When people imagine a bridge, a wooden structure that provides a walkway over a body of water usually comes to mind. However, people themselves can also be described as bridges. The 18th century poet Thomas Gray is often referred to as a literary bridge between neoclassicism and the Romantic Movement due to the contrasting elements of both styles within his poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” Neoclassicism is characterized by a regard for the classical ideals of reason, form, and restraint, while Romanticism is an artistic movement that values imagination and feeling over intellectual reason. Gray includes both neoclassic and romantic elements throughout his famous elegy that ponders the purpose of life, human potential, and the democracy of death.
This famous poem includes multiple examples of neoclassicism. Aside from its reason, form, and restraint, it also contains an organized iambic pentameter system. Gray describes the setting of the poem by using this system in lines one and two, “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,/The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea....
The timeline carries on chronologically, the intense imagery exaggerated to allow the poem to mimic childlike mannerisms. This, subjectively, lets the reader experience the adventure through the young speaker’s eyes. The personification of “sunset”, (5) “shutters”, (8) “shadows”, (19) and “lamplights” (10) makes the world appear alive and allows nothing to be a passing detail, very akin to a child’s imagination. The sunset, alive as it may seem, ordinarily depicts a euphemism for death, similar to the image of the “shutters closing like the eyelids”
The poem begins by explaining the sluggishness of time and sets the mood for the rest of the piece. The repetition of the word “slow” was employed by the author in order to emphasize that changes in life occur very slowly and may even pass unnoticed. However, it is still important to recognize that time is progressing, but it takes so long that it’s hard to realize so. The last sentence expands on this idea by introducing “palsied apples”, comparing time’s speed of movement with that of a paralyzed being. It is also important to highlight the relevance of the syntax present in the first lines of the poem, as its analysis will lead to an interesting contrast with the last stanza. Nevertheless, in the first stanza, the author describes a “copper-coated hill”, and in fact, the author continues to describe the setting of his poem by employing a variety of warm colors to capture the true essence of autumn.
This poem is also in iambic pentameter, and though it lacks a uniformed rhyme scheme, there is rhyming in certain words within in a line such as line two, instead of typical “a, b, a, b,” form. Hayden emphasizes words that were used as adjectives, whether it is describing the temperature “banked fires blaze” (5), or physical attributes “with cracked hands that ached” (3), or verbs “slowly I would rise” (8). The author also introduces alliteration in “put his clothes on in the blueblack cold” (2) and “when the rooms were warm”
In the first two lines of the poem the speaker established his or her tone, and justifies why poet 's write in such gloomy manner. The first two lines of the poem asks, "Isn 't the moon dark too, most of the time?" (line 1-2). This question prepares the readers to expect an argument to come from
This essay is anchored on the goal of looking closer and scrutinizing the said poem. It is divided into subheadings for the discussion of the analysis of each of the poem’s stanzas.
The ironic use of rhyme and meter, or the lack thereof, is one of the devices Larkin uses to emphasize his need to break out of industrial society. The typical rhyme scheme is not followed, but instead an ironic rhyme scheme is used in the sonnet in the form of abab cdcd efg efg. Larkin writes this poem as a sonnet but at the same time diverges from what a typical sonnet is supposed to be. He is commenting on society’s inclination to form restrictions on those within it. By writing out of the accepted form of a sonnet, his writing becomes more natural because of a lack of constraints due to following certain rules and fitting a certain form. He breaks free and writes as he pleases and does not conform to society. Just as with the rhyme, ...
On the surface the poem seems to be a meditation on past events and actions, a contemplative reflection about what has gone on before. Research into the poem informs us that the poem is written with a sense of irony
The poet must be in love and thinking about her while writing the poem because the poem sounds cool, calm, and loving. The organization of poem is 5 stanzas each with 4 lines. The poet uses rhyming as his main element in this poem. The second and fourth line in each stanza ends with a rhyming word, “Side by side through the streets at midnight / Roaming together / Through the tumultuous night of London / In the miraculous April weather” (1-4). The poet put this together like this way to represent the action and the setting of the action. Arthur also uses the figure of speech in this poem. The line, “How the Spring calls to us, here in the city” (7) uses personification. The spring is personified with the human ability of
with the alliteration of the frst five lines : "Kubla Khan'', ''dome decree'', and ''sunless sea''. Coleridge interlaces short exclamations (''but oh!'', ''a savage place!'') and exageratedly long exclamations (''as holy and enchanted as e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted by a woman wailing for her demon lover!'') reinforces the feeling of flowing which is related to the time ''ticking'' irregularly away, creating a sense of timelessness.
Chaos and drudgery are common themes throughout the poem, displayed in its form; it is nearly iambic pentameter, but not every line fits the required pattern. This is significant because the poem’s imperfect formulation is Owen making a statement about formality, the poem breaks the typical form to show that everything is not functioning satisfactorily. The poem’s stanza’s also begin short, but become longer, like the speaker’s torment and his comrades movement away from the open fire. The rhyming scheme of ABABCDCD is one constant throughout the poem, but it serves to reinforce the nature of the cadence as the soldiers tread on. The war seems to drag on longer and longer for the speaker, and represents the prolonged suffering and agony of the soldier’s death that is described as the speaker dwells on this and is torn apart emotionally and distorts his impressions of what he experiences.
In line one, “Death be not proud, though some have called thee” the poem begins with an apostrophe, in this specific instance, Death. In line one the narrator also personifies death by directly addressing it. In line three, “For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow” there is an alliteration sound of “Th”. This repetitive “Th” sound draws the reader’s attention to a certain line and signifies some kind of importance the author is trying to convey. The narrator displays a creative use of imagery in line five “From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be” to help the reader use imagination and picture death as no more than restful sleep. Another strategically used device in line six, “Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,” is the narrator’s use of an ellipsis. The author leaves the interpretation of the rest of the sentence for the reader to fill in at his or her discretion with the words they choose. (Hebron, 37) The narrator uses internal rhyme in line seven and eight to grab the reader’s attention and renew interest in the following lines, “And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.” Lastly the narrator ends the work by reiterating the personification of Death in the last
The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Shorter 5th Edition ed. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005. 1307. Print.
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a poem composed by Thomas Gray over a period of ten years. Beginning shortly after the death of his close friend Richard West in 1742, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was first published in 1751. This poem’s use of dubbal entendre may lead the intended audience away from the overall theme of death, mourning, loss, despair and sadness; however, this poem clearly uses several literary devices to convey the author’s feelings toward the death of his friend Richard West, his beloved mother, aunt and those fallen soldiers of the Civil War. This essay will discuss how Gray uses that symbolism and dubbal entendre throughout the poem to convey the inevitability of death, mourning, conflict within self, finding virtue in one’s life, dealing with one’s misfortunes and giving recognition to those who would otherwise seem insignificant.
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.
Over the years many different ways of analyzing poetry have been developed. One such approach is the “New Critical,” or the “Formalist,” which is based on the writings of Coleridge. The formalist approach is useful because it takes the poem’s form, which may be overlooked, and analyzes it to see what its effect is on the meaning of the poem. There are other aspects taken into consideration, like who the speaker is and how the author incorporates “ironic awareness” into the poem. Eavan Boland’s message in “The River” comes across best when looking at the poem with the formalist approach, taking into consideration the speaker and the speaker’s situation, the organic form, and the use of irony. Some aspects may have more importance than others, but all need to be looked at, beginning with the speaker.