William Shakespeare 's 'Sonnet 73 ' highlights the continuous anxiety; of speaker the due to the inevitability of old age. Through various poetic techniques Shakespeare underlines that the deterioration of time is arbitrary; and it therefore naturally decays beauty and life. However there is a sense that he expresses love as a stronger force which overcomes the constant decline of youth and time. This is strongly represented by the use of seasonal imagery. Similarly, John Donne utilizes formal aspects in 'A Valediction Forbidding Mourning ' to convey the same view of the strong force of love. Unlike, Shakespeare 's constant reflection on deterioration; Donne presents arguments to reassure his lover that their love can overcome all aspects. …show more content…
Verbs like 'melt ' imply a gentle parting. He does this to add to the sympathy that the poem reflects, thus reassuring his lover that he will come back to her when he leaves. The regular iambic tetrameter and the ABAB rhyme scheme echo 's the emotional strength that Donne feels his love has. Differently, 'Sonnet 73 ' creates a morbid tone due to the constant reference to degeneration. The ABAB rhyme scheme creates the sense of certainty that after time fades so does beauty, and thus this therefore leads to …show more content…
In 'Twickernham Garden ' Donne cleverly uses a spider as the conceit of the poem to comment on the nature of love, to emphasise that just like a spider love traps you insidiously and leaves you helpless. As well as that there is religious connotations to transubstantiation and manna and serpents. By doing this Donne finds another way to create an effective poem in emphasising his meaning and thoughts. The Major conceit in 'A Valediction Forbidding Mourning ' is that of a compass. Samuel Johnson a fellow poet, who coined the term metaphysical poetry criticised Donne by stating that 'the poem 's compass analogy highlights the violence used by metaphysical poets to force the most heterogeneous ideas together. Disagreeing with this statement, Donne 's use of the compass to reinforce the idea that their souls are like the legs of the compass, even though they will physically separate he will always come back as they create something perfect 'Thy firmness makes my circle just and make me end where I begun '. The conceit reassures his lover that it is inevitable that he will return because they are joined spiritually, mentally and physically, and their love is strong because he will always come back to
John Donne uses poetry to explore his own identity, express his feelings, and most of all, he uses it to deal with the personal experiences occurring in his life. Donne's poetry is a confrontation or struggle to find a place in this world, or rather, a role to play in a society from which he often finds himself detached or withdrawn. This essay will discuss Donne's states of mind, his views on love, women, religion, his relationship with God; and finally how the use of poetic form plays a part in his exploration for an identity and salvation.
Comparing Philosophies of Donne's To His Mistress and Herrick's Corrina Going A-Maying. The seventeenth century in England produced two varying schools of poetic philosophy which included the metaphysical and the cavalier. While the metaphysical poets, comprised of the artists who followed John Donne's use of the metaphysical conceit, tended to reinforce the traditional forms of love and devotion, the cavalier poets, led by Ben Johnson, intellectualized the themes of their poetry. Both metaphysical and cavalier poets such as John Donne and Robert Herrick experimented with poetry of seduction, dramatic verse from a male lover attempting to persuade his beloved.
Death is merely being controlled by things like fate, which is the only way he can act. He has no way to move on his own without these other forces. Like with war, death is the result, not the cause: death cannot physically make people fight. This comparison devalues death in its importance and therefore its necessity. John Donne’s use of metaphors and personifications in his poem emphasizes his belief that death is not as bad as people think it really is, but can actually be advantageous.
The Norton Anthology: English Literature gives a summary of John Donne’s work as follows: “John Donne’s poems abound with startling images, some of them exalting and others grotesque. With his strange and playful intelligence, expressed in puns, paradoxes, and the elaborately sustained metaphors known as ‘conceits,’ Donne has enthralled and sometimes enraged readers from his day to our own. The tired clichés of love poetry—cheeks li...
In both ‘The Sun Rising’ and ‘The Good Morrow’ Donne presents the experience of love, in a typical Metaphysical style, to engage his reader through sharing his own experiences. These poems show distinctive characteristics of Metaphysical poems which involve colloquial diction, drawing inventive imagery from unconventional sources, passionately analysing relationships and examining feelings. Donne presents the experience of love through conceits, Metaphysical wit, language techniques and imagery, in a confident tone using logical argument. The impact of Donne’s use of direct and idiomatic language shows the reader how he feels about a woman and ultimately love.
William Shakespeare’s sonnets are renowned as some of the greatest poetry ever written. He wrote a total of 154 sonnets that were published in 1609. Shakespearean sonnets consider similar themes including love, beauty, and the passing of time. In particular, William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 75 and Sonnet 116 portray the theme of love through aspects of their form and their display of metaphors and similes. While both of these sonnets depict the theme of love, they have significantly contrasting ideas about the same theme.
Sonnet 71 is one of 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare, and although it may rank fairly low on the popularity scale, it clearly demonstrates a pessimistic and morbid tone. With the use of metaphors, personification, and imagery this sonnet focuses on the poet’s feelings about his death and how the young should mourn him after he has died. Throughout the sonnet, there appears to be a continual movement of mourning, and with a profound beauty that can only come from Shakespeare. Shakespeare appeals to our emotional sense of “feeling” with imagery words like vile, dead, be forgot, and decay, and we gain a better understanding of the message and feelings dictated by the speaker.
