Analysis Of The Poem Tears Idle Tears

886 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Theme of death in poetry

Maya Savoie-O'Hara
Tears, Idle Tears
Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote the poem Tears, Idle Tears explaining his hardships and heartbreak. In this poem, he is talking about a loved one leaving him and a controlling relationship. I know this because he keeps reflecting on the past, he also talks a lot about love and lost happiness.
My first reason that he is talking about heartbreak is that he does a lot of reflecting and comparing of the past and present. This shows that he is nostalgic about what he had and is reminiscing about what he had that he now knows is lost forever. Even the title says that he knows his tears are wasted, they are pointless yet he cannot help them from flooding his bloodshot eyes and rolling down his puffy cheeks because …show more content…

What this means is that the days with her are over and he now leads an empty life because as mentioned before, he is dead inside because of his overwhelming devastation. Others may interpret as he is actually dying or someone he cared for died. I know that this is not what he is talking about because how would you explain That brings our friends from the underworld or On lips that are for others. If it is his loved one that is dying then how would her lips be made for others? Dead people will have no need for lips. However if it is him that is dying it would make sense although the line That brings friends from the underworld would not.

Finally, I think that in the poem Tears, Idle Tears by Alfred Lord Tennyson was talking about a lover that left him because; he reflects a lot on a happier past, he talks about a fresh start, he is dying inside due to grief, he talks about lips that are for others (he would not bring up kisses and lips if he were not talking about a lover), and finally, some of the lines would not make sense if it were not about someone he loved who left

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of First Poem For You

    940 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kim Addonizio’s “First Poem for You” portrays a speaker who contemplates the state of their romantic relationship though reflections of their partner’s tattoos. Addressing their partner, the speaker ambivalence towards the merits of the relationship, the speaker unhappily remains with their partner. Through the usage of contrasting visual and kinesthetic imagery, the speaker revels the reasons of their inability to embrace the relationship and showcases the extent of their paralysis. Exploring this theme, the poem discusses how inner conflicts can be powerful paralyzers.

    Read More

  • Penelope Shuttle's Poem 'In The Kitchen'

    294 Words  | 1 Pages

    This poem reflects on how when you lose someone you truly care about it affects you mentally. When we lose someone who we're really close to, we tend to hold a grudge and start questioning our love for the world. We lose ourselves when we

    Read More

  • Poem Analysis: Ballad By Sonia Sanchez

    558 Words  | 2 Pages

    The most preeminent quality of Sonia Sanchez “Ballad” remains the tone of the poem, which paints a didactic image. Sanchez is trying to tell this young people that we know nix about love as well as she is told old for it. In an unclear setting, the poem depicts a nameless young women and Sanchez engaged in a conversation about love. This poem dramatizes the classic conflict between old and young. Every old person believes they know more then any young person, all based on the fact that they have been here longer then all of us. The narrative voice establishes a tone of a intellectual understanding of love unraveling to the young women, what she comprehends to love is in fact not.

    Read More

  • Explication Of Sharon Olds Poem, "Late Poem To My Father"

    1000 Words  | 2 Pages

    trauma can have on someone, even in adulthood. The speaker of the poem invokes sadness and

    Read More

  • I Ll Open The Window Analysis

    453 Words  | 1 Pages

    ‘When we Two Parted’ by Lord Byron and ‘I’ll Open the Window’ by Anna Swirszczynska, are both poems about unrequited love. Although both poems are about leaving someone and feeling alone, ‘When we Two Parted’ is about the lover of the speaker leaving them, while ‘I’ll Open the Window’ is about the speaker leaving their lover. ‘When we Two Parted’ shows how the speaker still has feelings for the woman that his left him and he feels sorrow as he cannot tell anyone as his love was possibly an affair. On the other hand ‘I’ll Open the Window’ talks about how the speaker does not feel the same about her lover as she once did in the past. In the poem the first line is “our embrace lasted too long. / we loved right down to the bone” this shows how

    Read More

  • Themes Of Isolation In Grass By Carl Sandburg

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    Loss and isolation are easy, yet difficult to write about. They are easy because every human being can empathize with loneliness. If someone denies this, they are lying because loneliness is a common feeling, anyone can relate. It’s hard because we don’t discuss loneliness or loss publicly very often, and when we do, we forget about it quickly. These poems contrast each other by speaking of the different types of loneliness and isolation, distinguishing between the ones of loss, and isolation in a positive perspective.

    Read More

  • Fickleness Of The Human Heart In Pablo Neruda's If You Forget Me

    434 Words  | 1 Pages

    The speaker seems to divide his thoughts into three parts: what she knows about their relationship, what would happen if she left him, and what would happen if she were to continue to love him. While the language used in the poem is very romantic with magnificent imagery of autumn leaves, ocean shores, and blooming flowers, the meaning conveyed is not romantic. Instead of expressing a love that would last even unrequited, the speaker explains the reality and selfishness of love. If she forgot him, he would have already forgotten her first.

    Read More

  • Literary Elements in Emily Bronte´s Poem Remembrance

    1047 Words  | 3 Pages

    Emily Bronte’s Remembrance is about one who is reminiscing a lost love who had died. It is an elegy poem which is “a poem that laments the death of a person, or one that is simply sad and thoughtful.” Remembrance is also a lyric poem in which “expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet.” The poem reflects the historical context of the 18th century and expresses the romanticism of the Victorian era. Bronte has influenced her 18th century audience and 21st century audience to connect to the tone and mood of the poem through the literary devices she has used, such as imagery and repetition. Through her use of these literary elements, Bronte has created a sense of heartache and remembrance for those who have experienced similar loss to the loss present in the poem. For me personally, these elements, along with the romanticism she has included, make me appreciate my life in that I have not yet experienced this heartache, and encourages me to realise how fortunate I am to have people in my life in which have a similar love for me as the speaker has for their lover.

