout the sonnet, the speaker states all the elements of the world that are unable to survive time, such as “brass... stone…earth…[and] boundless sea” (1). Yet, the poem’s narrator is able to find a solution. The speakers attitude throughout the sonnet begins out as confused, they are wondering how they will be able to capture and express the beauty forever. As the sonnet moves forward the speaker frantically becomes more vigorous. The sonnet’s narrator gains disbelief that there is no way to preserve such a goal, “O fearful meditation!” (9). The speaker comes across as frantic as they begin to rapidly fire questions within every line of quatrain three. It is not until the final rhyming couplet that
First of alll, the poem is divided into nine stanzas, where each one has four lines. In addition to that, one can spot a few enjambements for instance (l.9-10). This stylistic device has the function to support the flow of the poem. Furthermore, it is crucial to take a look at the choice of words, when analysing the language.
Edna St. Vincent Millay once stated, “I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.” Millay was a poet in the early 1900s. She wrote numerous poems in which all had a constant theme. Two of my favorite poems from her are Spring, which was written in 1921, and I Forgot for a Moment, which was published in 1940. These two poems were written nineteen years apart, but Millay showed a thematic connection between them.
Millay uses romantic language. That is evident in the first line, "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink". The romantic aspect of love is shown in the language of this poem. The poem is not directly about two lovers. It is more indirect, this is what two lovers may face. Her language is picturesque. "Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink / And rise and sink and rise and sink again;" It is as if the poem was showing a picture of a man in the sea that is struggling to survive and throughout the course of bobbing up and down he continues to see a pole or paddle, but he just can't reach it. There are more ideas that can be pictured easily throughout the poem, because of the language that Millay uses. "Love can no fill the thickened lung with breath, / Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;" These lines create an interesting picture in your mind.
The first quatrain In this sonnet the speaker starts to reveal more about the relationship between him and the Dark Lady, and also his fear of growing old. He starts the sonnet by saying “When my love swears she is made of truth/ I do believe her, though I know she lies” (1-2). In these first two lines the speaker contradicts himself right away by saying that he believes her, but knows she is not telling the truth. He is very aware of the delusion he is in, but he is willing to let it pass. He is willing to let it pass because of the mutual dishonesty that exists in the relationship. In the next two lines, he talks about youth, and age. He is talking about the Dark Lady considering him a younger ma...
Time is equated with constant decay throughout the entire poem, which is primarily shown in the speaker’s comparison of the concept of eternity to a desert. Love, and other concepts felt in life, are subject to this negative force of deconstruction over time, and are vanquished in death; this idea can be seen in the witty commentary at the end of the second stanza, “the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace”
Browning’s “Sonnet 43” vividly depicts the human dependency of love. She uses irony to emphasize that love overpowers everything. Browning starts the poem with “How do I love thee” (Browning). Ironically, she answers the very question she presents the reader by describing her love and the extent to which she loves (Kelly 244). The ironic question proposes a challenge to the reader. Browning insinuates how love overpowers so that one may overcome the challenge. People must find the path of love in life to become successful and complete. Also, the diction in “Sonnet 43” supports the idea that love is an all-encompassing force. The line, “if God choose, I shall love thee better after death” means that love is so powerful that even after someone passes away lov...
...e speaker admits she is worried and confused when she says, “The sonnet is the story of a woman’s struggle to make choices regarding love.” (14) Her mind is disturbed from the trials of love.
Although this section is the easiest to read, it sets up the action and requires the most "reading between the lines" to follow along with the quick and meaningful happenings. Millay begins her poem by describing, in first person, the limitations of her world as a child. She links herself to these nature images and wonders about what the world is like beyond the islands and mountains. The initial language and writing style hint at a child-like theme used in this section. This device invites the reader to sit back and enjoy the poem without the pressure to understand complex words and structure.
