In his poem, “To a Skylark,” Percy Shelley praises the title character as well as implores the creature to teach him happiness. Yet the kind of happiness he seeks is different than the kind of tainted human emotion he naturally experiences but rather to understand the raw and heavenly joy that the skylark is graced with. “Teach us, Sprite or Bird,” (line 62 pg 892) Shelley pleads to the creature that he so fondly praises throughout the poem with its unity with nature. “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of the saddest thought,” (line 90 pg 893) encompasses Shelley’s views on how humanity cannot find happiness without the experience of pain. Therefore he contrasts the joy of the Skylark as love without ever having been forced to undertake the suffering, which accompanies it. Shelley yearns to learn how to find happiness the way the Skylark does, and he beseeches it to “teach us,” as in humanity the way it does. However as depicted through the first section of the poem, this Skylark is quite different than a normal bird. Shelley’s description of the Skylark incorporates a lot of...
Right from the first stanza, we can clearly see that the girl emphasizes her passionate feelings towards the boy by explaining how she desires to be close to her love. Moreover, she expresses the theme of love through using a narrative of how she is prepared to trap a bird. Apparently, this symbolizes how she is prepared to trap her lover’s feelings with the desire to live together all through her life. Additionally, the young lady emphasizes on her overall beauty, her beautiful hair, and clothing which is of the finest linen which she uses to attracts her lover’s attention (Hennessy & Patricia, p.
To briefly summarize this poem, I believe that the poem could be separated into three parts: The first part is composed in the first and second letters, which stress on the negative emotions towards the miserable pains, illnesses that the parents are baring, and also their hatred of the birds. The second part, I believe will be the third and fourth letters, which talks about the birds’ fights and the visiting lady from the church. And the last part, starts from the fifth letters to the rest of them, which mainly describe the harmonious life between the parents and those birds.
The tile of the poem “Bird” is simple and leads the reader smoothly into the body of the poem, which is contained in a single stanza of twenty lines. Laux immediately begins to describe a red-breasted bird trying to break into her home. She writes, “She tests a low branch, violet blossoms/swaying beside her” and it is interesting to note that Laux refers to the bird as being female (Laux 212). This is the first clue that the bird is a symbol for someone, or a group of people (women). The use of a bird in poetry often signifies freedom, and Laux’s use of the female bird implies female freedom and independence. She follows with an interesting image of the bird’s “beak and breast/held back, claws raking at the pan” and this conjures a mental picture of a bird who is flying not head first into a window, but almost holding herself back even as she flies forward (Laux 212). This makes the bird seem stubborn, and follows with the theme of the independent female.
Rowland, Beryl. Birds With Human Souls, A Guide to Bird Symbolism. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1978.
Additional Thoughts: Majority of the quotes I like are chosen because they relate to modern-day situations.
Kelly, Joseph. The Seagull Reader Poems Second Edition. New York: W.W Norton and Company, 2001.
Moore begins the last stanza with an ambiguous “So”. Although one has a heightened awareness of mortality, one “behaves,” one keeps the ego disciplined. This is the same concept as that of the caged bird who, though held captive in a cruelly small space, continues to sing with all his heart. Despite the bird's lack of “satisfaction” because of his loss of flight and freedom, he knows “joy”.
Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the
In his poem “The Great Scarf of Birds”, John Updike uses a flock of birds to show that man can be uplifted by observing nature. Updike’s conclusion is lead up to with the beauty of autumn and what a binding spell it has on the two men playing golf. In Updike’s conclusion and throughout the poem, he uses metaphors, similes, and diction to show how nature mesmerizes humans.
