When reading the title, we often associate a love song as something jaunty, pleasureable, and celebrating, or its other extreme, regretting, nostalgic, and full of pity for the singer’s troubles in love. With Williams the singer, the main idea revolves around the concept of an incomplete union in first person point of view, which makes the reading more personal as the reader is using I instead you or he. From this concept stem the ideas that this poem is about hopelessness or happiness, communal sex or masturbation. Delving into history, literary techniques, association with the author, and own opinion of it, there is easily more to it than meets the eye. 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”. For those who disagree, it also appears to be about a lover who perceives the world through love which he finds in sunlight.
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker starts by telling the reader the place, time and activity he is doing, stating that he saw something that he will always remember. His description of his view is explained through simile for example “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets of their branches” (Updike), captivating the reader’s attention
There are multiple examples of visual imagery in this poem. An example of a simile is “curled like a possum within the hollow trunk”. The effect this has is the way it creates an image for the reader to see how the man is sleeping. An example of personification is, “yet both belonged to the bush, and now are one”. The result this has is how it creates an emotion for the reader to feel
It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.” -pg. 85
The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and
In Muir’s essay his tone remains calm and happy as he explains the struggles he faced while looking for the Calypso. He talks about the control the Calypso has over him as he states at one point in his essay, “It seems wonderful that so frail and lovely a plant has such power over human hearts.” In this statement Muir is describing to his audience that the Calypso has a strong controller over his feelings because of its beauty. Wordsworth also uses various positive tones when describing his relationship with nature. In Wordsworth's poem he states that his “heart with pleasure fills” at the sight of the daffodils. This statement shows the audience that the sight of the daffodils makes Wordsworth’s heart fill with pleasure and delight as he examines their beauty. The audience is also shown how Wordsworth’s tone changes when he is separated from the daffodils, as it quickly changes from being joyous to being depressing. This quick shift in tone can be seen in the first stanza when Wordsworth says, “I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills,” this statement allows the audience to see that Wordsworth is sad and depressed when he is not accompanied by the daffodils, which shows that Wordsworth has a codependent relationship with
This is a complex poem. She even began with a complex idea, love. What exactly is love? Is it a feeling, an emotion that no one has control of? Is love something you can feel or touch? Some say it is not something that you can feel or touch, but you are well aware when love touches you, because you can feel it. It is an emotion that causes pleasure and pain. In this poem, Millay is showing how complex love is. The first half is about what love cannot do. Love is not a lifesaver, shelter, or a doctor. The second half is about the power of love. Even though love is not tangible, is it as important as something that is? Millay seems to be coming from the idea that love is not everything, but it is important. A question is raised, is love necessary for survival?
The phrasing of this poem can be analyzed on many levels. Holistically, the poem moves the father through three types of emotions. More specifically, the first lines of the poem depict the father s deep sadness toward the death of his son. The line Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy creates a mental picture in my mind (Line 1). I see the father standing over the coffin in his blackest of outfits with sunglasses shading his eyes from the sun because even the sun is too bright for his day of mourning. The most beautiful scarlet rose from his garden is gripped tightly in his right hand as tears cascade down his face and strike the earth with a splash that echoes like a scream in a cave, piercing the ears of those gathered there to mourn the death of his son.
The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, a poem created by the late T.S. Eliot was a poet in the 20th Century (when Europe was at its peak of industrialisation) and this is considered to be one of his highly regarded pieces alongside The Wasteland. This poem is a monologue of the persona of J. Alfred Prufrock, (the speaker of the poem) a middle aged man, intellectual and described with little self-confidence with himself who has problems in dealing with self-image and anxiety. He’s a solitary man who is achingly shy and has little courage, when isolated, he isn’t subjected to a social lifestyle and this halts him when it comes to speaking with a female. The title to me is ironic, Eliot titled it a ‘Lovesong’, therefore, the language used in the poem cements a theme of pessimism, as hardly anything is written on love.
The title of this poem makes us think that this is going to be a love story with him and a significant other. But these expectations are not fulfilled by the text starting in the introductory epigraph. The title is completely ironic because this is not a “love song”, yet this story is about a depressed, lonely and weak man. The title makes us think that this poem is going to be a serious love song about J. Alfred Prufrock, but instead it is more of a fake love song. From the third line of the poem he shows a man who is unable to communicate, much less sing, “love songs” to anyone.
The main line that directs the poems feelings is "The wraith of Love's sweet Rose is here, It haunts me everywhere! ". The ghost of "Love's sweet rose" is in my life and mind. The ghost of that rose is in my presents and is with her everywhere she goes.
Love has many definitions and can be interpreted in many different ways. William Maxwell demonstrates this in his story “Love”. Maxwell opens up his story with a positive outlook on “Love” by saying, “Miss Vera Brown, she wrote on the blackboard, letter by letter in flawlessly oval palmer method. Our teacher for fifth grade. The name might as well have been graven in stone” (1). By the end of the story, the students “love” for their teachers no longer has a positive meaning, because of a turn in events that leads to a tragic ending. One could claim that throughout the story, Maxwell uses short descriptive sentences with added details that foreshadow the tragic ending.
These three metaphors exemplify beauty, but also an end to nature and life. Death is slowly creeping up to him and taking over his life as realized in this comparison of him to nature. The poem shows the need to seize the moment in life before death. The last couplet talks about the topic of love and the power of it. Love lasts through the struggles in life, and the changes of seasons. Love of life keeps us from realizing that an end will eventually come. “This thou perciev’st, which makes thy love more strong.” Encompasses the idea that although everything comes to an end, love still fuels everything within a person. He realizes everything will come to an end and death is inevitable but the passion is still
Will's beloved is "more lovely and more temperate (18.2)" than a summer's day; "the tenth Muse (38.9);" "'Fair,' 'kind,' and 'true' (105.9);" the sun that shines "with all triumphant splendor (33.10)." We've heard all this before. This idealization of the loved one is perhaps the most common, traditional feature of love poetry. Taken to its logical conclusion, however, idealized love has some surprising implications.
And “make our visit” indicates that he is on his way to social occasions. All of these settings and details in the second stanza does not seem to make any sense individually, but as a whole, they actually convey the narrator’s depression and loneliness toward his boring surroundings. In addition, in the next stanza, the speaker of the poem says, “the room the women come and go. Talking of Michelangelo.” At this plot, the narrator of the poem just skims over the communications among upper-class women. However, when to compare his preference toward the upper-class women who are trying to pose themselves as lovers of culture with the shantytown mentioned above, an obvious strong contrast is formed invisibly. Similarly, in the fourth stanza, the speaker of the poem asserts,，“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes”, the setting here indicates the speaker’s extremely empty and boring emotions, when the dusk comes. In conclusion, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a love song without love. It’s more like a realism of plain folks who live in the oppressive and depressing modern industrialized
To conclude, William Wordsworth uses form and syntax and figurative language to stress on his mental journey, and to symbolize the importance of the beauty and peace of nature. In my opinion, the poet might have written this poem to show his appreciation towards nature. The poem has a happy mood especially when the poet is discussing the daffodils. In this poem the daffodils are characterized as more than flowers, but as humans “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (line 6). In addition, the poet mentioned himself to be part of nature since nature inspires him to write and think. Therefore, the reason that the poet wrote this poem was to express the feeling of happiness in his mental journey in nature.