The Comparison and Contrast of I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud & The Preservation of Flowers

1631 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Treatment of nature in poetry

‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ and ‘The Preservation of Flowers’: two notable poems, two very different styles of writing. This essay will look at their contrasts and similarities, from relevant formal aspects, to the deeper meanings hidden between the lines. We will look at both writers use of: rhyme scheme, sound patterning, word choice, figurative language and punctuation. The essay will also touch a little on the backgrounds of the writers: themselves, and their inspiration, with the intention of gaining a greater understanding of both texts.

The structure and form of both poems is evidently dissimilar. Wordsworth’s poem follows a clear rhyme scheme: ABABCC; and contains four stanzas of six lines each. In each stanza, the first line rhymes with the third, the second with the fourth and the stanza concludes with a rhyming couplet.

Bird’s sixteen line- narrative verse does not follow any formal rhyme scheme. She describes full rhyme as being “too strident”E1 for her personal taste. Choosing instead: to use consonance and near rhymes. Despite this seemingly unconventional style with which the poem is written, it does follow an iambic pentameter, with every line containing five stressed syllables, except line 13 which contains six.

‘Cer-tain cus-to-mers, he slips an ex-tra rose’13.

This is a very clever play on words, using the term ‘extra rose’ to mirror the extra syllable in the line. This patently demonstrates Bird’s astute understanding of structure and form. She explains –

“There's a poetry joke in there too - each line has five stresses, but the 'extra rose' line has six stresses. An extra rose, an extra stress.”E2.

This again presents another parallel to Wordsworth’s lyric, where the meter is not u...

... middle of paper ...

... he has a point. Contrary to this statement however, there remains the reality: that without dissection and close analysis, the true meanings encoded within these two texts, might remain perpetually esoteric.

Bibliography

.T Furniss & M Bath.

1996. Reading Poetry: an introduction. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

.Preface to Lyrical Ballads, in Wordsworth (1968) Lyrical ballads, pp. 241-72, 246. ‘Organic sensibility’ refers to the responsiveness of the senses.

See ‘The Tables Turned’, in Wordsworth (1968) The Lyrical Ballads, pp. 105-6.

.Internet 1 http://www.enotes.com/william-wordsworth/q-and-a/what-elements-nature-daffodils-poem-144087

.Internet 2 http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/poetry/index.asp?pageid=101

.Internet 3 http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2337.html

.Internet4 http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html

Show More
Related

  • Commentary on Henry Green's Novel "Black"

    1368 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ioned “roses after roses”, which would be a metaphor for the dead amidst the beautiful roses, which is quite similar to the incident about the gun and the rose, and how all the hurtful things are beneath the beautiful things.

    Read More

  • Corruption In The Great Gatsby

    1539 Words  | 4 Pages

    “I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation “An absolute rose?”

    Read More

  • Calypso Borealis 'And' I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

    50 Words  | 1 Pages

    The authors of Calypso Borealis and "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," not just through the diction , vocabulary, and syntax, additionally through the impact of tone, and disposition, and while both authors express their relationship in distinctive ways there is still the substance of them impact on the

    Read More

  • Cold Mountain Essay

    3131 Words  | 7 Pages

    (ll. 19-24) Wordsworth’s famous and simple poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” expresses the Romantic Age’s appreciation for the beauty and truth that can be found in a setting as ordinary as a field of daffodils. With this final stanza, Wordsworth writes of the mind’s ability to carry those memories of nature’s beauty into any setting, whether city or country. His belief in the power of the imagination and the effect it can have on nature, and vice a versa, is evident in most of his work. This small

    Read More

  • Lyrical Ballads Captures The Hour of Feeling

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lyrical Ballads were written in a time of great change. They were dominated by the French Revolution and both Wordsworth and Coleridge felt great impact from this. There was disruption all over with the American War of Independence and other wars worldwide. Britain itself was changing rapidly due to colonial expansion, which brought new wealth, ideas and fashion, and there was much disturbance to both the people and the land with the act of enclosure, which may have meant more effective farming but less work. The introduction of the Poor Laws meant that landowners paid their remaining staff very little knowing that they would be supplemented by poor relief. However the conditions stated by the Laws before aid would be given were very similar to ?The Last Of The Flock? with people having to give up every means of self support and therefore reduce the chance of them ever living independently again. The Industrial Revolution introduced the new ?middle? class for which many of these poems were written for. They use simple language to allow them to understand and self educate, which many of them were very interested in doing and bettering themselves, much like Wordsworth himself and his sister as shown in ?Tintern Abbey?. Here he talks of her being at the stage of education that he was five years before when he last visited.

    Read More

  • Narrative Worth in A Rose for Emily

    1314 Words  | 3 Pages

    Watkins, Floyd C. “The Structure of A Rose for Emily”. Modern Language Notes (1954): 508-510

    Read More

  • Friendship in Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey

    1052 Words  | 3 Pages

    Written on the banks of the Lye, this beautiful lyric has been said by critic Robert Chinchilla to “pose the question of friendship in a way more central, more profound, than any other poem of Wordsworth’s since ‘The Aeolian Harp’ of 1799” (245). Wordsworth is writing the poem to his sister Rebecca as a way of healing their former estrangement.

