James McAuley’s “In Northern Tasmania” is a poem describing a mundane day in northern Tasmania. However, it is filled with poignancy because the poet feels as time passes; the life of a person reduces. He further adds that only they who had lived the life know that time waits for no one and when the time has come, they must slowly let go and move on. The poem presents a lucid image of the cold weather after it rained and shows how time and life is moving on without even realizing it. This poem is written in iambic tetrameter. This suggests that there are four feet per line with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable and occurs alternately. Though, there are some irregularities such as a spondaic foot in line 7: “Timber-trucks pass now and then,” After the word “Timber-trucks” which has two stressed syllables, the poem falls back into its regular meter. Besides that, there is an amphibraic foot in line 13 with the word, “overwhelms”, the sound of –ver is longer and stressed between two unstressed syllables. Lastly in line 14, the word “gradually” would be pronounced as “gradu-lly”, in three syllables rather than four so that it will fall into its regular meter. In addition, the rhyme of the first two stanzas goes A B B A and C D D C respectively; however it is E F F in third stanza and G E G in the fourth stanza. Besides the end rhymes, there are the internal rhymes such as the words; “fields” (1) and “ewes” (2) and also “faintly” (3) that rhymes with “silently” (4). Likewise, end-stopped lines are a feature in this poem which goes: “Soft sodden field. The new lambs cry, / And shorn ewes huddle from the cold.” (1-2). There are also enjambment such as lines 9 and 10: “At dusk I look out through old elms / Where m... ... middle of paper ... ...us, the effect it has on them. The relationship between the irony and personification that the poet applied is that he is mocking the “mud-pools” (10) that can give light indicates that there is hope even in the darkest moment. However, in his next line he states: “A way of life is in decline,” (11). Presumably, his health is deteriorating and with the mockery, he cannot see that glimmer of hope. Which then follows with his application of personification, the poet realizes that: “And only those who lived it know / What it is time overwhelms, / While they must gradually let go.” (12-14). Hence, the poem “In Northern Tasmania” is a slow and heavy poem as the poet recites the gloomy weather and how time takes life away. The poet has also utilized various figures and tropes in his poem such as hyperbaton, polysyndeton and imagery; and personification and irony.
Someone might’ve had an intention to do nothing but good, and then ends up doing a terrible deed. Situational irony can completely shock and surprise the reader and their expectation of the story. This could be an easy and entertaining way for the author to show a character’s failure, or even a character’s unexpected success. The narrator had said,”I ran as fast as I could, leaving him far behind with a wall of rain dividing us.” (pg.425) This quote helps to represent the stories theme because it talks all about irony and how things don’t end up as they are supposed to. It was obviously ironic when the Narrator caused the breakdown of Doodle while he was the one trying to build Doodle up the most. Or even how the Narrator thought he would be stuck with Doodle his whole life, and then he becomes the reason why Doodle is gone from his life permanently. The Narrator does something completely unexpected and leaves Doodle behind in the rain. Throughout the whole story we knew the Narrator didn’t really like Doodle in the beginning, but he still stuck with him. Now when the Narrator and Doodle are at their closest point yet, the Narrator decides to abandon him. It is ironic how if Doodle wasn’t pushed towards societal betterment, he would still be
The poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” by E.E. Cummings talks about the cycle of life and the importance of structure, symbolism, and language of the poem. For instance, the poem has nine stanzas, which has a rhyming pattern of AABC. The rhythm of the poem is significant for it supports one of themes, the cycle of life. Cumming uses season to explain the poem's progress. “spring summer autumn winter” (3) and “sun moon stars rain” (8) symbolizes time passing, which represents life passing. In the poem, as the seasons and skies rotate, life continues along with them. In addition, the uses of the words “snow” (22), “buried” (27), “was by was” (28), and “day by day” (29) leading to death. Towards the end of the poem, the depression of death was mention, but Cumming was just stating the n...
He mentions “the air seemed dead” which creates an image of a foul and unappealing environment. Lawson so cleverly describe the hardships of being an itinerant worker out back in the line which states,” He tramped for years, till swag he bore seemed part of himself to him”. This shows that the man searched for work for years in vain so his swag was now part of him. Lawson uses metaphors to symbolise the shearer doubts of finding a job and a place he belonged or could settle down, ‘his lamps of hopes grew dim’. In other words, the shearer had a feeling that he would be left unnoticed and to die in this merciless, barren land. A simile is used in the seventh stanza in which he, by chance, finds a supposed lake and as he approaches it, “the wind blew his face like furnace breath”. This encapsulates the exact image of how hot and humid the drought and Lawson writes, rather gloomy, “where the bleaching bones of a white man lie by his mouldering swag out back”. Lawson ends the outback rather gloomy by repeating the second stanza again. The reason for this is that Lawson wanted to emphasis on the fact that this was the life of an itinerant worker or a poor person years ago and that although many attempted to search for work they most likely would meet their end the harsh, dessert-like environment. This couldn’t be avoided because the time has come for a shearer who “must carry their swag outback”. Although this
Throughout this poem Mark O’Connor reinforces a biological imperative, which is shown through words such as, oceans, limbs and nature. This is used to create a friendly and informative tone.
