Poetry is a form of literature which can be characterized by rhythm. Poetry may be short or may be long. There is no limit to themes that a poet may use for their poem. A poem can be about animals, nature, and a common theme, love. The two poems that will be discussed in the paper have a common theme of love. While one poem speaks of love for a woman, the other explains what love is in general. Theses two poems are "When You Are Old" by William Butler Yeats, and "Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds" by no other than William Shakespeare. In our first poem, "When You Are Old," Yeats uses his aesthetic language to rhyme about the love of a woman whom he addresses. He begins his poem by telling her that when she is "old and grey and full of sleep" and sitting by a fireplace, reading a book, she'll dream of the "soft look her eyes once had" as a younger woman. (Yeats 600) He continues by expressing how many men had loved her in her "moments of glad grace" which a youthful woman may possess. (Yeats 600) There were men who looked beyond her beauty and expressed true love and there were those who did not look at her inner beauty but the outer beauty with "love false." (Yeats 600) But there is one man, William Butler Yeats, who loved the questing, "pilgrim soul in [her]," and embraced and "loved the sorrows of [her] changing face "as she loses her youthful beauty. (600) As Yeats concludes his poem and the woman is by the "glowing bars," the fire place, she "murmurs, a little sadly," how love has escaped her and "hid his face amid a crowd of stars," which are always beautiful to look at. (600) Men's love for her will fade parallel to her beauty. As mentioned before, this poem was written for a woman he loved. She was beautifu... ... middle of paper ... ... love. Though it is interesting how both love poems use this star for symbolism. Symbolism is also presented in the love poems. The reader can imagine an old and grey woman sitting by a fire, nodding while she's reading a book or a crowd of stars. In the sonnet, there's not as much imagery, but one can visualize "rosy lips and cheeks." (Shakespeare 616) Reading both poems gives me a better idea of what love is, but many will never understand what love really is. Love is a timeless and universal theme that is used for poems and is different for each individual person. Though, as one reads different love poems, a comparison, besides the obvious theme of love, can be found amongst them, like the two poems discussed. I found that love poems are easier to interpret, but the theme is difficult to understand. Roberts, V. Edgar, "Literature", Third Ed. New Jersey 2005
The Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Love is Not All” demonstrates an unpleasant feeling about the knowledge of love with the impression to consider love as an unimportant element that does not worth dying for; the poem is a personal message addressing the intensity, importance, and transitory nature of love. The poet’s impression reflects her general point of view about love as portrays in the title “Love is Not All.” However, the unfolding part of the poem reveals the sarcastic truth that love is important.
Love plays an important role in most physical and emotional relationships. Love is a word that can prove difficult to define or even compare to other emotions. This is due to the diversity of meaning and the complexity of the emotion itself. Everyone has been in love at least once before and has gotten a taste of all the good and bad things that come with it. Christina Rossetti’s “Song” presents some of the good parts of love while Philip Larkin’s “Talking in Bed” shows us some of the bad parts of love. Larkin’s poem presents a failing relationship where communication has failed between a couple and things are getting more and more difficult. Rossetti’s poem presents a wholly different view on love; it is told from the viewpoint of someone talking to his or her lover about what said lover should do after the speaker dies. The love between them seems better, more powerful and good. The two poems also present wholly different attitudes towards “The End,” whether that is the end of life or the end of the relationship. Larkin presents the end as something dark and sad, difficult to cope with. Rossetti, on the other hand, talks about the end as just another beginning, a chance to start over in a new world. Finally, the two poems represent remembrance in different ways. Larkin’s presents memory as something extremely important while Rossetti implies that it does not matter whether we remember or not.
Love is something that no one can understand completely, but there is one thing that can be universally accepted: love creates a lot of feelings. Some are painful and mysterious, but some are loving and warm. The poems, "Sonnet 18," and "I Am Offering this Poem," demonstrates how the speakers similarly present their love through imagery, symbolism, and tone to show how they truly love their loved ones. Those feelings are so common these two poems are just some of the infinite amoount of poems that express these similar feeling of love: warmth, addiction, and affection. Love comes in many different ways, but the feelings are relatively similar.