In the poem, Donne structures each stanza individually as a different personification of love. In the first stanza, Donne compares love to a plague when he says, “Yet not that love so soon decays…that I have had the plague…” (3/6) It is the latter line that Donne implements his use of imagery and conceit. Love is not often compared with “the plague” and this is a very strong interpretation. However while these two images seem different, they do interconnect through the pain and anguish that love can foster. This first comparison of Donne’s is very ef...
John Donne's use of deep religious themes, unique poetic devices, and vivid imagery create a stunning and convicting poem. Donne's talents are on full display as he moves through each line with such beauty and simplicity. One can easily imagine his sorrow and pain as he penned the words of this poem and poured his heart into it. Donne's work reminds readers of the sorrow of sin, the necessity of forgiveness, and the hope of restoration. Although he focuses on anguish and sorrow, his message is truly one of joy and hope. All who take his words to heart find internal peace and rejoice in the mercy of their
In Sonnet number one-hundred sixteen Shakespeare deals with the characteristics of a love that is “not time’s fool”, that true love that will last through all (Ln: 9). This sonnet uses the traditional Shakespearian structure of three quatrains and a couplet, along with a standard rhyme scheme. The first and third quatrains deal with the idea that love is “an ever-fixed mark”, something that does not end or change over time (Ln: 5). Shakespeare illustrates this characteristic of constancy through images of love resisting movemen...
While Shakespeare and Spenser have their own sonnet forms and different rhyme schemes, the topics in which they write about in “Sonnet 18” and “Sonnet 75” possess many similarities. A major theme in both of the sonnets is the idea of immortal love. Both sonnets straightforwardly mention the idea of love eternalizing, defying all of time, and conquering all obstacles. Spenser unmistakably mentions that “whenas death shall al the world subdue, our love shall live, and later life renew”. Correspondingly, Shakespeare declares that his and the subject’s love “shall not fade,” but continue to grow. When it comes to a matter of love defying time, both sonnets remain in synchronization, expressing that even with death, love will go on and remain forever, through poetry and memory. Spenser conveys his lover as one who “shall live by fame”, because through “[his] verse [her] virtues rare shall eternalize”. Evidently, Shakespeare believes that as history writes itself, he and his subject’s love will become one with time because “when in et...
John Donne will not accept death as the finale, his religious conviction supports in the belief of eternal life proceeding death. Throughout the poem Donne’s main purpose was the personification of death, his use of figurative language gave death humanistic characteristics and made death vulnerable and unintimidating. The structure of three quatrains and a couplet for the poem allowed for easier understanding of the context because the layout and rhyme scheme helped the poem flow and also revealed the tones. The imagery of death described by Donne breaks down death’s pride and bravado, as well as shine an encouraging light past the process of dying, on to the hope of delivery to eternal life. Each element played a significant role in the interpretation of the paradox of the poem, that ultimately death is not the universal destroyer of life.
John Donne is known as being one of the most famous and influential metaphysical poets. The term “metaphysical," as applied to English and continental European poets of the seventeenth century, was used by Augustan poets John Dryden and Samuel Johnson to reprove those poets for their “unnaturalness.” As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, however, “The unnatural, that too is natural," and the metaphysical poets continue to be studied and revered for their intricacy and originality. Due to Donne’s personal experiences with spirituality and love, he is able to grasp the true meaning of metaphysical poetry (Brief Guide to Metaphysical Poets). Using all the aspects of metaphysical poetry, Donne creates a mysterious metaphoric poem titled, “The Flea.” Throughout this poem, the use of metaphors and breaks into the separate stanzas allow for the audiences to understand what The Flea is really about. At first glance, many read The Flea as a poem that compares sexual intimacy with an animal, but when broken down, it can be seen that the meaning is much deeper than intimacy, but it
John Donne lived in an era when the lyric was at its pinnacle. Poets were writing well-rounded, almost musical poetry on subjects that ranged from all kinds of love to enchantment with nature. Donne could not help but revolt against this excess of fluency and melody. John Donne's style stands in such sharp contrast to the accepted Elizabethan lyrical style that it becomes difficult to accept the fact that his works date from the same era. To highlight this statement, one has to compare a typical Elizabethan lyric to one of Donne's works.
In the beginning of the poem Donne is calling the sun an “old fool” and “unruly”, which shows that he is not grateful for the sun shining through their window and waking them up. The second line and third line, “why dost thou thus? Through windows, and through curtains call on us”, asking the sun why he is awaking him and his lover by coming through the curtains and interrupting their blissful night. He asks another question, “must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?” asking if lovers have to get up just because the sun has risen. Donne uses the words “saucy, pedantic wretch” to now describe the sun, saying that the sun has power some people but not him and his lover. He then goes on to tell the sun to go “chide” the people it still has power over like, children going to school who are late and apprentices who have overslept and are “sour” about it. The sun should be an indication to the huntsmen that the king will want go out and ride and the sun will also indicate to the “ants” that it is a good day to harvest their crops. The sun should not be waking up the lovers, because love does not change