Keats and Longfellow Time is endlessly flowing by and its unwanted yet pending arrival of death is noted in the two poems “When I Have Fears,” by John Keats and “Mezzo Cammin,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Keats speaks with no energy; only an elegiac tone of euphoric sounds wondering if his life ends early with his never attained fame. He mentions never finding a “fair creature” (9) of his own, only experiencing unrequited love and feeling a deep loss of youth’s passion. Though melancholy, “Mezzo Cammin,” takes a more conversational tone as Longfellow faces what is commonly known as a midlife crisis. The two poems progressions contrast as Keats blames his sorrow for his lack of expression while Longfellow looks at life’s failures as passions never pursued. In spite of this contrast, both finish with similar references to death. The comparable rhyme and rhythm of both poems shows how both men safely followed a practiced path, never straying for any spontaneous chances. The ending tones evoking death ultimately reveal their indications towards it quickly advancing before accomplish...
Millay’s poem “Thou famished grave” explores death’s inevitable success and the speaker’s resistance against it to gain victory within loss. The first way Millay achieves this is through the animalization of death. The poem describes death throughout with words such as, “roar” (2) and “jaws” (7), which leads to a portrayal of death as a predatory animal. A further description in the poem of the speaker as “prey” (9), helps to strengthen this portrayal. As a result, this animalistic depiction of predator and prey shows death’s advantage and dominance over life. In addition, it shows that the speaker is like a gazelle being hunted by a lion. They will not stand motionless and be defeated, but will run away to survive death and “aim not to be
After a four week survey of a multitude of children’s book authors and illustrators, and learning to analyze their works and the methods used to make them effective literary pieces for children, it is certainly appropriate to apply these new skills to evaluate a single author’s works. Specifically, this paper focuses on the life and works of Ezra Jack Keats, a writer and illustrator of books for children who single handedly expanded the point of view of the genre to include the experiences of multicultural children with his Caldecott Award winning book “Snowy Day.” The creation of Peter as a character is ground breaking in and of itself, but after reading the text the reader is driven to wonder why “Peter” was created. Was he a vehicle for political commentary as some might suggest or was he simply another “childhood” that had; until that time, been ignored? If so, what inspired him to move in this direction?
An unknown author once wrote “Never take life too seriously; after all, no one gets out of it alive”. When reading this quote, there can almost be an immediate connection between two very good works of writing: Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” speech from Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, and the poem “Out, Out --” by Robert Frost. Both allude to the idea that a single life, in its totality, denotes nothing, and eventually, everyone’s candle of life is blown out. However, each poet approaches this idea from opposite perspectives. Frost writes of a young, innocent boy whose life ends suddenly and unexpectedly. His poem is dry and lacks emotion from anyone except the young boy. Whereas the demise of Shakespeare’s character, Macbeth, an evil man, has been anticipated throughout the entire play. Through these writings, we are able gather a little more insight as to how these poets perhaps felt about dying and life itself.
The constant process of life and death, driven by an indestructible progression of time, explains the attitude of carpe diem expressed in three poems focused on human love being a fickle matter. Within the poems “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Robert Herrick, and “Youth’s the Season Made for Joys” by John Gay, the concept of how a shy attitude towards the inevitable end of all life is exposed as an inherently useless view. Nevertheless, though their primary themes and ideas of this constant procession of time are obviously expressed, the manner in which they do this, through figurative language and imagery, is the main point in which each of these three poems can be contrasted and examined
John Keats’s illness caused him to write about his unfulfillment as a writer. In an analysis of Keats’s works, Cody Brotter states that Keats’s poems are “conscious of itself as the poem[s] of a poet.” The poems are written in the context of Keats tragically short and painful life. In his ...
A study of William Butler Yeats is not complete without a study of William Blake, just as a study of Blake is greatly aided by a study of Yeats. The two poets are inexorably tied together. Yeats, aided by his study of Blake, was able to find a clearer poetic voice. Yeats had a respect for and an understanding of Blake's work that was in Yeats' time without parallel. Yeats first read Blake at the age of 15 or 16 when his father gave him Blake to read. Yeats writes in his essay "William Blake and the Imagination" that "...when one reads Blake, it is as though the spray of an inexhaustible fountain of beauty was blown into our faces (Yeats, Essays xxx)." Yeats believed Blake to be a genius and he never wavered in his opinion. It is his respect for Blake that caused him to study and emulate Blake. He tried to tie Blake closer to himself by stressing Blake's rumored Irish ancestry. He strove to understand Blake more clearly than anyone had before him, and he succeeded. As with other pursuits Yeats held nothing back. He immersed himself fully in Blake's writings. As with many of his mental pursuits he deepened his understanding of the subject by writing about it.
