As a young girl grows into a woman, she will lose her innocence eventually, making the transformation from purity to impurity. Innocence and impurity are often seen as antonyms, and qualities that cannot possibly coexist. However, William Carlos Williams suggests that passion and purity can and do coexist in his 1923 poem, “Queen Anne’s Lace.” The poem depicts a woman shifting from pure innocence to passion, while proving that though different, purity and passion may depend and flourish upon each other. The poem as a whole is a metaphor of a woman to nature, specifically a certain species of flower, which accurately represents the growth that occurs within her. Women are often compared to nature in poetry, as it represents their beauty and delicacy, much like Williams did in this poem. Queen Anne’s lace is a white flower with a purple spot in the middle, also called the flower’s “beauty mark.” Douglas Verdier from Poetry for Students points out that the name of the flower alludes to the face of a queen, being fair and pure (189). Queen Anne’s lace is also a hardy flower that is able to thrive in many environments, supporting that the woman of the poem is beautiful yet strong (Stephenson). The metaphor to this flower shows the man’s adoration towards the beauty of the woman in the poem. As the poem progresses, the flower blooms underneath the touch of the man, representing that their passion for each other allows her spirit to bloom just as a flower does. Philip Jason notes the effectiveness of Williams’ metaphor to Queen Anne’s lace, writing, “…it is mainly through metaphor that he transforms his observation, his still life, into a dynamic field of action that reveals the life and energy hidden.” Just as Jason proves, the metaph... ... middle of paper ... ...rdier also elaborates on the contrasting meanings of white, saying: “Whiteness continues to permeate Williams’ canvas, suggesting perhaps that the kind of purity which dominates his pastoral scene is also essential in the sort of love such a scene brings to mind” (190). Here, Verdier is pointing out that when white represents both innocence and desire, it proves that passion and innocence rely on each other, as he says that purity is essential to the love shown in the poem. At the end, the speaker mentions whiteness yet again, saying, “a pious wish to whiteness gone over-/or nothing” (Williams 20-21). This wish to whiteness was a wish of the woman’s, and wish that has been satisfied, or “gone over.” This shows that the woman desired the man’s passion all along; it was the key to her ultimate fulfillment. Her wish was the whiteness, “or nothing” (Williams 21) at all.
Symbols are one of those most important things to a story. They share the meaning of themselves, as well as the meaning for something else. Symbols usually make the important ideas stick out as well as make the reader have different ideas of what is actually being said. One of the many symbols in “Paul’s Case” is flower’s. From violets to carnations, the flowers Paul talks about are ones of many meanings. The flowers represent a continual motif, expressing Paul’s character.
Comparing The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd. and the stark contrast of the treatment of an identical theme, that of love within the framework of pastoral life. I intend to look at each poem separately to give my interpretation of the poet's intentions and then discuss their techniques and how the chosen techniques affect the portal of an identical theme. The poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love appears to be about the Elizabethan courtly ideal of living with the barest necessities, like.
In order to completely grasp exactly how the old maid appears to the woman on the sidewalk and the love she feels for the man walking with her, Sara Teasdale uses personification to describe the characters in the poem. One would be, “Her soul was frozen in the dark/ Unwarmed forever by love’s flame.” Obviously, a person’s soul cannot be frozen, but the meaning is that the old maid had never felt a heated intensity between herself and someone special to her which could give her a cold outlook on life. Another time the poet uses personification is when the speaker states, “His eyes were magic to defy”. Eyes cannot be magic. By saying that his eyes were magic the reader can get the notion that when the speaker looks into the eyes of her lover she feels awed, happy, or even entranced. Sara Teasdale also uses a metaphor in her work, “Her body was a thing growing thin,” In that line the speaker is comparing the old maid’s draining body to something that can get thinner. The poet uses a rhyme scheme of rhyming the second with the fourth line and there are four lines in every stanza. Finally, in this narrative poem there are eight syllables per line of the poem.
This distinction between filth and purity was called into question by Joe Weil in “Ode to Elizabeth”, where Weil overlaps filth and purity in the city of Elizabeth; also by Nicolás Guillén in “What Color?”, where Guillén negates color from the definition of purity; and also in William Carlos William’s “This is Just to Say”, where Williams provides a sense of purity in a world full of filth. These poems combined show how the distinction between filth and purity is not as easy as black and
The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and
When a comparison is made between There is a Garden in Her Face by Thomas Campion and Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare, the difference between lustful adoration and true love becomes evident. Both poems involve descriptions of a beloved lady seen through the eyes of the speaker, but the speaker in Campion's poem discusses the woman's beautiful perfections, while the speaker in Shakespeare's poem shows that it is the woman's faults which make her beautiful.
...ots her memory, the blossoms her dreams, and the branches her vision. After each unsuccessful marriage, she waits for the springtime pollen to be sprinkled over her life once again. Even after Tea Cake's death, she has a garden of her own to sit and revel in.
