We humans are a crafty. Since the dawn of time immemorial, we have labored to make sense of an existence that, by and large, defies comprehension. There have been some successes; science, philosophy, love, and religion have all been forged and wielded in this struggle to offer the occasional light of truth. The problem is that they all deal in the definitive, but in a world without absolutes there might only be one human convention capable of truly answering the biggest questions of life: poetry. All teasing aside, the poem is indeed best suited to deal with matters of the unknown because poems are intrinsically left open to interpretation. In the simplest terms, Matthew Arnold’s 18th century poem “Dover Beach” is about the unknown. The poem doesn’t just reflect on that idea, no, it edifies about humanity’s history with ‘questions that have no answers’ and the great internal and external conflicts inherent within. In the end, the poem attempts to find peace in the perpetual tide of uncertainty, likes waves on the shore, that only brings us more questions when were seek answers.
The first stanza of the poem is very different in construct than the rest of the poem and serves mostly to establish the reflective tone and set up the primary metaphor –waves on a beach. With the title and the first line, “The sea is calm tonight” the poem immediately places the speaker on or near a beach looking out at the sea (ll. 1). The tide, the poem’s foremost symbol, enters the picture in just the second line. This early introduction is a clue to the important role the tide plays in the poem, almost making it the main character. The next five lines are full of vivid sense imagery of the setting, including the visual:
Upon the straits; o...
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...(ll. 35-37)
The poem ends in a warning. The darkening plain is the world getting harder to understand, any possible truths getting harder to see. If we choose to fight in that darkness, believing that we can see anything at all – be they false truths of science, religion, or even love, then were are the ignorant armies fighting in darkness.
The most powerful aspect, or trick, of “Dover Beach” is that it does not tell the reader what to think. Opinions will be strong and varied, but certainty is nearly impossible. In that sense, the entire poem is a metaphor for embracing the unknown, finding peace in the endless waves of doubt, and avoiding the temptation of fighting for false truths. Ultimately, the poem leaves us with a single ironic truism - the more we look for answers, the more questions we get, and thus, the less certainty we can have about anything.
The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ...
Humans and dogs have been pals for what seems like forever. However, all relationships have to start somewhere, and this relationship is no different. From the beginnings of domestication to where we are today, how we have adapted dogs to our needs and how dogs have adapted us to their needs is a story that sounds fictional. This couldn’t be further from the truth. We call them Man’s Best Friend for a reason--we artificially created them to become our best friends, and they created the mannerisms we use today.
situation is not to surrender to fear and the author shows this idea throughout the poem that we
In this poem, Frost includes his fear of the ocean and exaggerates its destructive power. As Judith Saunders stated that “The first thirteen lines have depicted an ocean storm of unusual force, and through personification the poet attributes to this storm a malign purposefulness” (1). Frost provided human characteristics on the storm to help prove his point that the ocean has bad intentions and its only purpose is to hurt him. Frost does not describe the waves as a result of unfavorable weather; he explains them as having a malignant intention to destroy the world. This poem revolves around the forces of nature and could be included in the long list of nature themed poems by Robert Frost.
The poem begins with the two-stanza statement, which announces the speaker’s visits to the sea followed by the sea’s reaction to her presence on the shore. The first two lines of the poem “I started Early – Took my Dog –/And visited the Sea –” declare the motive, goal and rationale for the “visit,” but this declaration does not appears (). The speaker provides a statement of enigmatic fact that she recalls the earliness of this venture with no specific point of departure, but the end of the poem, the “Solid Town” in the concluding stanza, doubles as a point of origin (). From the beginning the speaker does not give us any information concerning the nature of this “visit;” however, the reader could think about several scenarios that the speaker of this poem would take casual early-morning walk accompanied by her dog, an excursion of some ambiguous nature on which the dog might accompany her for protection, and also in an Emersonian vein, a latter day experiment with the nature (). The world “visit” here has two possible definitions (1) “an instance of going to a place, house, etc., for the purpose of inspection or examination” and the verb form (2) “to go to (a place) for the purpose of seeing that everything is in due order” (OED). The poem does not give any indication in its earliest stanza that the range of the term “visit” seems operative, but the more we analysis the poem’s textual boundaries, the more this reading of Dickinson’s “visit” reveals something about her poetic work.
The ocean is mysterious to mankind. The unfathomable vastness of the ocean intrigues humanity into exploring it. In life, the immense possibilities that lie in the future compel us to reach for the stars. In the poem “The Story” by Karen Connelly, an individual willingly swims into deep waters even though they are fearful of what may exist in the waters. The swimmer later finds out that their fears were foolish, which illustrates the human tendency to venture into the unknown. The theme conveyed in this poem is that life is like a rough, uncertain, uncontrollable ocean that we must find get through with experience.
