1. Illustrate how all three of the Housman poems assigned deal with time and the passing of time. In The Loveliest of Trees, Housman uses a cherry tree to relate the passage of time. He begins the poem in springtime when the cherry is in bloom, “wearing white for Eastertide.” The image of white and the blossoming tree give the reader of feeling of rejuvenation and rebirth, both feelings associated with spring. The next stanza uses clever word play to describe the passing of decades and scores. The last stanza puts the greater concept of a lifetime into perspective. He writes that fifty springs not enough to look at things in bloom. He ends with, “About the woodlands I will go to see the cherry hung with snow.” Housman has managed to deal with time on a couple levels: micro and macro. He begins his poem in spring (birth) and ends in winter (death). At the same time he is dealing with time periods of around fifty to seventy years. It is through his careful word play that he is able to do this. The poem When I Was One-and-Twenty displays the author’s recognition of his young adult naïveté’. He starts the poem describing advice a man gave him when he was twenty one years of age. The man advises giving away gifts and such, but not one’s heart. He is telling the young man to be freely giving of his money and possessions, but not of his emotions; the wise man seems to think that a young man should not fall in love just yet. He says that prematurely giving one’s heart away is “paid with sighs a plenty and sold for endless rue.” The author ends by saying now that he is twenty-two he knows what the wise man said to be true. It is often said that hindsight is 20:20 and this poem exemplifies that. To an Athlete Dyi... ... middle of paper ... ...cribe the skin and muscles which are draped on this skeleton. Yeats, in just a few words, is able to evoke a scarecrow-esque image in the mind of the reader when referring to the elderly. “The salmon-falls.” By making a reference to salmon, the fish that swim upstream in order to lay eggs, Yeats is able to make his character go against the grain. The river, such as life and society, flows one direction. Salmon, and Yeats’ character, are attempting to go the opposite direction. Is it difficult? Yes. But impossible? No. “All mere complexities.” Yeats uses this term at the end of the first stanza in Byzantium. It is sort of an oxy-moron in the mere means simple or plain while complexities is rooted in the word complex, meaning intricate or compound. Mere is modifying complexities so what Yeats is doing is downplaying what man considers difficult in life.
Each stanza is composed of words that present a logical flow of growth through the entire poem. The words in the poem do not rhyme and the lines are different lengths.
In the poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” the author uses rhyme to show the readers how the glory of the runner came and went in a dramatic way. By having rhyme in “To an Athlete Dying Young” it allows the irony in the poem and the meaning that poet A. E. Housman is trying to convey, really stick with the readers. In stanza three, “away” and “stay” and “grows” and “rose” make that stanza really stay put in the mind of the readers.
Both poems, “To Sir John Lade, on His Coming of Age,” and “When I Was One and Twenty”, speak about two men coming of age. The age of twenty-one is a coveted age in which may changes in life and setting occur. Both poems give a different insight to what that coming of age will mean for a young boy and what happens when they to and do not take those opportunities. Each poem brings different tone, structure, and diction to convey the same message to these boys. That coming of age brings new responsibilities, warnings, and joy that should be relished and taken in.
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...
For each seasonal section, there is a progression from beginning to end within the season. Each season is compiled in a progressive nature with poetry describing the beginning of a season coming before poetry for the end of the season. This is clear for spring, which starts with, “fallen snow [that] lingers on” and concludes with a poet lamenting that “spring should take its leave” (McCullough 14, 39). The imagery progresses from the end of winter, with snow still lingering around to when the signs of spring are disappearing. Although each poem alone does not show much in terms of the time of the year, when put into the context of other poems a timeline emerges from one season to the next. Each poem is linked to another poem when it comes to the entire anthology. By having each poem put into the context of another, a sense of organization emerges within each section. Every poem contributes to the meaning of a group of poems. The images used are meant to evoke a specific point in each season from the snow to the blossoms to the falling of the blossoms. Since each poem stands alone and has no true plot they lack the significance than if they were put into th...
Throughout the novel arises the symbol of the tree which has it’s part in the many conflicts each character faces. The sequence of events involving the tree are the challenge of climbing the tree, victory over fear and the betrayal of a friend.
