Romantic love is one that often leaves heartbreak in its wake. Many people confuse love and lust and often chase it to achieve happiness; not knowing that if the love is not fulfilled it only causes pain. “What lips my lips have Kissed” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, demonstrates that relationships are short-lived and leave a person with only pain. This is demonstrated through the use of metaphor, symbolism and imagery.
In this poem, Millay talks about the many past lovers she had in her life, using metaphor. The speaker says, “The rain is full of ghosts tonight that tap and sigh” (3-4). She is reminiscing over memories of her past lovers, who haunt her memory even after all these years. She goes on to say, “In my heart there stirs a quiet pain for unremembered lads that not again will turn to me at midnight with a cry” (6-8). She is upset about the fact that those people, men or women, will never be with her again. This shows us
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how even those relationships she had once do not exist anymore. The speaker misses the emotions that come with those relationships, as she doesn’t remember any relationship in particular but remembers just the feelings associated with it. From those emotions, know she only feels lonely after the exhilaration she received from those emotions. She further explains her point through the use of symbolism. She talks about the two opposing seasons, the extremes, which are summer and winter. Millay writes “Thus in winter stands the lonely tree” (9) and then at the end of the sonnet says “I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more” (13-14). Summer is alludes to passion and love, it is the time of regrowth and love. The particular love she had “sings in her no more” (14) because of the arrival of winter. Winter symbolizes the state of life she is in now. It is cold and lifeless, it symbolizes a life without love or human contact. The lonely tree that is mentioned represents Millay, or anyone who has felt the same as she has. The tree is left alone with no one to accompany it. The birds, which represent the past lovers, have left to find greener pastures. The lonely tree is like that because the season it is in leads to a lonely and separated life. Millay no longer has love as a part of her life, as she is the tree in the middle of winter. This shows us that love and emotions are fleeting, like the seasons, they are here for a while and then they are gone. Their removal from a person’s life leaves sadness and loneliness, just like it left loneliness in the speakers’ life. This shows us how Edna St. Vincent Millay used symbolism to emphasize how relationships are as short as seasons and leave a person lonely. The writer also uses imagery to show us the passionate love she experienced and then later on how her heart broke because she lost that.
Millay writes “what lips my lips have kissed” (1) in a passionate tone. She is proud about what happened in her past but misses it immensely. She continues to say that ‘arms have lain under my head till morning…’ (2-3), here she continues to talk about the passion and love she once experienced in life. Then we see that she no longer has this when she states that “but the rain is full of ghosts tonight that tap and sigh upon the glass and listen for reply, and in my heart there stirs a quiet pain…” (3-6). Those ghosts are memories of her past lovers that still haunt in her present. She further makes her point when she says “Thus in the winter stand the lonely tree” (9). This further emphasises how Millay is left alone in the bitter-cold, after the ending of the relationships. It is shown using imagery how Millay once had a passionate love but is now alone because those short relationships have
ended. In “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed” by Edna St. Vincent Millay the short life of relationships is discussed using metaphor, symbolism and imagery. This sonnet shows us the frail nature of relationships and how they leave loneliness at the end for those involved.
Love, partnership and commitment have been the subjects of a multitude of novels, plays poems, movies and great works of art. Throughout these works, the image of love and commitment in love have taken many different forms. Today, we easily recognize symbols of commitment in love to be items such as hearts, wedding bands, roses, etc. However, in literature, especially, more abstract and creative symbols of commitment to a loved one are often present. Additionally, the symbols of devotion that exist in literature do not always involve romantic love as opposed to many movies, painting and sculptures. For example, in the short story, “Saving Sourdi” by May-Lee Chai, symbols of loyalty to a loved one manifest between two sisters. In opposition to symbols of loyalty existing in a platonic manner as it does in “Saving Sourdi,” Peter Meinke’s “The Cranes,” provides symbols of commitment in an amorous relationship.
Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet, “What lips my lips have kissed and where and why,” is about being, physically or mentally jaded, and thinking back to the torrid love of one’s youth. The “ghosts” that haunt her are the many lovers of her past; she’s specifically trying to remember them all. She recalls the passion she experienced and how there was a certain feeling within herself. Millay shows this through her vivid imagery, use of the rain as a literary device and by paralleling herself with a lonely tree.
