A firefly, a lover, a memory: all can disappear within a second. Experiencing loss is a dreadful time that most humans undergo. Deena Larsen compares one’s lover who has passed to a firefly who has lost his light. Larsen’s Firefly has six stanzas, each five lines long and six lines deep that uncovers the ulterior meaning of loss and loneliness from unrequited love. On the surface, it is just a simple poem about nature, but the six-line depth gives it a greater purpose. The firefly represents a vulnerable human companion that has lost his connection with the living. In one reading of the poem, the narrator states, “I long for the sound of his wings to hear symphonies between us” (Larsen Stanza 5). When grieving, the speaker finds it difficult to let go of her lover, and she yearns for one last goodbye. As the narrator watches, “his dark body fly off toward other lights obscuring the horizon” (Stanza 6), she is finally faced with the horrid truth: he is gone, and she is alone. Each …show more content…
It begins with the narrator stating, “Slowly I slip into oncoming twilight in unutterable silence of fog and green light” (Stanza 1). Thus, the foggy atmosphere represents her loneliness now that her man has vanished. When the narrator lays her, “back against the ancient elms until they shiver with their age,” (Stanza 2) she reminisces the memories of her love. Larsen demonstrates how the elms are growing old just like her lover, and she slowly illustrates the memorial in the background as the stanzas continue. As the memorial becomes more visible, the narrator recounts, “I watch him light on a blade of grass and he stays without breath, without motion,” (Stanza 4). Using the firefly to represent the deceased, Larsen also compares the forest to a memorial through her description of the atmosphere and visuals faded behind her
The timeline carries on chronologically, the intense imagery exaggerated to allow the poem to mimic childlike mannerisms. This, subjectively, lets the reader experience the adventure through the young speaker’s eyes. The personification of “sunset”, (5) “shutters”, (8) “shadows”, (19) and “lamplights” (10) makes the world appear alive and allows nothing to be a passing detail, very akin to a child’s imagination. The sunset, alive as it may seem, ordinarily depicts a euphemism for death, similar to the image of the “shutters closing like the eyelids”
The scene takes place in the clouds, she is in the heavens surrounded by angels. It's a moment of pure devotion, love, and fantasy. Clouds are often connected to the gates of heaven. It is at these gates that you are in a liminal space between life and death.
In Craig Lesley’s novel The Sky Fisherman, he illustrates the full desire of direction and the constant flow of life. A boy experiences a chain of life changing series of events that cause him to mature faster than a boy should. Death is an obstacle that can break down any man, a crucial role in the circle of life. It’s something that builds up your past and no direction for your future. No matter how hard life got, Culver fought through the pain and came out as a different person. Physical pain gives experience, emotional pain makes men.
...otter, disturbing high pitched sounf of the oystercatcher, the cormorant, and the heron all connote the idea of an overwhelming chaotic nature of the world. The first two lines of the second stanza justify this view because we find that the speaker has gone through a personal experience of facing death. However, in the majority of the second stanza, the speaker finds a more peaceful underlying order in the next few images he sees. The butterfly, a couple quietly speaking, and the soothing warmth of nature all appeal to an underlying order, filled with peacefulness and serenity. From the different perspectives of a single experience of the speaker, the author is able to create a world where although chaos can be present through personal experience, the underlying order is still intact, as long as one is able to look at it from a more calm and peaceful vantage point.
Like “On the Departure of the Nightingale”, the flight of the bird also symbolizes the removal of the song, and the loss of the creative force for the poet; the nightingale is free to escape from a world of decay and death, while the poet is forced to suffer in it.
From that point on, the reader is aware that they are being separated from the landscape, moving through the outside world as it passes by the window. The fog, “shifting, salty, thin, / comes closing in,” at the end of the seventh stanza, completing the separation.
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
Even from the first paragraph, Hurst's use of vocabulary evokes an emotional response to the story line. His word choice as the narrator describes his surrounding and hints to a fatal event that awaits the reader's attention. Hurst uses words and phrases such as “dead autumn,” “rotting brown magnolia,” “graveyard flowers.” The last sentence, “...speaking softly the names of our dead” adds one final melancholy statement (91). The imagery throughout the paragraph helps to imagine an eerie swamp land surrounded by death and depressing memories. This melancholy setting foresha...
“In this poem, the night represents his destination — the poet’s own inner life, possibly self-knowledge. The poet, then, feels at least partially alienated from himself in much the same way that the night promotes a feeling of alienation from other people” (Kidd 2). Therefore, the reader can assume this rest of the poem is going to be about the narrator getting to know his place in this world while he is on a night stroll. The second line of stanza one states “I have walked out in rain –and back in rain” (Frost 157). His repetition of going in the rain twice emphasizes his miserable condition on this dark, rainy night. Nonetheless, he embraces nature and continues on with his walk past “the furthest city light” which tells the reader that he is now in complete darkness. Stanza two focuses primarily on his relationship with society. The narrator is casually walking in the city at night and sees the “saddest city lane” and
In stanza one all we know about the narrator is that they are alone in a car. In stanza two all we know is that the narrator compares the young housewife to a "fallen leaf". And in stanza three, the final stanza, as the narrator passes on by, he or she bows, and smiles.
In the second stanza, Sexton drives from the funeral to the Cape to “cultivate” herself or deal with her grief. She describes the images she sees on the cape such as the sun shining from the sky and uses a simile to describe the sea that “swings in like an iron gate”. The scenery, unlike Sexton’s emotions, are very lively and happy and the usage of this imagery makes the reader understand that the world was still turning even through the speaker’s life had just stopped due to her loss (Johnson 3). The end of the second stanza concludes with “in another country people die”, which brings back the poem’s theme of death and returns the poem to a more dismal tone showing that she cannot escape death or her grief. In the third stanza, Sexton addresses a loved one who is with her. Despite the wind falling like stones from “white hearted water” or the grief hitting her, her loved one touches her and she realizes that unlike the dead, she is not
“We pluck and marvel for sheer joy. And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs…” (14-16). This emphasis on nature reflects the respect and connection to the natural world the culture was trying to convey in their poetry. The colorful and illustrative descriptions of the physical world are indicative of the mindset and focus of these poems. Namely the fact that they were concerned with the world around us and the reality we experience as opposed to that of abstract concept of god or the supernatural as seen in other historical texts. This focus on nature is important because it sets the context in which the major theme of loss and separation originate from. In this poem the poet chooses to emphasize the passing of time in the choice of comparing the two seasons. Spring, in which life begins a new, and fall, in which the leaves begin to fall off and die. The poem reads “And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs- Those are the ones I hate to lose. For me, it is the autumn hills” (15-18). This juxtaposition of these two
In the opening stanza, Frost describes coming to a point during a walk along a rural road that diverges into two separate, yet similar paths. The narrator finds that he ...
...r very uncomfortable. Then someone else who died for the truth was placed in there with her. In the second stanza the man tells the woman that they are both the same. He tells her that they are family. In the last stanza, it says they met each other every night to talk and comforted each other. When Dickinson writes, “Until the moss had reached our lips, / And covered up our names” (11-12) it meant that they have come to terms with death and have passed on.
Darkness may also symbolize the mystery of the yet to be discovered secrets deep within the woods. (8) The silence makes the speaker feel secluded from all other aspects of reality. (11-12) Stopping by the woods provides the speaker with a temporary escape from reality. Frost does not ever tell what business the speaker is on, but you can assume it may be very stressful. This escape from reality is very important even in today’s world. This poem was written in 1923 and still has aspects of 20th century society.