James Dickey vs. Tennyson James Dickey's "On the Hill Below the Lighthouse" best reminds me of the Lord Alfred Tennyson. Upon first reading Dickey's poem, a deep yearning and sentimental emotion is achieved. There is a great sense of not regret but of something that the narrator longs for. This can be seen in the last stanza of the poem. "Now that I can be sure of my sleep; The moon is held strongly within it. A woman comes true when I think her. Shade swings, and she lies against me. Let us lie in the returning light; Let us lie where your angel is walking, Coming back, coming back, going over." It is not until this last stanza that I completely feel the concept of nostalgia. Here it can be seen that there was once a woman that the narrator had deep feelings for and he recalls how she used to lie next to him in the light of the lighthouse's beam. The last line, "coming back, coming back, going over" is almost like a unifying device for the whole poem. It almost seems that the narrator is recalling the woman that was from his past and replaying the whole scene of when they were together in his head all over again. And it is also this quality of recollection that has reminded so much of Tennyson. In Tennyson's "Tears, Idle Tears," a strong sense of nostalgia is perceived. In the last line of every stanza there are the words, "...the days that are no more." This appears to be the unifying device that connects this poem together. However, in this poem, there seems to be a sense of regret. Unlike Dickey's poem, this poem is much more sad and more depressing. It appears that this poem was the reaction of the death of a loved one. Tennyson explains in his first stanza that as he looks into the autumn fields, he recalls of happy days with a loved one that will no longer happen anymore. "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more." Both poems do not contain any hope in relationships because there longer are any relationships. In both "On the Hill Below the Lighthouse" and "Tears, Idle tears" there is only the memory of the loved one that is inside the heart.
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
as told from the point of view of a friend serving as pall bearer. The poem
In line three, she says the ferry "smelled like a stable." We know now that smell is the strongest sense tied to memory, so a certain smell can cause a memory to flood back to mind as if it were right there, happening right now, all over again. It is personal and ta...
Using Yusef Komunyakaa's poem "Facing It" and "Ghost of a Ghost," Brad Leithauser's one can see that there are certain moments in life when an incident is so powerful, emotionally or physically. Some of these moments when we look back tend to be viewed in a black and white perception. In Komunyakaa's poem "Facing It," this sense of nostalgia is shown through traumatizing flashbacks of war when visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial site. In "Ghost of a Ghost," a man is upset that his family has moved on since his death. In these poems, one character wishes they could go back to the days he once knew and the other wants to leave behind any memory of his past experience.
In his early years, Alfred Tennyson was a strong but struggling poet with love and passion for his poetry. He went to college to pursue his poetic career and refine his skills. Education played a big hand in his achievement of success. Richard J. Dunn makes evident that “Tennyson earned his position in literature because of the remarkable range of his talents and his dedication throughout his long career to perfecting his art” (166d). After receiving a prestigious Chancellor’s gold medal award in 1829, Tennyson released a book of his poems in 1830 followed by his second book three year...
The poem is told in the first person point of view. Being told in this point of view creates a narrative and conversational feeling when reading the poem. In addition, The speaker begins the poem with simple sentences; each sentence contains a subject and a predicate, nothing more. In this part of the poem, there is a nostalgic, reminiscent tone. The speaker remembers back to the days when she was in love with her Meema’s blanket. The speaker looks back to a time when she “planned to inherit / the blanket, how [her and her sister] used to wrap ourselves / at play in its folds” (9-11). The beginning part of the poem, the speaker reflects back on her past, which is represented by simple sentences. However, as the poem progress, the sentence structure shifts. The sentences go from simple sentences to more complex sentences. With each memory, the sentences begin to grow longer; through this transition, clauses and prepositional phrases are included which shift the tone of the poem. The poem shifts from a nostalgic tone to a more dream-like tone. In this section of the poem, the speaker moves on from remembering the past to focussing about the future. In this dream-like trance, the speaker believes that while she is “under this quilt / [she’d] dream of [her]self … within the dream of
Still, the authentic motivation that drives this persona to want to recreate and improve all of the events that seemingly fade away from his memory over the course of the poem is nostalgia and the power that it imposes, in this case by means of regret. The relationship between the speaker and his lover appeared to be afflicted with struggles, as observed from the lines “the weight of her” which he had to deal with, and the previous incident of him “forgetting her phone number” (“palindrome” 8, 9-10). Nevertheless, the affection that the speaker claims to feel for the girl is profound, as she remains in his memory in a foreign fashion, where her name “flips on a page, or in [his] mouth” and the speaker realizes that “[he] never knew words could do that” (“palindrome” 26-27). It seems as though here is an artificial sense of love or attraction that the speaker conjures up as he looks back into the past, which links him to this memory of his first romance. Subsequently, there also appears to be an absence that exists and a void that has been left unfilled, which influences his thoughts and emotions. All in all, the fact that the speaker remains absorbed by the presence of this female in his life perpetuates the notion that nostalgia triggers his emotions’ chronic and cyclical
The concept of loss is a notable theme in poetry, whether its about love, beauty or even
experience he encountered, is all still too vivid and will never leave his mind no matter how hard he tries
To me the poem seems like a lament for the poverty of these people and
I think that the poem has a specific meaning that symbolizes the life of a girl who compares her life to grass. This
In conclusion, the poem helps you to realize and accept that just like birth is natural, death is a natural process in life. No matter what, death is inevitable. But instead of holding on to the sad memories, you can use the happier memories to cope and deal with the loss of a loved one or family pet. However, you are able to be at peace with the fact that you loved them until the end.
The imagery used is not obvious in the first stanza. In the second stanza, the line "so Eden sank to grief" can help the reader visualize a garden filled with many plants that are wilting from the fall.
The last two lines of the first stanza steer away from the theme of the first three, but continue to portray a distressing feeling of loss. The text takes a self-described happy scene and even that becomes warped into a presumably sad thought process. This referral the days past still gives the impression of having lost something
He wants vengeance against death because he can no longer communicate with his dead friend. This anger anchors the speaker by allowing him to focus on something other than his grief over the loss of his friend. During the next stage of grief, bargaining, an individual wants life to return to the way it was before the loss of a loved one. Depression can be seen in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam A. H. H.” For example, in Canto 46 the speaker writes, “A lifelong tract of time revealed; / The fruitful hours of still increase; /