Poets have used the structured sonnet form to express various ideas and emotions, such as the death, love, and life. In “Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne, a statement on death is given, which does against the common grain. Donne expresses the need to remove the stigma around death and perceives it as inconsequential. Death is not brought up in everyday conversations and people often elude the thought of death when it does come up. Death is feared and dreaded by most people, but Donne veers away from this stigma. Death is personified in this poem and Donne establishes his superiority over death. He mocks death by comparing it to drugs and potions, which lead to the same fate, but drugs and potions are not feared as much as death. Furthermore, …show more content…
This is why “our best men” die the soonest, as they get to enjoy death sooner. Donne thinks of death as just a short period of nothingness, after which comes the eternal life. If death itself was to die, any person would not ever die. Moreover, death is not as mighty or powerful as it thinks it is. On the contrary, Keats expresses a complete fear of death, in “When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be”. Unlike Donne’s unabashedly tone towards death, Keats portrays a salient fear of death. Keats fears the idea of death taking away his chance to achieve his aspirations. He fears that he will not be able to express his ideas, or write volumes of literary work. Also, he has a fear of not having enough time to be able to find idealistic and pure love. Death had brought a great deal of anxiety, which causes him to do nothing but think about death. This creates a vicious cycle of fear, in which Keats is left with an ever-increasing fear of death. Unfortunately, Keats does not see the gracious afterlife that Donne does. Keats’ attention is narrowed to his present life. He wants to become famous now, so he can enjoy his fame. He compares his poetry career to nature to over dramatize his fear of death. Keats believes his career will fall into the
In May Miller’s Poem “Death is not Master” the persona explains that death is not the master that will increase the desperation but it is a way to become eternally calm. Many poems on the topic of death explain it as powerful thing that fears the existence of human beings, but Miller’s persona death is a way to achieve eternal serenity. She explains death as something that can end all the worldly tears, desires and tension and transform the human memory into a sculpture which is unaware of tensions. Miller’s persona believes that blocking death will be unfair as it will be a barrier to the everlasting happiness and calmness that lies inside the grave. Miller’s persona is an elaboration of Christian beliefs that death ends all worldly problems
In the poem Death Be Not Proud and The Book Thief the deception of death is dissimilar. In Death Be Not Proud the poet is insulting death. One example of this “Some have called thee Mighty and dreadful for thou art not so.” In that quote he is saying that don't think you are powerful because you are not. In The Book Thief death is the narrator, and death does not interpret himself as evil. For example, Death has real feelings. He experiences both sadness and joy in the novel. Personification is what makes them dissimilar. In the poem the personification of death creates a feeling that death is less powerful than we think. He undermines death by stating that he subject to the rules of "fate, chance, kings, and desperate men." Death is also personified as a slave that has many masters, which limits the people he takes. In the book death is personified as cheerful affable amiable and agreeable. Going against John Donne's portrayal of death as a coward. In The Book Thief death is quite observant colors and is not just dark and evil. As shown in this quote “People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quite
Death is merely being controlled by things like fate, which is the only way he can act. He has no way to move on his own without these other forces. Like with war, death is the result, not the cause: death cannot physically make people fight. This comparison devalues death in its importance and therefore its necessity. John Donne’s use of metaphors and personifications in his poem emphasizes his belief that death is not as bad as people think it really is, but can actually be advantageous.
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...
In "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," John Donne uses many metaphors and images to convince his lover that even though they are going to be apart, their love will remain untainted. The prefix un- meaning to do the opposite of or is also used to reverse the meaning of a word. The definition of tainted is to be contaminated or to be touched or affected slightly with something bad. In short, untainted means to remain the same without being corrupted by outside influences. The author uses references to spheres and circles, which depict something that ends where it begins, to support his defense. Donne also uses many references to nature, as he does in many of his poems, which has the same reinforcing effect. Some examples of the author doing this would be when he refers to the moving of the earth, and the trepidation of the spheres (9-11). The trepidation of the spheres are believed to be like earthquakes and caused by the planets moving. These movements supposedly occurred without being felt by people on earth. Some of the author's parallels are more far-fetched than others, but all in all his choices in diction provide hard hitting and touching prose.