    Read More

  • The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe

    1752 Words  | 4 Pages

    ... be casting stones, or holding a conversation. The speaker of the poem does not move on from this emotional torment, yet I do feel as if in his quest for closure he does resolve some of the tumultuous feelings he does have in regard to losing his love.

    Read More

  • Sympathy In Andrew Jackson's 'Tears Of A Tiger'

    944 Words  | 2 Pages

    The young man is continually talking about his feelings about being depressed, empty, and having horrible feelings. He writes poetry for one assignment, and we all know that poetry can capture true pain and sadness. The poetry that Andy writes evinces that emotional torture. His poem is called “Poem of Hope” and is on page 57 stating, “It’s dark where I am. And I cannot find the light. There are shadows all around me. And my heart is full of fright. (Lines 1-4) … I cannot see the future. And I cannot change the past. But the present is so heavy. I don’t think I’m going to last. (Lines 9-12)” It is fairly evident that he is talking about how his life is dark without any light, and he’s fearful of if he can handle all of his problems because of how much it is weighing on his shoulders. He will soon explode after so much pressure and negative build up. It is a metaphorical representation of how he truly feels. Next Andrew says how he feels in another, painful way on page 123. “It was dark, so I couldn’t see, and I was under the water, so I couldn’t breathe. I tried to scream, but water got into my mouth and my throat and my chest. I was crying out for help, but my cries only made things worse. That’s how I feel tonight, Mom. That’s exactly how I feel tonight. (Lines 21-26)” The water represents the suffering that he is experiencing;

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

    1575 Words  | 4 Pages

    The idea of losing a loved is a powerful emotion and one that virtually every person can relate to. It was with this concept in mind that Edgar Allan Poe crafted his classic narrative poem “The Raven.” For some, poetry acts as a means to express different ideals, either social, intellectual, or philosophical. For Edgar Allan Poe, poetry was at its best when it conveyed beauty through the expression of simple yet powerful emotion. In Poe’s mind, there was no purer manifestation of poetic beauty than the deep emotion felt from the loss of a beloved woman. Is with this in mind the Poe employs setting, tone, and symbolism to relate the powerful emotion of never-ending despair to connect with his audience in the classic poem “The Raven.”

    Read More

  • Essay on Adam's Curse - Everyone's Fate, Everyone's Tragedy

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...s despair in accepting that his and his lover's fate was to grow "As weary-hearted as that hollow moon" (38). The fact that this line, and not a happy, upbeat ending, closes the poem further emphasizes the tragedy.

    Read More

  • Love Song By William Carlos Williams

    1587 Words  | 4 Pages

    My first and immediate explanation for the poem was an address from one lover to a loved one, where distance became a factor in their relationship. The lover has it far worse than the desired partner and the solitude builds nothing but longing for this person at a time when his love is the greatest. He says " What have I to say to you when we shall meet?... I am alone" with my head knocked against the sky”. He further asks, “How can I tell if I shall ever love you again as I do now?” There is uncertainty because he is wondering over the next encounter with his loved one. He says, “I lie here thinking of you” and is compelling when he wants the loved one to see him in the 5th stanza and what love is doing to his state of mind. He is hopeless and expresses it by asking questions he is unsure of, conveying his troubled state. Williams enforces imagery along with sound effects to demonstrate the despair of the man in a realm that is almost dreamlike with purple skies,spoiled colors, and birds. Stating he is alone and that his head collides with the sky may underline the man’s confusion. He also uses imagery in the “stain of love as it eats into the leaves”, and saffron horned branches, vivid and easy-to-imagine images that captivate the reader. The line stating “a smooth purple sky” and this stain which is “spoiling the colours of the whole world” easily formulate a very distinct picture. Through consonance words like “eats” and “smears with saffron” become fiercer in the eyes of this lover as they cancel out a “smooth sky”.

    Read More

  • Funeral Blues Analysis Essay

    1109 Words  | 3 Pages

    Toward the end of the poem, Auden begins to use hyperboles to demonstrate how his world feels diminished after the passing of his lover. For instance, when Auden writes, “I thought that love would last for ever,” he is using a hyperbole because at some point we all die so therefore, by logical reason, it is impossible for a love to truly last forever. When Auden later writes, “Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,” he is expressing how his physical world too may as well be over because he has lost his one true love. In some aspects, he wants nature to heed his grief; “He wants the world to reflect the emptiness within him.” Auden has successfully incorporated the use of hyperboles throughout his poem Funeral Blues to further prove the harsh reality of how it feels for the love of your life to die and to be left with nothing but

    Read More

  • In Memoriam Alfred Lord Tennyson Analysis

    1477 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anger can be an anchor, allowing momentary structure to the nothingness of loss. The anger becomes a bridge, a connection to the deceased loved one. This connection made from anger feels better than nothing. According to Kübler-Ross, "When the first stage of denial cannot be maintained any longer, it is replaced by feelings of anger, rage, envy, and resentment'" (43). Anger can be seen subtly throughout Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam A. H. H.” For example, Canto 83 portrays the culminating anger that the speaker is battling over the loss of his friend. The speaker writes, “For this alone on Death I wreak / The wrath that garners in my heart; / He put our lives so far apart / We cannot hear each other speak” (1525- 1528). Within these lines the speaker is conveying his opinion that he has somehow been wronged by the death of his friend. He wants vengeance against death because he can no longer communicate with his dead friend. This anger is anchoring the speaker by allowing him to focus on something other than his grief over the loss of his

    Read More

More about Analysis Of The Poem Tears Idle Tears

Open Document