In spite of reading so many intriguing texts this year I did manage to narrow my favorites down to just five, the first being The Seafarer by Burton Raffel. In the poem a man talks about how dangerous the sea is but how much he loves to be out at sea. He loves the danger and the excitement that the voyage brings. However, my favorite line in the whole poem is this “A man must conquer pride, not kill it”. (pg. 25 Lines 109) This is a bold and magnificent statement, it is saying that pride cannot be killed. Since we cannot kill pride we must learn how to control it and in turn conquer it, and that is an interesting concept to me. Following that poem was the poem The Wife’s Lament by Ann Stanford; this was a favorite of mine for many reasons. …show more content…
This is a story about three brothers who become drunk and in turn angry at death causing them to go out and search for him. As they are searching they came across an old man and accuse him of being deaths spy. The old man replies calmly that “if it be your design to find death, turn up this crooked away towards the grove”. (Pg. 130 Lines 182-184) The tree men in a hurry run up the road and they find a pile of gold, and in the end they end up killing each other for this gold. Without even realizing it they find death, he was not something physical or unreachable. In fact he was a part of them the whole time; he was their greed that turned them against each other. I loved the story told because you can find many different meaning to it, though it has many meanings the one that I enjoyed the most was how in the underlining it tells us that death is within us and all we have to do is control it or like pride conquer …show more content…
Spencer is talking to the love of his life telling her how she will be remembered for all eternity, and her in her wisdom calls him silly and tells him that no women of a poet will ever be remembered. And he proceeds to tell her “whereas death shall all the world subdue, our love shall live and later life renew”. (Pg.256 Lines 13-14) These lines make me laugh because, how often do women believe their man is wrong and out of nowhere comes their man doing what she thought was impossible. These lines and that poem are what made Spencer famous and eventually made the poem and girl remembered by
The man claims he is waiting for Death to take him for some time, and the angered men are enraged by the name Death. The rioters ask where to find Death, and the old man says they can find death under a certain oak tree. The rioters rush to the tree and find gold coins. The men do not want to be taken as thieves, as discover a plan to transport the gold at night. The men direct the youngest to retreat back to town and grab wine. While the youngest is away, the two remaining men design a plan to kill the third to increase their profits. The man in town is also consumed by greed, and he decides to poison the wine. Retreating with the poison wine, the youngest man is killed by the other two rioters. To celebrate, the two men drink the wine. Within minutes, all three of the greedy rioters are dead. After his tale, the Pardoner asked the group for
A poem that I have been studying recently is Assisi by Norman McCaig, which I found very interesting to read because it made a statement which relates to our world today even though the poem was wrote about thirty or forty years ago. The poem has lots of ideas including effective figures of speech, good choice of words, important images and irony. The statement that McCaig makes is, where ever there is great wealth it always exists along side great poverty.
O'Hara, Frank. "The Day Lady Died." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jahan Ramazani et al. 3rd ed. 2 vols. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003. 2: 365.
She writes a letter to husband, almost instructing him on what to do after her death. Unlike other demure housewives of her time, she acknowledges the risk birthing her child brings by saying, “And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains / Look to my little babes, my dear remains” (107). Bradstreet also approaches a taboo subject by acknowledging that her husband might remarry. Bradstreet does not tread lightly on this subject either by writing, “And if thou love thyself, or loved’st me, / These o protect from step Dames injury” (107). In this poem, Bradstreet faces the possibility of not only the loss of her life but the loss of her husband’s love. Bradstreet challenges Puritan beliefs by showing that she will still be concerned with her earthly life after her
...expressed such as in, ‘An impromptu for Ann Jennings’. In this poem Harwood recalls the times that she and a friend experienced during motherhood. She talks of beautiful memories, ‘Nursing…by huge fires of wattle…’ and ends the poem with, ‘to know; our children walk the earth.’ This line is very powerful in that it expresses Harwood’s sheer joy and gratefulness she has for having children and for having a friend to help her along the way. This line becomes imbedded in her audience as its great strength of structure, it opens a window in which some women or mothers can relate and share an un-dividing connection to Harwood’s poems.
...pproaching footsteps of him? The novel revolves around the premise of Death's contemplation of the worth of humanity and his inability to reconcile the remarkable cruelty and compassion humans are simultaneously capable of. This fact, this paradoxical, beautiful scenario, follows him always.
“The Faithful Wife”, written by Barbara L. Greenberg, uses first-person narration to depict the style, language, and theme of the poem. By using first-person narration, Barbara Greenberg was able to portray events and ideas very persuasively to the reader. In addition, this first-person narrator creates dramatic irony concerning the title in reference to the body of the poem.
Being prideful can be very easy. It's natural to think that you are superior, and that you can do everything. However, this is not always correct, and sometimes pride can lead to negative effects. These instances are shown vividly through the short stories, “To Build a Fire,” and “The Scarlet Ibis.” In the end of these stories, the main character’s pride caused regret, or even death. In”To Build a Fire,” by Jack London and “The Scarlet Ibis,” by James Hurst, the authors both conveyed the common theme that pride can have negative consequences.
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea: True Order Exists in the Exposed Core
This is taken as the speaker allowed his wrath and anger to their foe grow and develop into a seed of revenge, illustrated as the apple on this tree grow with hate. The foe recognizes this apple as a tangible reincarnation of the speaker's desire for revenge and it is understood that through some manner this apple kills the foe and the speaker is glad that it has done so, showing no remorse. This is seen in the lines “In the morning I was glad to see;/ My foe outstretched beneath the tree”. The speaker's reaction to the death has an effect on the theme because although the speaker has killed someone he has no
It is important to consider the meaning of home when analyzing The Seafarer. The narrator of this poem seems to feel a sense of belonging while traveling the sea despite the fact that he is obviously disillusioned with its hardships .The main character undergoes a transformation in what he considers home and this dramatically affects his life and lifestyle. Towards the end of The Seafarer the poet forces us to consider our mortality, and seems to push the notion that life is just a journey and that we will not truly be at home until we are with God.
“Spinster” by Sylvia Plath is a poem that consists of a persona, who in other words serves as a “second self” for the author and conveys her innermost feelings. The poem was written in 1956, the same year as Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes, who was also a poet. The title suggests that the persona is one who is not fond of marriage and the normal rituals of courtship as a spinster is an unmarried woman, typically an older woman who is beyond the usual age of marriage and may never marry. The persona of the poem is a woman who dislikes disorder and chaos and finds relationships to be as unpredictable as the season of spring, in which there is no sense of uniformity. In this poem, Plath not only uses a persona to disclose her feelings, but also juxtaposes the seasons and their order (or lack thereof) and relates them to the order that comes with solitude and the disorder that is attributed with relationships. She accomplishes this through her use of formal diction, which ties into both the meticulous structure and develops the visual imagery.
The Norton Anthology of Poetry, ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy, 5th edn (London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005)
The book “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex” by Nathaniel Philbrick is tragic, eyes widening and heart wrenching where all the morals and ethics are gravely subjected to situation and questioned when it comes to survival. What they must do for survival? How man love their lives and no matter what strikes upon them, holler from behind, ambush their morale, yet they want to keep going just for the sake of living. The book is epitome of such a situation that encounters survival over morality. However, in the thrust of knowledge and oceans of secrets locked inside the chambers of this world, there is a heavy price men have to pay in the ordeal of yearning for knowledge.
Nims, John F. "Love Poem." Literature: A Portable Anthology. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. N. pag. Print.