Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Bells” is a fascinating experiment in poetic form, rhythm, and imagery. Poe’s liberal use of repetition and contrast within that repetition ends up being a compelling work, as he uses these tools to guide the reader emotionally into a fascinating emotional journey. Poe centers the piece around different types of bells, and explores the significance of each of these bells through his repetitive and image-based verses. The first stanza of “The Bells” paints a pleasant scene, reminiscent of wintertime, specifically the Yuletide season. The bells in this stanza are silver, and Poe immediately references “sledges”, or horse-drawn sleighs. The bells “tinkle” as well, further insinuating that these are sleigh bells, which are small and produce a gentle, “tinkling” sound. The images used in the rest of the stanza match the tone of these sentences. Poe puts plenty of emphasis here on creating a beautiful and intricate atmosphere, with much of the focus for his metaphors being on stars, as well as the sky in general. The “Runic rhyme” line is also important to note — when Poe says this, he is implying that the song created by the bells has a magical quality to it, as …show more content…
He reuses the line “Keeping time, time, time/In a sort of Runic rhyme,” which calls back to the idea of the bell’s music being somehow magical. He repeats this line a couple of times, but rather than seeing the happy imagery found in the first stanza, it is played against words that share the same melancholy tone as the rest of the first stanza. An example: “Keeping time, time, time,/in a sort of Runic rhyme/To the throbbing of the bells.” The contrast between these lines, especially with the prior context that we have from the first stanza, create an interesting contradiction that carries the poem to its finish, as its sing-song-like quality goes from pleasant and jovial to something far more
This poem had no rhymes or stanzas . But it does have repetition , the repetition is “knock knock”.This saying is repeated because the author and his father had a game , but when he went to jail it was no longer a a game for them.
Poe, Edgar Allan, and Arthur Hobson Quinn. Complete Tales and Poems. New ed. : Dorset P., U.S., 1992. Print.
Edgar Allan Poe primarily authored stories dealing with Gothic literature; the stories were often quite dreary. Poe possessed a very sorrowful view of the world and he expressed this throughout his literary works. His goal was to leave an impression with every detail that he included in his stories. Although Poe’s stories seem very wretched and lackluster they all convey a certain idea. A trademark of Poe’s is his use of very long complex sentences. For instance, in his work The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe tried to ensure that every detail was as relevant as possible by integrating a wide variety of emotion. In the third paragraph, of page two hundred ninety-seven, Poe wrote, “Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around…” This sentence illustrates the descriptiveness and complexity that Edgar Allan Poe’s works consisted of. The tormented cognizance of Poe led him to use a very gloomy diction throughout his writing. Edgar Allan Poe’s use of symbols and the way he conveyed his writing expr...
Because of this, his works have repeating themes, which have to do with emotions ("Poetry Foundation"). Most of his work portrays the main character as a madman, that has either suffered from a great loss or has a dwelling fear of some sort. One example of this theme is “The Raven”, a story about a man who thinks that a raven is talking and answering back to him, which is a sign of pure madness ("Shmoop.com"). Many poets use different techniques and poetic devices in their work. As for Poe, he uses both symbolism and repetition as devices in his poems. Symbolism is “the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense” ("Literary Devices"). The poem “The Masque of the Red Death” is a great example of this device because Poe uses the Masquerade as a symbol of the people hiding from the Red Death ("Shmoop.com"). Another device is repetition, which is a “device that repeats the same words or phrases a few times to make an idea clearer” ("Literary Devices"). In “The Bells”, the word “bells” is repeated and every time it is said, each word has a different tone as if each bell has a different sound ("Poetry Foundation"). In all, Poe had a great reason for writing, his passion for poetry, in
Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the
The. Edgar Poe or The Theme of the Clock? Poem: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Poe utilizes a gradual change in diction as the poem progresses. Initially, he begins the poem with melancholic diction when the narrator is falling asleep: “while I pondered, weak and weary,” “nodded, nearly napping,” and “of someone gently rapping” (1-4). The utilization of alliteration in these lines supply a song-like rhythm, which is soothing to the reader. This usage of diction conveys a mellow tone. Further into the poem, when the increasingly agitated narrator becomes vexed at the raven, he lashes out at the bird. Here, he states, “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! / Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! / Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! / Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” (98-101). Here, his uses archaic words and phrases such as “thee,” “Night’s Plutonian shore,” and “thy soul hath”. This usage of unorthodox language creates a theatrical, dramatic, and climactic effect, which leads to an impassioned tone. By presenting both tones, Poe is able to show the contrast between the two. This transformation from a tone that is mellow to one of frustration and anxiety represents the spiraling downward of the narrator’s mental state.