Millay is associating death with happiness. This unlikely comparison allows the reader to become relaxed about the hardships the author was facing in the earlier passages of the poem. As the earth gave way and Millay sank softly and perfectly six feet under the ground, the reader celebrates as if a runner was finally crossing the finish line. Comparing death to a successful situation is an unusual way of looking at the end of life. Yet, this view of death is a positive outlook and is quite wonderful as opposed to other literary views of death such as "death: the gatekeeper of hell who has conquered the Earth." Millay makes the reader believe that the sinking earth is more of a pair of open hands waiting to hold the weary soul of man. Death is a chance of catching up on that sleep that you never quite caught up on. Another image that Millay gives the reader is that of a mother embracing her child. Mother Earth welcomes home her tired child and allows him to rest his head upon her soft breast. She runs her hands through his hair and lays them on his brow as to cool him off. She whispers her tired child to sleep through the sweet and friendly sound of rain.
This poem holds many metaphors and symbols pertaining to how certain seasons make people feel. She compares the feeling of nature with her personal feelings of being alone after having so many lovers. In “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” Millay reminisces back to a time when she had one lover after another. She cries because she lost them all and instead of opening her heart to them and offering her love, she remained closed off and simply enjoyed the physical connections. Edna St. Vincent Millay may have imagined a speaker for this poem, but she makes it seem as if it is coming from her own personal experiences.
This poem dramatizes the conflict between love and lust, particularly as this conflict relates to what the speaker seems to say about last night. In the poem “Last Night” by Sharon Olds, the narrator uses symbolism and sexual innuendo to reflect on her lust for her partner from the night before. The narrator refers to her night by stating, “Love? It was more like dragonflies in the sun, 100 degrees at noon.” (2, 3) She describes it as being not as great as she imagined it to be and not being love, but lust. Olds uses lust, sex and symbolism as the themes in the story about “Last night”.
...ttachment or emotion. Again, Heaney repeats the use of a discourse marker, to highlight how vividly he remembers the terrible time “Next morning, I went up into the room”. In contrast to the rest of the poem, Heaney finally writes more personally, beginning with the personal pronoun “I”. He describes his memory with an atmosphere that is soft and peaceful “Snowdrops and Candles soothed the bedside” as opposed to the harsh and angry adjectives previously used such as “stanched” and “crying”. With this, Heaney is becoming more and more intimate with his time alone with his brother’s body, and can finally get peace of mind about the death, but still finding the inevitable sadness one feels with the loss of a loved one “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, indirectly telling the reader how young his brother was, and describing that how unfortunate the death was.
In Millay's poem " What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where and Why" she laments over lost lovers. Ironically, she is described as both fondly remembering and regretfully forgetting them. In the second and third lines, the speaker recalls the lips and arms, of the young men, that have embraced her in the past, rather than their faces, suggesting her ignorance of their identities or names. She continues, "the rain is full of ghosts tonight." (3-4) In this octave she uses raindrops hitting a windowpane to stand for the sighs of lost lovers. She also compares raindrops to ghosts as a metaphor for memories of lost lovers, whose absence she feels, though who have faded into a vague abyss. In this comparison, she also uses the windowpane to show the separation between the present and past, or a border which allows insight but not interference. She is able to look back at her past but not change anything she has done thus she can only reminisce and unfortunately only regret. She describes "a quiet pain" (6) in her heart "for unremembered lads" (6-7) emphasizing her loneliness and sorrow caused by these meaningless trysts. In the sestet Millay compares herself to a "lonely tree," (9) "with birds vanishing one by one" (10) and "boughs more silent than before." (11) The tree is an analogy for her lost chances at true love. The lack of leaves and singing birds on the boughs of the trees stand for the loss of youth and lovers. In the last few lines of the poem Millay's character realizes that nobody young desires the her, now that she has aged.
Love and affection is an indispensable part of human life. In different culture love may appear differently. In the poem “My god my lotus” lovers responded to each other differently than in the poem “Fishhawk”. Likewise, the presentation of female sexuality, gender disparity and presentation of love were shown inversely in these two poems. Some may argue that love in the past was not as same as love in present. However, we can still find some lovers who are staying with their partners just to maintain the relationship. We may also find some lovers having relationship only because of self-interest. However, a love relationship should always be out of self-interest and must be based on mutual interest. A love usually obtains its perfectness when it develops from both partners equally and with same affection.