The theme throughout the poetry collection is the emotion of melancholy and the speaker speaking with a wise and philosophical tone. She has also used the repetition of nature and religion-based implications in her poems. Most of the poem titles is named after a specific plant because it fits in the meaning of her entire poem collection. The title of the poems hold symbolism because of the flower language. You can constantly see the cycle of rebirth through the beautiful description of a nonphysical form of a soul and develop into beautiful flowers in her garden. The vivid imagery of the flowers by describing the color and the personification of these living beings. She is also trying to explore the relationship between humans and their god. The poet is a gardener who tends to the flower and she prefer the flowers in her garden over her god, “knowing nothing of the
The excerpt is plastered with a plethora of pictorial diction to depict Keller’s undying love for nature. Keller displays that she can still observe the beauty of nature even after having gone blind and deaf, describing how she recognizes items based on their characteristics. The butterfly lilies based of the “fragile petals that resemble butterflies’ wings” or the leaves and blossom that indicate a “beautiful vine.” Continually she connects events of her life with nature through pictorial such as when she first walked due to her attraction towards “the flickering shadows of leaves.” Moreover, Keller creates asyndeton multiple times to portray the power held within herself and reinforce the beauty of nature. In the second paragraph Keller writes, “I came, I saw, I conquered,” depicting the vast amount of willpower held within herself. The lack of conjunctions ups the pacing of how the passage is read and displays how fast her first months as a child passed. In addition, asyndeton is employed as Keller describes the seasons that pass by before her illness. This enables the reader to understand how that time passed by rapidly, but Keller’s love for nature developed to greater lengths. In this excerpt from Keller’s autobiography she develops the notion that for her love
"The Yellow Violet" vividly expresses the nature of life in a very simple way. Bryant takes the cycle of a yellow violet and uses it to describe the humanistic world around him. It is very clever, too, that when he does this, he uses personification. A "modest flower" (2674) pops out from the dark, damp leaves below and "[makes] the woods of April bright" (2675). While the rest of the forests and fields go on with their life cycle this tiny flower does itsí best to make things pretty and happy. The persona describes this sight as an "early smile" (2675) and that is what kept a smile on his own face. Even the various blooms and colors that surface in May are not as joyful because when the violet blooms, it is the first color you see after a long winter of gray. This modesty of the meek flower is compared to that of a person. It's usually the poorer, less known people in the world that are the ones who really cheer you up. They will never let you down. As the persona in the poem points out, "So they, who climb to wealth, forget" (2675). This is the most important line of the entire poem. It is basically saying that those who are wrapped up in material things are just th...wrapped up. They are not dependable. Thus, the yellow violet is the modest person, which are far and few, who you can always count on to stand by you in the end and brighten up your day. This is the illustration of the nature of life.
In Herrick’s poem, he uses a metaphor of a flower which may be at full
Williams’s poems represent the simple, small, or quick occurrences in everyday life. This may be a scene, image, or event, but Williams seems to capture the essence of these ordinary items and describe them in great detail. A possible reason for these simple ideas showing up in his poems may be because he was a doctor. Doctors are taught to see the smallest details in trying to determine what is wrong with their patients, and in some cases these small issues can be very important. This may explain why Williams portrayed seemingly insignificant aspects of life as complex or important. Another possible reason for these praises in Williams’s poetry according to Poet
The speaker uses metaphors to describe his mistress’ eyes to being like the sun; her lips being red as coral; cheeks like roses; breast white as snow; and her voices sounding like music. In the first few lines of the sonnet, the speaker view and tells of his mistress as being ugly, as if he was not attracted to her. He give...
This poem speaks of a love that is truer than denoting a woman's physical perfection or her "angelic voice." As those traits are all ones that will fade with time, Shakespeare exclaims his true love by revealing her personality traits that caused his love. Shakespeare suggests that the eyes of the woman he loves are not twinkling like the sun: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" (1). Her hair is compared to a wire: "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head" (3). These negative comparisons may sound almost unloving, however, Shakespeare proves that the mistress outdistances any goddess. This shows that the poet appreciates her human beauties unlike a Petrarchan sonnet that stresses a woman's cheek as red a rose or her face white as snow. Straying away from the dazzling rhetoric, this Shakespearean poem projects a humane and friendly impression and elicits laughter while expressing a truer love. A Petrarchan sonnet states that love must never change; this poem offers a more genuine expression of love by describing a natural woman.
The sincerity that is shown to the reader can be seen in the use of the classic Petrarchan tropes found in Wyatt’s poem. For example, his use of opposites to convey the strength of his love such as the idea that she taught his to both ‘love and suffer’, or the idea that he shall both ‘live and die’ due to his love for the mysterious ‘she’. The use of these well-known sonnet tropes allows for the readers at the time of the poems creation to immediately understand that the poem is in fact a sincere display of the writer’s affection for his muse. This is because this was the norm in sonnet writing forms and were used to display the agonising sensation of the speaker’s feelings of loving a woman who is too distant for him to reach out right. However, from the perspective of a contemporary reader we may view this poem in another way. In the poem we can see that the ‘she’ in the poem is much more distant that other renderings of the poem, such as in Surrey’s translation of the poem as well as the original by Petrarch, which allows for the poem to focus much more on the speaker than the object of his affections. For example throughout the poem we can clearly see Wyatt’s use of words such as ‘me’, ‘mine’ and ‘my’ allows the reader to focus purely on the speaker and the way in which they