“When I Have Fears” effectively demonstrates the elements of poetry, creating a poem that causes the reader to think in depth about his life. Keats describes his own reasons for fearing death in a way that causes the reader to reflect on death and its effects. He does so by using symbols, images, comparisons, and sounds to generate a thoughtful mood in his audience. The tone he uses throughout the poem also contributes to the effectiveness it has on its readers. Concentrating on fame, love, and death, Keats organizes the elements of poetry into a formal sonnet that expresses the reasons behind his fear of death and urges his audience to contemplate on that same fear.
early poets such as William Shakespeare who portrays loss in many of his tragedies including the loss of sanity in ‘King Lear’ and the loss of his life. of reputation in ‘Othello’, through to Keats’s ‘Odes’ and into the. twentieth and twenty-first century. Loss is an important aspect of life and many modern poets find it to be an interesting theme to deal with. with in their work,. The poems chosen for the anthology show a range of responses to different types of loss, from death to material.
Arguably one of John Keats’ most famous poems, “Ode to a nightingale” in and of itself is an allegory on the frail, conflicting aspects of life while also standing as a commentary on the want to escape life’s problems and the unavoidability of death. Keats’ poem utilizes a heavy amount of symbolism, simile and allusion to idealize nature as a perfect, almost mystical, world that holds no problems while using imagery taken from nature, combined with alliteration and assonance, to idealize the dream of escape from the problems life often presents; more specifically, aging and our inevitable deaths by allowing the reader to feel as if they are experiencing the speaker’s experience listening to the nightingale.
The speaker started the poem by desiring the privilege of death through the use of similes, metaphors, and several other forms of language. As the events progress, the speaker gradually changes their mind because of the many complications that death evokes. The speaker is discontent because of human nature; the searching for something better, although there is none. The use of language throughout this poem emphasized these emotions, and allowed the reader the opportunity to understand what the speaker felt.
This opposition shows Keats highlighting the delicate correspondence between happiness, death and melancholy having humanistic traits. In order to experience true sorrow, one must feel true joy to see the beauty of melancholy. However, Keats’s poem is not all dark imagery, for interwoven into this poem is an emerging possibility of resurrection and the chance at a new life. The speaker in this poem starts by strongly advising against the actions and as the poem continues urges a person to take different actions.
Henry Ford, the automobile magnate, once stated that the "world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward” (Daily Quotations Network). Man has always struggled with uncontrollable aspects of his environment, but his ability to overcome these seemingly indomitable obstacles has earned recognition from numerous classical writers and poets, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “One of the real American Poets of yesterday” (Montiero, Preface), Longfellow elaborates on man’s perpetual struggle with life and nature in his poetry. In “A Psalm of Life,” “The Village Blacksmith,” and “The Rainy Day,” Longfellow explores many facets of man’s unyielding will.
The following two poems “A Psalm of Life” and “ The Tide Rises, the tide Falls” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s, both share a common theme of death. The main philosophical point of the poem “ A Psalm of Life”is to live life to the fullest rather than just allowing life to pass by. The main philosophical point of the poem “ The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls” is that people come and go but and that the memories that they have left soon begin to disappear and forgotten over time. Although these two poems share the theme of death they both show a different way they see death and the mood. In the poem “ A Psalm of Life” he doesn’t really think of death instead he lives in the moment and the mood in the poem is encouraging and hopeful. Rather than in the poem “ The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls” he is accepting the fact that you cannot fight death that it will happen sooner or later and the mood is more calming.
Perhaps his best display of this is in his strong theme of mortality in “Ode to a Nightingale” where he depicts a soft view of death due to the guaranteed beauty that the bird provides for generations to come. One of the strongest themes of this poem is the mortality of man and the guarantee that all men will pass from this world. Keats fixates on the idea that a member of a species lasts a comparatively fractional amount of time as the species it belongs to. He suggests that long after he is dead and the nightingale in the forest is dead, that the forests will still echo with songs from nightingales, whose species will live on long past his own life. These dismal realities cause Keats to view the world as painful and bleak, where happiness can only be found in temporary doses; as we see when the nightingale’s beautiful songs lift his somber heart.
In his poem “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” (1919), William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) dramatizes the contemplation between life and death during an air battle at war. The poem is about an Irish Airman, who is preparing to go on a flight or is pondering his fate during a flight, and foresees his death during an air battle. The mood of the poem has a very somber tone to it, yet with very little emotion; considering the man is reflecting upon his life and anticipating his own death. This may be an indication that either the man had a fulfilled life, or a life of tedium, without a bright future to look forward to; either way, the fear of death does not seem to be a major concern for the Airman, more of an impending fact.