The Transition of Season in Summer and Winter by Mary Shelley and Winter and Summer by Stephen Spencer

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The Transition of Season in Summer and Winter by Mary Shelley and Winter and Summer by Stephen Spencer

Both Summer and Winter by Mary Shelley, and Winter and Summer by Stephen Spender discuss the transition of both seasons. In Summer and Winter, the author is a spectator. She discusses only her observations of the seasons. In Spender's poem, the author partakes in the poem, noting his feelings about winter and summer. Spender's views are a more personal account; he actually participates in the poem. In both pieces, the authors view winter as death; life stops in the season. In Summer and Winter and Winter and Summer, the authors alludes to the birth and death of nature.

Summer and Winter by Mary Shelley notes the transitions of the seasons from summer to winter. The author uses rhyme scheme in the form of (aa)(bb)(c)(d)(ee)(ff), (gg)(hh)(ii)(jj). The poem is divided into two stanzas. The first stanza discusses summer, and all the beautiful things it encompasses. It describes clouds, the sky, and praises the birth of nature. The second stanza discusses winter, about how nature suffers so much in the freezing cold that it dies.

Shelley uses literary techniques to get her points across. Shelley uses only one example of an oxymoron in her work. "And the firm foliage of the larger trees." This example is an oxymoron because the words "firm" and "foliage" are contradictory. The leaves on a tree are soft and bendable, not stiff. The author uses a total of two similes in this poem. "A wrinkled clod as hard as brick…" Shelley compares the dirt to brick, because in the winter the ground freezes. "and the stainless sky opens beyond them like eternity." Also an example of a simile, this line describes the clear ...

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...nsition of both seasons. Both poets allude to this transition in different ways, Shelley beginning with summer and Spender with winter. This affects how each view the changeover of seasons. While both poets discuss the transition, Spender examines the seasons in more detail, with more description and feeling. The dying of nature is the underlying theme in both poems. Shelley begins with nature delighted in summer, and ends with birds dying and fish frozen under ice. For a simple poem, Shelley gets her point across. Spender begins with an everlasting winter, continues on to the rebirth of summer, and ends once again with winter. Shelley is more understated in her views, and Spender is powerful in his opinions of the seasons. Spender succeeds in passionately describing what his "inner eye" sees, while Shelley blandly shows what is obvious about winter and summer.

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