    Read More

  • William Wordsworth And Wordsworth's Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

    1848 Words  | 4 Pages

    During the 18th century, two great companions, William Wordsworth, collaborated together to create Lyrical Ballad, one of the greatest works of the Romantic period. The two major poems of Lyrical Ballad are Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” and Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight.” Even though these two poems contain different experiences of the two speakers, upon close reading of these poems, the similarities are found in their use of language, the tone, the use of illustrative imagery to fascinate the reader’s visual sense and the message to their loved ones. The speaker of “Lines Composed of a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” is Wordsworth himself. He represents Romanticism’s spiritual view of nature.

    Read More

  • Free Essays - Analysis of I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

    434 Words  | 1 Pages

    I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud – An Analysis    I chose the poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth because I like the imagery in it of dancing daffodils. Upon closer examination, I realized that most of this imagery is created by the many metaphors and similes Wordsworth uses. In the first line, Wordsworth says "I wandered lonely like a cloud. " This is a simile comparing the wonder of a man to a cloud drifting through the sky. I suppose the wandering cloud is lonely because there is nothing up there that high in the sky besides it.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Burn's Poem A Red, Red Rose

    572 Words  | 2 Pages

    'A Red, Red Rose', was first published in 1794 in A Selection of Scots Songs, edited by Peter Urbani. Written in ballad stanzas, the verse - read today as a poem – pieces together conventional ideas and images of love in a way that transcends the "low" or non-literary sources from which the poem is drawn. In it, the speaker compares his love first with a blooming rose in spring and then with a melody "sweetly play'd in tune." If these similes seem the typical fodder for love-song lyricists, the second and third stanzas introduce the subtler and more complex implications of time. In trying to quantify his feelings - and in searching for the perfect metaphor to describe the "eternal" nature of his love - the speaker inevitably comes up against love's greatest limitation, "the sands o' life." This image of the hour-glass forces the reader to reassess of the poem's first and loveliest image: A "red, red rose" is itself an object of an hour, "newly sprung" only "in June" and afterward subject to the decay of time. This treatment of time and beauty predicts the work of the later Romantic poets, who took Burns's work as an important influence.

    Read More

  • I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

    732 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “I wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” William Wordsworth accomplishes his ideal of nature by using personification, alliteration, and simile within his poem to convey to the reader how nature’s beauty uplifts his spirits and takes him away from his boring daily routine. Wordsworth relates himself in solidarity to that of a cloud wandering alone, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1). Comparing the cloud and himself to that of a lonely human in low spirits of isolation, simultaneously the author compares the daffodils he comes across as he “floats on high o’er vales and hills” (line 2) to that of a crowd of people dancing (lines 3-6 and again in 12). Watching and admiring the dancing daffodils as he floats on by relating them to various beauties of

    Read More

  • Analysis of Oh, my love is like a red, red rose, by Robert Burns

    1288 Words  | 3 Pages

    The often-used first line makes the reader more familiar with poem. The speaker's love is expressed through two similes; his love is compared to “a red, red rose” and “the melody” (1, 3). The speaker echoes his sentiments by reinforcing two above similes with the phrases “That’s newly” and “That’s sweetly” (2, 4). Obviously, the color "red" is a symbol of passionate love and used in the form of alliteration such “a red, red rose” it shows how strong is the speaker’s feeling (1). Its appeal over time and comparison with the loved woman gives the reader the possibility to discover the speaker’s pleasant ways on art...

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud By William Wordsworth

    889 Words  | 2 Pages

    William Wordsworth is a British poet who is associated with the Romantic movement of the early 19th century. Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. Wordsworth’s mother died when he was seven years old, and he was an orphan at 13. This experience shapes much of his later work. Despite Wordsworth’s losses, he did well at Hawkshead Grammar School, where he firmly established his love of poetry. After Hawkshead, Wordsworth studied at St. John’s College in Cambridge and before his final semester, he set out on a walking tour of Europe, an experience that influenced both his poetry.

    Read More

  • Solitude By Lla Wheeler Bugude Poem

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    Solitude, “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone;” Here is laid bear the paths of solitude and the plights of sorrow. By opening the poem describing the universally known effects of two quite potent emotions, Ella Wheeler Wilcox draws the reader in with familiar experiences. The poem also portrays the light tread of those untroubled by woe, for friends who don’t exist cannot be missed, nor do those who are friendless ever cease to dwell on the past and those times when they did not fair alone. The contrast between the solitary and social lines of the poem emphasizes the sad and solitary theme by describing that which the travelers in solitude no longer have. The flow and rhythm of the words in Solitude etch an image of remembered friendship and lonesomeness into the mind that all might recognize and that most will realize.

    Read More

  • Nature in "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth

    867 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth is about the poet’s mental journey in nature where he remembers the daffodils that give him joy when he is lonely and bored. The poet is overwhelmed by nature’s beauty where he thought of it while lying alone on his couch. The poem shows the relationship between nature and the poet, and how nature’s motion and beauty influences the poet’s feelings and behaviors for the good. Moreover, the process that the speaker goes through is recollected that shows that he isolated from society, and is mentally in nature while he is physically lying on his couch. Therefore, William Wordsworth uses figurative language and syntax and form throughout the poem to express to the readers the peace and beauty of nature, and to symbolize the adventures that occurred in his mental journey.

    Read More

More about The Comparison and Contrast of I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud & The Preservation of Flowers

Open Document