Louise Mallard has not yet heard the news of her husband’s death. As the news is revealed to her she went into a state of unhappiness, and she had a hard time “accepting the significance” (463). She “wept at once” with “wild abandonment” and the “storm of grief” (463), passed over and she went alone to her bedroom with no one to follow her. The author describes in the previous sentence that the storm of grief has passed over her,
The Symposium, The Aeneid, and Confessions help demonstrate how the nature of love can be found in several places, whether it is in the mind, the body or the soul. These texts also provide with eye-opening views of love as they adjust our understanding of what love really is. By giving us reformed spectrum of love, one is able to engage in introspective thinking and determine if the things we love are truly worthy of our sentiment.
There exists no power as inexplicable as that of love. Love cannot be described in a traditional fashion; it is something that must be experienced in order for one to truly grasp its full enormity. It is the one emotion that can lead human beings to perform acts they are not usually capable of and to make sacrifices with no thought of the outcome or repercussions. Though love is full of unanswered questions and indescribable emotions, one of the most mystifying aspects of love is its timeless nature. Love is the one emotion, unlike superficial sentiments such as lust or jealousy, which can survive for years, or even generations. In the novel The Gargoyle, the author, Andrew Davidson, explores the idea of eternal love between two people, a union that spans over centuries spent both together and apart. Davidson, through the use of flashbacks, intricate plot development and foreshadowing, and dynamic characterization, creates a story that challenges the reader’s preconceived notions regarding whether eternal love can survive even when time’s inevitable grasp separates the individuals in question.
Love has the power to do anything. Love can heal and love can hurt. Love is something that is indescribable and difficult to understand. Love is a feeling that cannot be accurately expressed by a word. In the poem “The Rain” by Robert Creeley, the experience of love is painted and explored through a metaphor. The speaker in the poem compares love to rain and he explains how he wants love to be like rain. Love is a beautiful concept and through the abstract comparison to rain a person is assisted in developing a concrete understanding of what love is. True beauty is illuminated by true love and vice versa. In other words, the beauty of love and all that it entails is something true.
Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway both convey their ideas of love in their respective stories The Lady with the Pet Dog and Hills like White Elephants in different ways. However, their ideas are quite varying, and may be interpreted differently by each individual reader. In their own, unique way, both Chekhov and Hemingway evince what is; and what is not love. Upon proper contemplation, one may observe that Hemingway, although not stating explicitly what love is; the genius found in his story is that he gives a very robust example of what may be mistaken as love, although not being true love. On the other hand, Chekhov exposes love as a frame of mind that may only be achieved upon making the acquaintance of the “right person,” and not as an ideal that one may palpate at one instance, and at the another instance one may cease to feel; upon simple and conscious command of the brain. I agree with Hemingway’s view on love because it goes straight to the point of revealing some misconceptions of love.
Despite his position, Wordsworth can hear the “soft island murmur” of the mountain springs. As “five long winters” suggests, Wordsworth is cold and dreary—London, we must remember, is a bitter place. He longs for the islands: the sand, sun, and warm waters that those murmurs suggest. The coldness of winter could be brought about by Rebecca’s distance from her brother; they had been, at the time of the poem’s writing, separate for five long years. But he can hear reconciliation coming just at the edge of hearing: he can spot the horizon of friendship. But no sooner does friendship appear in the poem than it is thwarted by these lines:
The first reader has a guided perspective of the text that one would expect from a person who has never studied the short story; however the reader makes some valid points which enhance what is thought to be a guided knowledge of the text. The author describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman who seems to be the "victim" of an overbearing but occasionally loving husband. Being told of her husband's death, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." (This shows that she is not totally locked into marriage as most women in her time). Although "she had loved him--sometimes," she automatically does not want to accept, blindly, the situation of being controlled by her husband. The reader identified Mrs. Mallard as not being a "one-dimensional, clone-like woman having a predictable, adequate emotional response for every life condition." In fact the reader believed that Mrs. Mallard had the exact opposite response to the death her husband because finally, she recognizes the freedom she has desired for a long time and it overcomes her sorrow. "Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering." We can see that the reader got this idea form this particular phrase in the story because it illuminates the idea of her sorrow tuning to happiness.