Published in 1944, the poem itself is an elegy, addressing the melancholy and sorrow of wartime death, as indicated by the title ‘Beach Burial’. This title gives clear meaning to the sombre nature of the work, and the enigmatic nature of it holds the attention of the audience. The entirety of the poem is strewn with poetic devices, such as personification of dead sailors as “…they sway and wander in the waters far under”, the words inscribed on their crosses being choked, and the “sob and clubbing of the gunfire” (Slessor). Alliteration is used to great effect in lines such as that describing the soldiers being “bur[ied]…in burrows” and simile in the likening of the epitaph of each seaman to the blue of drowned men’s lips and onomatopoeia is shown in the “purple drips” (Slessor). The predominant mood of the work is ephemeral, with various references to the transient nature of humanity. The ethereal adjectives used to describe and characterise objects within the poem allow a more abstract interpretation of what would normally be concrete in meaning. The rhythm of this piece is markedly similar to the prevalent concept of tidal ebb and flow, with lines falling into an ABCB rhyme scheme and concepts
There is also a sense of acuteness as the words in this stanza are short and sharp, and the lines clash and seem to contrast greatly. " Whispering by the shore" shows that water is a symbol of continuity as it occurs in a natural cycle, but the whispering could also be the sound of the sea as it travels up the shore. The end of this section makes me feel as if he is trying to preserve something with the "river mud" and "glazing the baked clay floor. " The fourth section, which includes four stanzas of three lines, whereas the third section included four-line stanzas and the second section included two-line stanzas, shows continuity once again, as if it's portraying the water's movement. "Moyola" is once again repeated, and "music" is also present, with "its own score and consort" being musical terms and giving the effect of harmony.
..., the content and form has self-deconstructed, resulting in a meaningless reduction/manifestation of repetition. The primary focus of the poem on the death and memory of a man has been sacrificed, leaving only the skeletal membrane of any sort of focus in the poem. The “Dirge” which initially was meant to reflect on the life of the individual has been completely abstracted. The “Dirge” the reader is left with at the end of the poem is one meant for anyone and no one. Just as the internal contradictions in Kenneth Fearing’s poem have eliminated the substantial significance of each isolated concern, the reader is left without not only a resolution, but any particular tangible meaning at all. The form and content of this poem have quite effectively established a powerful modernist statement, ironically contingent on the absence and not the presence of meaning in life.
On the surface the poem seems to be a meditation on past events and actions, a contemplative reflection about what has gone on before. Research into the poem informs us that the poem is written with a sense of irony
One of Emily Dickinson’s greatest skills is taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar. In this sense, she reshapes how her readers view her subjects and the meaning that they have in the world. She also has the ability to assign a word to abstractness, making her poems seemingly vague and unclear on the surface. Her poems are so carefully crafted that each word can be dissected and the reader is able to uncover intense meanings and images. Often focusing on more gothic themes, Dickinson shows an appreciation for the natural world in a handful of poems. Although Dickinson’s poem #1489 seems disoriented, it produces a parallelism of experience between the speaker and the audience that encompasses the abstractness and unexpectedness of an event.
In conclusion, science shows that dog’s interaction with humans makes them more than just pets because dogs interact like human children and canines assist in various forms of human therapy. For most people who own a dog, the title of man’s best friend given to a canine is a well-deserved name earned over the centuries for this member of their family.
To begin, the reader may gather that the poem has a very dark and saddened tone. Due to Lowell's vivid imagery, a mental image of a dark urban setting is created. It also seems very cold, with the mentioning of wind and nighttime. Readers may be able to relate to urban places they know, adding to the reality of the poem. Connections can be made. The imagery is left in such a way that the reader can fill in the gaps with their own memories or settings. Also, since the poem uses free verse, the structure is left open to interpretation. This makes the poem more inviting and easier to interpret, rather than reading it as a riddle. However, though simple in imagery, the poem still captures the reader's interest due to the creation it sparks, yet it never strays away from the theme of bei...
The search for immortality is not an uncommon one in literature. Many authors and poets find contentment within the ideals of faith and divinity; others, such as Whitman and Stevens, achieve satisfaction with the concept of the immortality of mortality. This understanding of the cycle of death and rebirth dominates both Walt Whitman's "On the Beach at Night" and Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning" and demonstrates the poets' philosophies of worldly immortality.
In both poems “Dover Beach” by Mathew Arnold and “Calm is all Nature as a Resting Wheel” by William Wordsworth, both poets use explicit imagery to make their poems an incredible work of literary art, in conveying their appreciation and love for nature.