Essay on the Power Hopkins' Sonnet, God's Grandeur
As "the world is charged with the grandeur of God," so Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet, "God's Grandeur," is charged with language, imagery, sounds and metric patterns that express that grandeur. Through its powerful use of the elements of poetry, the poem explores the power of God and the wonder of nature.
"God's Grandeur" is a lyric poem. The tone of the poem is one, naturally, of grandeur, as well as power and wonder. Hopkins' choices of words add to the feeling of grandeur that is the subject of the poem through their powerful imagery, and they express wonder at the power and grandeur of God and the continuity of nature. Words such as "grandeur" and "flame out" show the power with which God is revealed in His creation, while "seared," "bleared," "smeared," "smudge," and "smell" add to the sense of man's inability to recognize God's grandeur and our tendency to destroy it. In the last line of the poem, "warm breast" and "bright wings" give a sense of hope for the world, in the warmth and light of the Holy Ghost, daily renewing the world with the morning.
Several key metaphors are used in the poem. The first is the me...
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The theme of the poems involves, according to title, God's grandeur, and his power as it is revealed in creation. It also involves the "searing" effect of generations of civilization that have trod the earth. Finally, it involves the "dearest freshness deep down things" of nature and the regenerative power of God to repair the damage of civilization.
Through his use of the elements of poetry and powerful imagery, Hopkins expresses his theme in a remarkable way. "God's Grandeur" is a powerful, expressive poem, a wonderful example of the uses of metaphor, imagery, and alliteration.
The overall themes of this poem are beauty, love, and destiny. The speaker constantly discusses beautiful things and how they can help us. Love can be felt throughout the entire poem. In the first stanza, the speaker verbalizes how he “came with love of the race.” He also expresses love for the beautiful things around him. The theme destiny can be seen in the third stanza when the speaker talks about staying on course. It can also be identified in the last stanza when he describes something inevitable that was about to
4) Marshall, William. From A Review of the Landscape, a Didactic Poem, 1795. in The Sublime: A Reader in British 18th Century Aesthetic Theory. Ed. Ashfield, Andrew and de Bolla, Peter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Every writer leaves his mark, his imprint, in his writing; a thumb print left behind the ink if you know how to look for it, and Donne is no exception. The problem is extracting Donne’s imprint, and essence, from the poem, and understanding what that tells us about him. In one poem in particular this stands out, his Holy Sonnet IX, where Donne’s imprint lingers, giving another story behind the text, of his belief in God, but also his inner questioning, and confliction and doubt which come out as contradictions. Behind the text, Holy Sonnet IX, as Donne speaks through his speaker and poem, we come to understand that he is a religious man, though conflicted, which leads to doubt and contradictions, as he resents God in a way, while also just craving for his absolution and for him to forget and forgive his sins and wash them away, sins which weigh on him heavily and he believes taint him.
The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and
This poem helps us to recognize and appreciate beauty through its dream sequence and symbolism. The poem opens with the Dreamer describing this
The drinking age in America is causing problems for underaged drinkers. There’s over thousands people living in the United States that are being arrested for underage drinking every year. This isn’t fair at all for them. If an eighteen year old is at a party that has alcohol and the cops come, that guy/girl is arrested, even if they didn’t drink anything. This causes them to be thrown in jail and have that put on their permanent record. With that written down, it will be harder for them to find a job with a ‘criminal record’. Another problem with underage drinkers, is that they take more risks, thinking they’ll get caught. They’ll try to drive home on their own, not wanting to get busted by their parents or their guardians, or their just too impaired to call someone. When they drive home, their coordination is off cause of all the alcohol they consumed, and they’ll either risk killing themselves or others. Though, not every dies from a car accident.
As the first poem in the book it sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. The questions posed about the nature of God become recurring themes in the following sections, especially One and Four. The symbolism includes the image of earthly possessions sprawled out like gangly dolls, a reference possibly meant to bring about a sense of nostalgia which this poem does quite well. The final lines cement the message that this is about loss and life, the idea that once something is lost, it can no longer belong to anyone anymore brings a sense...
My parents gave me my first car for my sixteenth birthday. I was overjoyed by this new found freedom; however, like a large portion of teenagers, I was also terrified of driving. This was mostly because I didn’t receive a lot of experience with my permit, and also because I was afraid of crashing my new car. In the years preceding my sixteenth birthday I had mourned the deaths of several teenaged friends who had died in car crashes. I ended up waiting a full year after I turned sixteen to take my driving test, because I didn’t feel comfortable driving until then, which later paid off when I passed my driving test the first time I took it. In my opinion, all teenagers should do as I did and wait to get their licenses. Though in reality, not all teenagers would agree to wait, so, I believe the legal driving age should be raised to eighteen years of age.
Edward Taylor’s poem “The Preface” consist of questions as to how the world was created. The purpose of this poem is to reveal God's sovereign authority over creation and life itself. No sooner do you understand one paradox that he changes to a different set that gets a little confusing. The need to understand the next set of metaphors and picture it and then to put all together to get the message that Taylor was trying to give.
These poems are not as complex when compared to other poems, and with that being said they do not take an abundance of inference to determine the theme of the poem. Because they are not as complex as others all 3 of these poems are capable of being paraphrased to better understand the main idea of the poem. When putting the poem into different words, one can
In conclusion, the sublime and the beautiful are major topics in romantic poems and novels. Different authors bring out the different ways they can be seen and interpreted. In the novel Frankenstein and the poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, the sublime and the beautiful are shown through the feelings and the mind of the main characters. In the poem “Mont Blanc,” the sublime is shown through the complexity of nature and how man will never truly be able to understand it. In order to have something beautiful there must be something sublime, and in order for they’re to be something sublime there must be something beautiful.
Today in the world you see how driving becomes an everyday thing, everybody uses a car to get to the destination they need whether it’s their job or just to go out. Many out there have their driver’s license, while others are just starting to learn how to drive to obtain their driver’s license. Everybody has always had an issue with what the right age should be to allow people to obtain their driver’s license and drive. While some people don’t argue with the age that teenagers should be allowed to drive, others don’t agree on letting teenagers get their driver’s license at such young age. People had always had various good reasons on why the driving age should be adjusted or why it should be left as it is. In my opinion and what I think is
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.
In William Wordsworth’s poems, the role of nature plays a more reassuring and pivotal r ole within them. To Wordsworth’s poetry, interacting with nature represents the forces of the natural world. Throughout the three poems, Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey, and Michael, which will be discussed in this essay, nature is seen prominently as an everlasting- individual figure, which gives his audience as well as Wordsworth, himself, a sense of console. In all three poems, Wordsworth views nature and human beings as complementary elements of a sum of a whole, recognizing that humans are a sum of nature. Therefore, looking at the world as a soothing being of which he is a part of, Wordsworth looks at nature and sees the benevolence of the divinity aspects behind them. For Wordsworth, the world itself, in all its glory, can be a place of suffering, which surely occurs within the world; Wordsworth is still comforted with the belief that all things happen by the hands of the divinity and the just and divine order of nature, itself.
The third stanza marks a solid transition into Keats’ open and almost (excessive) praising of the goddess. While this isn’t too remarkable as the entire poem is focused on lavishing Psyche with extraordinary praise heaping complementary metaphor upon complementary metaphor onto her.Keats makes sure that it is clear nothing can compare to Psyche’s perfection. Keats allows this repetition to build on itself, driving the point even more home.