In ‘All the Pretty Horses’ Luis states ‘among men there was no such communion as among horses and the notion that men can be understood at all was probably an illusion’, by this he means the relationship man has with nature is totally unique, it is sacred; the relationship between men is a misapprehension. In some respects the reader may agree with the statement because it is true, man’s relationship with animals and nature is fairly simple compared to man’s relationship amongst each other which is far more complex due to conflict of opinion and other complications. John Grady Cole’s relationship with Alejandra faced much turmoil and complication, one of the biggest issues they faced was the fact Alejandra’s family condemned their relationship and forbid her to be with him. To a certain extent John’s romance with Alejandra mirrors Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in respects to their forbidden love, however their story does not end in tragedy. Wordsworth shows nature to be more of a companion for man in ‘The Solitary Reaper’. The woman reaps the crops alone in the field singing with a voice so ‘thrilling’ it resonates ‘Long after it was heard no more’. Although she is lonely, she is wholly reliant upon the sustenance she receives and the relationship she has with nature. The poet proceeds to compare her to the Cuckoo and the Nightingale stating ‘No Nightingale did ever chaunt more welcome notes to weary bands’ being compared to birds with such beautiful song surely displays her oneness with nature. Unlike the ‘maiden’ Victor tries to control and dominate nature, this resentment could stem from the fact his mother died of the fever, making him go to extreme lengths in constructing this figure from different body parts to create a cre...
Richard Wilbur's recent poem 'Mayflies' reminds us that the American Romantic tradition that Robert Frost most famously brought into the 20th century has made it safely into the 21st. Like many of Frost's short lyric poems, 'Mayflies' describes one person's encounter with an ordinary but easily overlooked piece of nature'in this case, a cloud of mayflies spotted in a 'sombre forest'(l.1) rising over 'unseen pools'(l.2),'made surprisingly attractive and meaningful by the speaker's special scrutiny of it. The ultimate attraction of Wilbur's mayflies would appear to be the meaning he finds in them. This seems to be an unremittingly positive poem, even as it glimpses the dark subjects of human isolation and mortality, perhaps especially as it glimpses these subjects. In this way the poem may recall that most persistent criticism of Wilbur's work, that it is too optimistic, too safe. The poet-critic Randall Jarrell, though an early admirer of Wilbur, once wrote that 'he obsessively sees, and shows, the bright underside of every dark thing'?something Frost was never accused of (Jarrell 332). Yet, when we examine the poem closely, and in particular the series of comparisons by which Wilbur elevates his mayflies into the realm of beauty and truth, the poem concedes something less ?bright? or felicitous about what it finally calls its 'joyful . . . task' of poetic perception and representation (l.23).
bird as the metaphor of the poem to get the message of the poem across
... the reader understand the meaning that is behind it, like so “the poem concludes by asking rhetorically whether its listeners now understand the truths produced by both birds and poetry” (SparkNotes Editors). Besides nature being compared from birds a deeper meaning is behind this symbol and this is “art produces soothing, truthful sounds” (SparkNotes Editors) just like the soothing sounds from a bird that anyone can enjoy.
Wordsworth and Hopkins both present the reader with a poem conveying the theme of nature. Nature in its variety be it from something as simple as streaked or multicolored skies, long fields and valleys, to things more complex like animals, are all gifts we take for granted. Some never realize the truth of what they are missing by keeping themselves indoors fixating on the loneliness and vacancy of their lives and not on what beauty currently surrounds them. Others tend to relate themselves more to the fact that these lovely gifts are from God and should be praised because of the way his gifts have uplifted our human spirit. Each writer gives us their own ideals as how to find and appreciate nature’s true gifts.
...er readers. Dickinson’s use of literary devices and her creativity enables her to imaginatively describe the beauty and grace from a simple and familiar observation. It is through her use of tone, imagery, and sound that she exploits a keen sense of respect for at the very least the little bird, if not also nature itself. Dickinson recreates and expresses the magnificence and smoothness of the bird soaring across the sky. She uses tone to create the mood to emphasize the theme. She uses sound and imagery to not only tell the reader about the awesome flight of the bird, but to help the reader experience and connect to the little bird and nature in hope that they too will learn to respect nature.