The speaker also manipulates time to bring out his or her message. Lines 3, 8, 11, 21, 34, and 36 all contain some order of either “spring summer autumn winter” (3), as in lines 11 and 34, or “sun moon stars rain” (8), as in lines 11, 21, and 36. As the order of these seasons changes, it indicates the passage of time. This manipulation of time draws attention away from these lines and towards the lines with deeper meaning hidden within. However, there is another form of time: the progression of life. The speaker comments on the growth of children in terms of their maturity levels and how as they get older, children tend to forget their childish whims and fancies and move on. He or she says that they “guessed (but only a few / and down they forgot as up they grew” (9-10). He or she then goes on to say that “no one loved [anyone] more by more” (12), hinting at a relationship in development, foreshadowing a possible marriage.
In his poem “Field of Autumn”, Laurie Lee uses an extended metaphor in order to convey the tranquility of time, as it slowly puts an end to life. Through imagery and syntax, the first two stanzas contrast with the last two ones: The first ones describing the beginning of the end, while the final ones deal with the last moments of the existence of something. Moreover, the middle stanzas work together; creating juxtaposition between past and future whilst they expose the melancholy that attachment to something confers once it's time to move on. Lee’s objective in this poem was to demonstrate the importance of enjoying the present, for the plain reason that worrying about the past and future only brings distress.
In three poems – "Old Woodrat's Stinky House", "The Mountain Spirit", and "Boat of a Million Years" – Gary Snyder uses the concept of deep time to show us how nature views time and implies that humanity needs to be able to see time the same way. Snyder's poems imply that he believes people have forgotten their place in the natural world and that we should try to regain our respect for nature. "Old Woodrat's Stinky House" explains what is wrong with how we perceive time. "The Mountain Spirit" shows why nature views time as more like a singular thing than a series of segments like humans do. "Boat of a Million Years" hints at a solution and implies that we should relax and follow nature's example.
The leaning tree is a perfect example of how most people would expect an elderly person to pass away before a young person or in other words a leaning tree to die before a young and strong tree;however, today that is not the case anymore. Thompkins goes on to talk about young people and their belief that time is not as precious as it seems and that it can be wasted on anything. In the third stanza it states, “Some people think because they’re young/They have the time to play and roam/You better get your house in order,Before death do appear/You never know the time you’ll be leaving here.” This line was included to reveal how most young people act as if they have all the time in the world to do what they please such as making careless mistakes and decision not even trying to think about the possible consequences to come in the future. Yet Thompkins is stressing that one does not have all the time that they think they might have and now is the time for them to get everything in order because no one knows when their time is coming. Also, he included a brief story of an elderly Christian man who was a leaning tree, and his children were the strong, bulky trees. It states, “There was an old Godly man/His story always comes to mind/ He outlived all his children/ He lived a long time/God let him live to see a hundred nine.” The elderly man outliving his children supports the fact that young people will not always outlive their parents or live to be his age. Most young people believe that they will see their parents go before them , but that is not always the case as it seems to be like in the song. The lyrics in this song show that time is very limited and should be used
Plath employs a shift to accentuate a change in time. The speaker of the poem says “I am silver and exact/Now I am a lake” (1, 10) to indicate an alteration in time. The purpose of the device is to convey an adjustment in c...
In Beloved, recurring images of trees serve as multiple sources of symbolism. The main usage of tree imagery is in connection to healing and life for some characters and death and pain with others. For Sethe, trees represent a suppression of horrible memories from her time as a slave and fugitive. Instead of remembering events from that period in her life, trees act as a shade, protecting her from the emotional scars that were left behind. In her times as a slave, Sethe saw two other slaves being hung in trees, but when recalling the memory, she remembers the trees instead of the individuals being hung.
This poetic device aided the reader to visualize not only how silent and dead the leaves were, but also to perceive the atmosphere of the poem. In the poem “Time Does Not Bring
Andrew Marvell in his poem describes a young man convincing his fair mistress to release herself to living in the here and now. He does this by splitting the poem up into three radically different stanzas. The first takes ample time to describe great feelings of love for a young lady, and how he wishes he could show it. The idea of time is developed early but not fully. The second stanza is then used to show how time is rapidly progressing in ways such as the fading of beauty and death. The third stanza presses the question to the young mistress; will she give herself to the young man and to life? Although each stanza uses different images, they all convey the same theme of living life to the fullest and not letting time pass is seen throughout. Marvell uses imagery, symbolism, and wonderful descriptions throughout the poem. Each stanza is effective and flows easily. Rhyming couplets are seen at the ends of every line, which helps the poem read smoothly.
We get the idea that the poem starts out in the fall, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" (5). The season fall represents the year coming to an end, and e...