Analyzing Poetry

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Analyzing Poetry

It is possible to compare and contrast poetry from different literary periods by selecting a poem from each period and examining its use of structure, style, and imagery to enhance its theme. In the Elizabethan period, "Lullaby," by Richard Rowlands; in the Romantic period, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Youth and Age;" in the Victorian period, "A Child's Laughter," by Algernon Charles Swinburne; and in the Modern period, Jessica Hagedorn's "Sorcery," the reader will come to the conclusion that they have minor similarities as well as significant differences in the areas of structure, style, theme and imagery.

The Romantic poem called "Youth and Age," by Samuel T. Coleridge and the Modern poem, "Sorcery," by Jessica Hagedorn are similar in structure. Out of these two poems, neither one of them have stanzas that have a set number of lines, nor do they have set rhyme schemes. For example in "Youth and Age," there are three stanzas which contain at first seventeen lines, then twenty-one lines and finally eleven lines. In comparison, "Sorcery" has seven stanzas with a varying number of lines in each stanza. Thus, these poems are free verses.

In Algernon C. Swinburne's "A Child's Laughter," he uses his own particular rhyme scheme to portray the message of his poem. Each stanza consists of five lines and every fifth line rhymes. For example, in the fifth line of the first stanza the speaker states, "All sweet sounds together" and in the fifth line of the second stanza the speaker states, "Wind in warm wan weather." In Richard Rowlands' "Lullaby" there is also a pattern. Each stanza consists of six lines and every fifth and sixth line is the same through out the poem. These repeated lines are as foll...

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...w "Friendship is a sheltering tree…the joys that came down shower like, Of friendship, Love and Liberty, Ere I was old." The speaker feels that life's joys of friendship, love and liberty are appreciated more when you are older. One poet is expressing the love that a parent has for his child and the other is expressing the affects of growing old, so again, the imagery in each poem helps the poet to develop his message. In conclusion, after each period has undergone careful study, one discovers that in the modern poem, "Sorcery," by Jessica Hagedorn, the theme is the most effective. The poet's use of imagery and choice of language makes the theme easier for the audience to comprehend, than that of any other period. The other poets' messages seem unclear because their uses of imagery and chooses language only make the themes of the poems more confusing.

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