Unrequited love is a common theme in poetry. Nature, death, wars, religions are all significant themes but love is the most important. It gives the reader an insight to the author’s inner feelings. “When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats is no exception. Yeats reflects upon his unconditional love for a woman who was not ready for a serious relationship.
topic sentence: The imagery contained in both sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barret Browning and Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare, while both used to portray there love, the imagery still differs between poems.
The poem goes on to tell of the women, who "...haven't put aside desire/ but sit at ease and in pleasure,/ watching the young men" (Murray 837). This work obviously shows how the women lust after the attractive young men, and clearly are not in love; any one of these men could have been replaced with another attractive man and would have m...
Both poems represent the despairs and failures of the love they hone for their beloved, with brings a touch of sadness to the poems. From this the reader can feel almost sympathetic to the unrequited lovers, and gain an understanding of the perils and repercussions of love.
This poem is a beautiful recollection of love and how difficult it is to attain in our world. Yeats does not seem angry that he lost Maud, however he does feel God’s curse on men. He seems unsure if true love actually exists and thinks that he got as close as he ever will at finding it. Maud was unable to give Yeats the love he yearned in return, which is why Yeats felt the need to express himself through this poem. Perhaps this poem was the beginning of a healing process for Yeats. He was unable to express himself to Maud so he had to express himself through his poetry. His poetry, in turn was as difficult to write as his love for Maud was to accomplish. Yeats is just exhausted at this point and it is seen at the end of his poem.
While Lord Byron's poem enhances the beauty of love, Keats' does the opposite by showing the detriments of love. In “She Walks in Beauty,” the speaker asides about a beautiful angel with “a heart whose love is innocent” (3, 6). The first two lines in the first stanza portray a defining image:
This entire poem talk about how beauty fades with time. Thus, like any carpe diem poetry, one is urged to cherish time. In this case, beauty is associated with time and the narrator believes that both should be cherished with the same intensity. There is a tone of urgency to find physical love, as the narrator only addresses physical beauty, which fades. He wants the girl to learn to be "desired" and "admired" while she is still beautiful.
He compares his love to a "vegetable," which means that it would not stray, but would grow "vaster than empires," and would do so more slowly (ll. 11-12). He claims that he would happily spend a hundred years praising her eyes, and gazing at her forehead. When that is over, he would spend two hundred years on each breast, and spend "thirty thousand to the rest" (l. 16). He then crowns this romantic hyperbole with the statement, "[f]or, lady, you deserve this state, /Nor would I love at a lower rate" (ll. 19-20). These statements serve to support one of the major themes of the poem:
favourite out of the poems is Valentine as I feel it does show a very
A sonnet is a fixed patterned poem that expresses a single, complete thought or idea. Sonnet comes from the Italian word “sonetto”, which means “little song”. Poem, on the other hand, is English writing that has figurative language, and written in separate lines that usually have a repeated rhyme, but don’t all the time. The main and interesting thing is that these two poems or sonnets admire and compare the beauty of a specific woman, with tone, repetition, imagery, and sense of sound.
The poem says that "since feeling is first" (line 1) the one who pays attention to the meaning of things will never truly embrace. The poem states that it is better to be a fool, or to live by emotions while one is young. The narrator declares that his "blood approves" (line 7) showing that his heart approves of living by feeling, and that the fate of feeling enjoyment is better than one of "wisdom" (line 9) or learning. He tells his "lady" (line 10) not to cry, showing that he is speaking to her. He believes that she can make him feel better than anything he could think of, because her "eyelids" (line 12) say that they are "for each other" (line 13). Then, after all she's said and thought, his "lady" forgets the seriousness of thought and leans into the narrator's arms because life is not a "paragraph" (line 15), meaning that life is brief. The last line in the poem is a statement which means that death is no small thi...
The types of love in a poem can be reflected in many ways. One of