The number of beats and stresses in each line during the poem are scattered, but this serves a purpose by letting ideas flow from one to another. Each idea is connected by using the word “ring” or “ringing.” The overall message of the poem is the constant “ringing” Turner remembers from war experiences affects his everyday life. Turners tone of voice in the beginning of the poem differs from the tone of the voice in end of the poem. In the first couple of lines Turner introduces what the ringing is and why it is constantly in his head. Then towards the end of the poem, Turner uses more vivid language to describe certain images and events he went through to get the constant ringing playing in his mind. For example, in the beginning, words like; “this ringing,” “bullet borne,” and “static,” are used to describe what the ringing represents, and what it can be compared to. Then in the end language like, “muzzle-flash,” and “gravestones,” describe images he remembers from war. The change in the language creates different atmospheres. In the beginning the reader just feels they are reading descriptive language, but the language in the end makes the reader feel they are there in the setting of the poem. This specific structure is important for ideas to flow
Throughout “The Raven”, Edgar Allen Poe depicts the speakers slow decent into madness through onomatopoeia, personification, and dialogue. As the speaker nears slumber one dreary night, something seems to wake him up and draw his attention to his door, where a tapping coming from the door. The noise seemed to be tapping, yet it was near midnight and the speaker did not expect any company. Although he had almost fallen asleep he believes that the person tapping at the door might be his lost love, Lenore, so he decides to answer the door yet when he does there is “darkness there and nothing more” (24). The onomatopoeia of the tapping begins his descent into madness and continues through the whole poem, ultimately leading to him going insane at the poems end. Yet once he opens the door he stares “deep into that darkness peering” (25). At this moment Poe sets the eerie mood by having the speaker open the door to nothing, although the tapping still keeps him awake. After closing the door and walking back to his bed, the speaker hears the tapping again, but louder and coming from his window lattice. He walks to his window and opens it to find a “stately Raven of the saintly days of yore” (38). The speaker sees the raven as almost royalty from a time long ago. As the raven walks into the room the speaker’s sadness turns into a smile, foreshadowing his future lunacy. After opening the...
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,” (“The Raven” 1). “The Raven” arguably one of the most famous poems by Edgar Allan Poe, is a narrative about a depressed man longing for his lost love. Confronted by a talking raven, the man slowly loses his sanity. “The Haunted Palace” a ballad by Poe is a brilliant and skillfully crafted metaphor that compares a palace to a human skull and mind. A palace of opulence slowly turns into a dilapidated ruin. This deterioration is symbolic of insanity and death. In true Poe style, both “The Raven” and “The Haunted Palace” are of the gothic/dark romanticism genre. These poems highlight sadness, death, and loss. As to be expected, an analysis of the poems reveals differences and parallels. An example of this is Poe’s use of poetic devices within each poem. Although different in structure, setting, and symbolism these two poems show striking similarities in tone and theme.
Throughout “Alone”, Poe uses various poetic devices to captivate his reader. For instance, Poe uses external rhyme throughout the poem, at the end of each pair of lines. Along with the use of rhyming, Poe also uses descriptive imagery. A m...
Along with imagery and symbolism, Poe incorporates many poetic elements to express his feeling. These include assonance, alliteration, and rhyme. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. For example ?For the race and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore.? This repeats the vowel sound of ?a?. Poe also used a lot of alliteration. For example, ?Doubting dreaming dreams no mortal level, dared to dream before?. Notice the repetition of the ?d? sound. One last element used in ?The Raven? is rhyme.
Poe exemplifies terror in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ by indicating what humanity is capable of doing in order to conquer their fears. This is conveyed through the narrator’s actions and tone when expressing his sanity although confesses to murder by being horrified of an old man’s vulture eye and wanting to permanently shut it. Poe’s vivid and rhetoric language portrayed allows his readers to become aware of what is out there by allowing them to grasp the narrator’s thoughts and mindset. This is revealed through the device of an ecphonesis, as it provides emotional and exclamatory phases to show the narrators persona of having a psychological illness, mood shifts and lack of insight. For example this device is used in the last paragraph of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ as the use of exclamations allows the readers to understand the feelings and emotions of th...
Stanza three explains what life was like at the farm he lived on, as the previous stanzas have. Line twenty describes the landscape and how beautiful it is. It describes it as Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air,” (20). Lines twenty one through twenty three use more imagery to describe the landscape. They use words such as “lovely and watery” (21) to show how pleasant it was to gaze upon the land. The word “And” is also repeated in the beginning of each of these lines which creates suspense. They also show repetition by repeating words such as “green” and it brings up the starry night again. Line twenty four talks about owls and how they are starting to come out. The day is starting to end and there is still beauty in everything. Now night has begun and all the things that made the day happy and carefree are starting to disappear. Lines twenty five through twenty seven use imagery to show that the moon is appearing and the horses and everything else is disappearing into the night. This begins to show that the youth the speaker is experiencing is starting to
Poe’s most famous poem begins with an imagery that immediately brings the reader into a dark, cold, and stormy night. Poe does not wish for his readers to stand on the sidelines and watch the goings on, but actually be in the library with the narrator, hearing what he hears and seeing what he sees. Using words and phrases such as “midnight dreary” and “bleak December” Poe sets the mood and tone, by wanting his readers to feel the cold night and to reach for the heat of the “dying embers” of the fireplace. You do not come into this poem thinking daffodils and sunshine, but howling winds and shadows. By using these words, Poe gives you the sense of being isolated and alone. He also contrasts this isolation, symbolized by the storm and the dark chamber, with the richness of the objects in the library. The furnished room also reminds him of the beauty of his lost Lenore. Also, Poe uses a rhythm in his beginning stanza, using “tapping”, followed by “rapping, rapping at my door”, and ending with “tapping at my chamber door.” You can almost hear the tapping on the door of the library as ...