These three metaphors exemplify beauty, but also an end to nature and life. Death is slowly creeping up to him and taking over his life as realized in this comparison of him to nature. The poem shows the need to seize the moment in life before death. The last couplet talks about the topic of love and the power of it. Love lasts through the struggles in life, and the changes of seasons. Love of life keeps us from realizing that an end will eventually come. “This thou perciev’st, which makes thy love more strong.” Encompasses the idea that although everything comes to an end, love still fuels everything within a person. He realizes everything will come to an end and death is inevitable but the passion is still
...the fleeting innate qualities of human beings and their world that they have constructed, giving way to the idea that mortals should live their lives as honorably as possible, so that they will be remembered by their future generations. The impermanence of the human form and its creations is heavily referred to as neither can survive throughout time, however, their words and deeds can live on through stories. The mere existence of this poem can attest to this idea.
In Sonnet number one-hundred sixteen Shakespeare deals with the characteristics of a love that is “not time’s fool”, that true love that will last through all (Ln: 9). This sonnet uses the traditional Shakespearian structure of three quatrains and a couplet, along with a standard rhyme scheme. The first and third quatrains deal with the idea that love is “an ever-fixed mark”, something that does not end or change over time (Ln: 5). Shakespeare illustrates this characteristic of constancy through images of love resisting movemen...
In “Sonnet XVII,” the text begins by expressing the ways in which the narrator does not love, superficially. The narrator is captivated by his object of affection, and her inner beauty is of the upmost significance. The poem shows the narrator’s utter helplessness and vulnerability because it is characterized by raw emotions rather than logic. It then sculpts the image that the love created is so personal that the narrator is alone in his enchantment. Therefore, he is ultimately isolated because no one can fathom the love he is encountering. The narrator unveils his private thoughts, leaving him exposed and susceptible to ridicule and speculation. However, as the sonnet advances toward an end, it displays the true heartfelt description of love and finally shows how two people unite as one in an overwhelming intimacy.
The similar rhyme schemes of the two sonnets allow for clear organization of the speaker’s ideas and support these ideas through comparison and connection. Both poems use or essentially use a Shakespearean rhyme scheme to provide rhythm for their sonnets, while adding extra emphasis to the topics presented throughout them. Owen uses the rhyme scheme in a way to stress his description of the enraged scene of the battlefield, and to further the dehumanization of the soldiers at war. The simile used to compare the soldiers to “cattle”, is connected to the fast “rattle” of the rifles, furthering the image of the inhumane way the soldiers we killed (1,3). Owen alters the Shakespearean rhyme scheme in the eleventh line making a switch to create two lines in a row that rhyme, rather than alternating. This allows for a smooth transition in his description of the ritual that marks a soldier’s death. To draw attention to the tears “in their eyes”, which could be in the eyes of the dead soldier or of their brothers at war, they are connected to the “glimmer of good-byes”, to represent the quick mourning for the soldiers (10-11). The connection here is furthered with the use of enjambment at the end of the tenth line; with no grammatical separation, the thought smoothly transitions from one line to the other. On the other hand, Keats uses the exact Shakespearean rhyme
During the Renaissance period, most poets were writing love poems about their lovers/mistresses. The poets of this time often compared love to high, unrealistic, and unattainable beauty. Shakespeare, in his sonnet 18, continues the tradition of his time by comparing the speakers' love/mistress to the summer time of the year. It is during this time of the year that the flowers and the nature that surround them are at there peak for beauty. The theme of the poem is to show the speakers true interpretation of beauty. Beauties worst enemy is time and although beauty might fade it can still live on through a person's memory or words of a poem. The speaker realizes that beauty, like the subject of the poem, will remain perfect not in the eyes of the beholder but the eyes of those who read the poem. The idea of beauty living through the words of a poem is tactfully reinforced throughout the poem using linking devices such as similes and metaphors.
This piece of the poem is full of the images of nature. The image of sun and the moon can be find throughout the whole work, but in this part it probably poses as a symbol of rationality and intellect. Its function differs from the function of the moon and its light shines its rays of light on things to make them clearer, more comprehensible and earthly. T...