Cicada
Out of all the temperate seasons that we have year round, summer is the warmest. It falls between spring and fall. The days are the longest, meaning we see the sunlight more in the summer then we do in the winter (Robert). With summer, we get many different insects that were hiding away in the winter because it is so cold, and just like humans, whom usually don’t like the cold, neither do cicadas. The insect we see, or hear most in the summer is the cicada. With summer comes the cicada’s, their noise comforts us, and brings summer to life. Through out the summer nights, cicadas swarm around us with there loud and almost relaxing sound. When we get summer, we get the not so peaceful but nice little insect with it. I think that the theme in this poem that Sappho is trying to portray is that cicada’s are just like people in the summertime, loving life and coming out to have a good time.
In line 1 Sappho opens with, “flaming summer”, which sends great imagery into the reader’s brain. It takes the individual who is reading the poem back to a really hot summers day that the reader has experienced. When it is so hot outside that all we want to do is jump into a big pool, or drink an ice-cold cup of water, or even eat a n ice cold popsicle. It makes the human being come out of our shells. Summer is the time of year where we open up and feel great happiness. Just like the cicada which literally comes out of its shell, or even when the cicada is making noise, we can tell it is happy. Its loud and cheerful, letting other little critters know that it is there.
In the middle of the poem, Sappho is trying to engage the reader into the moment of summer time. The season where we feel pure happiness and joy. It is shown tha...
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...orching days that I had dreaded being outside in, where all I wanted was the air conditioner and some ice water. It takes a great poet to show such great imagery and to be able to take the reader back. She shows us that no only humans enjoy the summertime, but the littlest things that we don’t think about on a day-to-day basis feel the same way. Cicada’s are just like humans in that they enjoy the summer, and they show their happiness through verbal or non-verbal communication. Sappho is trying to portray that summertime is the best time of the year, and she does a great job of making the reader believe her.
^ Ball, Sir Robert S (1900). Elements of Astronomy. London: The MacMillan
Company. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-4400-5323-8.
Sappho. “Cicadia.” Sweetbitter Love: poems of Sappho Trans Willis
Barnstone. Boston: Shambola Press, Inc, 2006.
In the poem, it seems that somebody is inside his or her dwelling place looking outside at a tree. The person is marveling at how the tree can withstand the cold weather, continuous snow, and other harsh conditions that the winter brings. Witnessed throughout the days of winter by the person in the window, the tree’s bark stays strong, however the winter snow has been able to penetrate it. The tree becomes frozen, but it is strong enough to live throughout the winter until the spring relieves its suffering. When spring finally arrives, the effects of winter can no longer harm the tree. The freezing stage is gone, and the tree can give forth new life and growth in the springtime.
...sual atmosphere created by the heat contributes to Leo’s feeling that the world in his imagination has more reality than everyday life. In addition, the weather acts as a metaphor for events which Leo cannot control, ‘It all began with the weather defying me’ (Chapter 1. p. 39) and comes to symbolize the increasing emotional intensity of a young child’s involvement in the adult world, ‘All the heat of the afternoon seemed to be concentrated where we stood…It made me uncomfortable’ (Chapter 7. P. 82-83). This creates a mood of intense anticipation and suspense as the heat reflects how events are escalating out of control. Furthermore, the writer portrays the world of children through Leo and Marcus’s daily ritual of visiting the thermometer to track record temperatures as it adds to the mood of innocent expectation and conveys the simplicity of childhood pursuits.
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...
“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
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In “I wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” William Wordsworth accomplishes his ideal of nature by using personification, alliteration, and simile within his poem to convey to the reader how nature’s beauty uplifts his spirits and takes him away from his boring daily routine. Wordsworth relates himself in solidarity to that of a cloud wandering alone, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1). Comparing the cloud and himself to that of a lonely human in low spirits of isolation, simultaneously the author compares the daffodils he comes across as he “floats on high o’er vales and hills” (line 2) to that of a crowd of people dancing (lines 3-6 and again in 12). Watching and admiring the dancing daffodils as he floats on by relating them to various beauties of
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She is known for creating radical novels, which stuck discord in many of its early readers, and writing highly respected sonnets. Similar to Behn, Smith also captures the inner thoughts of not just women, but all human beings in the sonnet “Written at the Close of Spring” and juxtaposes the beauty of the annual spring with the frailty of humanity. In the first stanza of this poem, the speaker uses imagery in order to help readers connect with the beauty and delicacy of spring flowers. In the second stanza, she calls to attention the fact that the spring flowers are dying and, to experience the beauty again, one will have to wait until next spring to enjoy them. In the third stanza, the poem’s focus changes from nature to humanity and asserts that as people age and begins to take part in, “tyrant passion, and corrosive care” (Line 11), youth becomes wasted. The speaker comes to the realization that once youth vanishes, it will forever, unlike the yearly revival of spring. The major fault of this sonnet is that it can be difficult to understand and has several different messages, some of which are not as strong or enlightening as
The poem as a whole is to prove that autumn was a great season. It