Both "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "Death Be Not Proud" see death as an opponent; however, one sees it as an adversary that is already defeated while the other sees it as an enemy that must be defeated. In "Death Be Not Proud" Donne says "those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow / Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me"(lines 3-4). This passage shows Donne's belief that people will always overcome death. In Thomas' poem, he writes "Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in the green bay, / Rage, rage against the dying of the light" (7-9). Even the "good men" are in the end defeated by death according to Thomas.
The two poems, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”, by Dylan Thomas and, “Because I Could Not Wait for Death”, by Emily Dickinson, we find two distinct treatments on the same theme, death. Although they both represent death, they also represent it as something other than death. Death brings about a variety of different feelings, because no two people feel the same way or believe the same thing. The fact that our faith is unknown makes the notion of death a common topic, as writers can make sense of their own feelings and emotions and in the process hope to make readers make sense of theirs too. Both Dickinson and Thomas are two well known and revered poets for their eloquent capture of these emotions. The poems both explore death and the
In Keats’ sonnet, “When I have Fears,” he initially focuses on his fear of morality and running out of time before he can achieve his goals in life of love and fame. In the concluding couplet, once his mind returns to reality, Keat dejectedly realizes that his desires for love and fame are petty compared to the anxiety he feels about his inevitable death.
sonnet form to write a poem about death, as the poems were for a lover
A sonnet is a fixed patterned poem that expresses a single, complete thought or idea. Sonnet comes from the Italian word “sonetto”, which means “little song”. Poem, on the other hand, is English writing that has figurative language, and written in separate lines that usually have a repeated rhyme, but don’t all the time. The main and interesting thing is that these two poems or sonnets admire and compare the beauty of a specific woman, with tone, repetition, imagery, and sense of sound.
The poem, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” has incredible wording. Donne is trying to explain to his wife that their love is much greater than physical love, and they are also conjoined in the mind. Some of the words he uses are “a love so much refined” and other enhance language like “two souls” to ease his wife when he is away. He is trying to calm his wife
Many people find it hard to imagine their death as there are so many questions to be answered-how will it happen, when, where and what comes next. The fact that our last days on Earth is unknown makes the topic of death a popular one for most poets who looks to seek out their own emotions. By them doing that it helps the reader make sense of their own emotions as well. In the two poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickenson and “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, the poets are both capturing their emotion about death and the way that they accepted it. In Dickenson’s poem her feelings towards death are more passionate whereas in Dylan’s poem the feelings
The first quatrain of the poem begins undermining the idea of death by personifying it. Death is personified by Donne throughout the poem as he challenges death by stating that it is not the “mighty and dreadful” aspect of life that people are afraid of, but as an escape from life where people can find peace after death because “nor yet canst thou kill me” (Donne 1100). He argues that death does not really kill those whom it thinks it kills to further beat death into humility. In the opening line of the poem he uses an apostrophe, “Death, be not proud..” to begin with a dramatic tone to argue with death as people’s adversary (Donne 1100). Death is given negative human traits, such as pride, but also inferiority and pretense.
The form of a poem can be understood simply as the physical structure. However, there are various aspects that make it up that contribute towards the goals of the poet. I find that the sonnets “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be”, by John Keats, and “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, by Wilfred Owen, make efficient use of their formal elements to display the depth of the situation of their poems. Keats uses a Shakespearean sonnet structure to organize his thoughts being displayed throughout the poem and to construct them around the speaker’s fear that is the central focus of the sonnet. Owen’s sonnet is a Petrarchan sonnet, although it has a rhyme scheme similar to a Shakespearean, which allows him to display a contrast between the images the
Death was introduced to Keats at an early age after the loss of his father, mother, and then eventually his brother Tom. Experiences were a major influence in the creation of his philosophy and concept of life, death, and mortality. Although it happens to be one of Keats’s shorter poems, “When I Have Fears” from 1818 has the most depth compared to others regarding his fear of death. Knowing the veracity that death could take his existence away, he meditated on how he may never “relish in the fairy power of reflecting love—then on the shore” and how he could pass “before high-piled books, in charactery, hold like rich garners the full ripened grain” (Text L. 11-12 & 3-4). All of these fears in the poem that derive from death would be correct when comparing it to that of his own life. Keats himself