The poet shows that this simple, pleasant memory and how it re-in-acts his childhood. The way in which the windmills squeaks and groans to bring water from the ground whereas during the period of rain they work in harmony, as the rain comes down. The poem is gentle and nostalgic. It seeks not only to recreate the scene for the reader, but to have the reader feel the day to day struggle of living in the hash Australian outback, the struggle of agriculture during a drought.
This means that the poem contains unstressed followed by stressed syllables. In addition, each line contains three-stressed syllable, which makes it trimeter. For instance, “The whiskey on your breath” (1) can be used to identify the stressed syllables in that line. The syllable for “whisk”, “on” and “breath” are the three stressed syllable within that line of the poem. The use of an iambic trimeter allows the poem to become the waltz itself as it matches the three beats of the waltz. While this meter is used throughout the poem, there are certain lines that contain disruptions to the meter of this poem. For example, “slide from the kitchen shelf”(6) which is a trochaic. A trochee is a meter pattern that involves a stressed syllable flowed by an unstressed syllable. In this case, “slide” is a stressed syllable, while “from” is unstressed. These disruptions in meter mirror the father’s “missing steps” in line 11. This dance between the father and son is not smooth, but rather rough and clumsy due to the father’s drunkenness. Similarly, the first stanza also includes a simile, “But I hung on like death” (3), which portrays a sense of seriousness in tone of the speaker. In other words, there is a sense of play but also a sense of danger that characterizes the
Good morning/afternoon invited teacher and students. The expressive poem ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ written by the prominent poet Andrew Barton Paterson illustrates the country life of a drover as the ideal lifestyle as it is the beauty and nature of mankind. This poem is extremely critical of city life and seems to only convey the negative aspects that are involved. During this analysis various poetic techniques as well as aesthetic features will be used including suggestive language, alliteration, metaphor and imagery are applied to describe the author’s use of poetic devices and to show how effectively the poet conveyed its messages and the link to Australian diversity.
Written in iambic form, the meter alternates from tetrameter to trimeter, which when incorporated with quatrain creates the same form and verse as that in “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, / that saved a wretch like me.” Although the poem lacks much rhyme, the speaker rhymes “me”, “immortality”, and “eternity” to reinforce her description of life after death. In the fourth stanza, the speaker seems to stumble or have a lapse in concentration, realizing that she is in the process of dying, as she uses slant rhyming, reverses the meter, and has a misstep in form, such as in, “The Dews drew quivering and chill—,” (line 14). The meter and form returns to normal in the next stanza as the speaker recovers from this realization and it remains normal
This poem is written in eleven quatrains. All of these quatrains follow an abcb rhyme scheme. An example of this from lines 1-4 are “toune” being a, “wine” being b, “salior” being c, and “mine” being b. This means that the poem was written in closed form. It also follows a meter with four beats in the a and c lines and three beats in the b lines. An example of the four beats from line 5 is “Up and spak an eldern I Knicht”. The example of three beats from line 6 is “Sat at the kings richt kne”.
The range of poets featured in “Lines to Time” use a variety of poetic devices and writer’s techniques such as symbolism, imagery, alliteration, onomatopoeia, tone, metaphors and humour, to effectively construct an evocative poem.
...fall of snow and the unremitting “sweep” of “easy wind” appear tragically indifferent to life, in turn stressing the value of Poirier’s assessment of the poem. Frost uses metaphor in a way that gives meaning to simple actions, perhaps exploring his own insecurities before nature by setting the poem amongst a tempest of “dark” sentiments. Like a metaphor for the workings of the human mind, the pull between the “promises” the traveller should keep and the lure of death remains palpably relevant to modern life. The multitudes of readings opened up through the ambiguity of metaphor allows for a setting of pronounced liminality; between life and death, “night and day, storm and heath, nature and culture, individual and group, freedom and responsibility,” Frost challenges his readers to delve deep into the subtlety of tone and come to a very personal conclusion.
The irony in this poem is the main plot of the poem. A man has taken a
The metre is mainly trochaic, ‘Spider, from his flaming sleep’, having a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. Such verse is composed of three trochaic feet with the last foot stressed. However there are some exceptions, ‘Fat hero, burnished cannibal’, which is iambic, that is having an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.
The poet uses end rhyming to give the poem a sing-song quality which enforces that the speaker is a child. “Young, tongue, weep, sleep” are examples of end rhymes from lines 1-4. At the end of the poem the speaker switches the sound quality to assonance where he uses the non-rhyming words “behind, wind” (16-17), “dark, work” (21-22), “warm, harm” (23-24)” which are near enough in sound to hear the echo of the syllables but illustrate opposing meanings. “Work” is “dark”, being “warm” should not cause “harm”. “When my mother died I was very young, / And my father sold me while yet my tongue / Could scarcely cry 'weep!’weep! 'weep! 'weep!” (1-2). Repeating the words “weep, weep, weep” sounds like a nursery rhyme, chorus of a song or maybe even the ringing of an alarm. We see the imagery of the young, crying child and also hear his grief. It is possible that the child is so young th...