Phillis Wheatley, a poet of early modern poetry discloses a sonnet to Scipio Moorhead labeled To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works. The start of Wheatley life was being purchased by a white family and shipped off to Boston. She was an extremely intelligent child that was beginning to learn how to read, write and how to strongly connect to the Bible. When knowing the background of this poet, we realize first-hand how her childhood impacted her poetry. This piece of poetry was in the point of view of first person. Many poets use a type of sound devices or figurative language to enhance their message within. Wheatley introduces a sound device known as end rhyme as a way of intensifying the experience to the reader. The poet stated, “When first thy pencil did those beauties give, and breathing figures learnt from thee to live” (409) uses end rhyme to give connection between those two lines. My outsight on these two lines would be summarized as the poet trying to interpret the beautiful people the artist has drawn in her own words. Also, Wheatley communicates figurative language into this poem by using the several metaphors to put emphasis on her writing. The metaphor heavily absorbed by me would be, “Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring: Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring” (410) creating an image of Heaven. …show more content…
I feel the poet expresses a joyful and hopeful tone for this poem by the words “delight” and “wishful” to illustrate her feelings. The tone of joy comes from looking at the images as she refers to them as, “And breathing figures learnt from thee to live, how did the prospects give my soul delight.” (409) I feel the images she is characterizing are Angels and they are breath taking. Another tone I feel she displays is hopeful by expressing the hope for her and Scipio to one day exist in
Wheatley explains in her works that there is a God that believes in you, no matter what race or religion. The idea of hope is so strongly engraved into Wheatley’s stories because hope is all she had to cling to while in Africa and then while being separated from her husband after arriving in America. A man named John Wheatley purchased Wheatley and gave her a much better life than she ever imagined. From her journey across the ocean upon her arrival to the United States of America, she expressed her love for writing as an illustration of God’s unfailing love to share with people. She became familiar with the true meaning of the bible and God’s providence. God’s providence is how he cares and watches over her during the life’s passage. In “To the University of Cambridge, in New England”, she is able to write to the college students about the main goals. Wheatley heavily emphasizes to them that they should not get so wrapped up in their schoolwork and studies that it hinders their personal relationship with God. By having a balance in schooling and daily walk with God, it will help the student’s life more efficiently than just doing one action. The author’s main point in her poetry
As a final point, Phillis Wheatley may have been bought a slave but she never lost faith and ended up being one of the best known poets in the early nineteenth century. This poem illustrates how she was living in darkness in Senegal, West Africa and because of slavery she was bought and brought to America. In this poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” Wheatley uses poetic devices such as similes, metaphors, hyperboles to illustrate color and darkness, multiple meanings of words, and the relationship between skin tone and salvation. This poem seems to be a narrative of her life and how slavery might have been the best thing that happened to her.
Throughout the poem, “To the University of Cambridge, in New England”, Phyllis Wheatley suggest that she accepted the colonial idea of slavery, by first describing her captivity, even though this poem has a subversive double meaning that has sent an anti-slavery message. Wheatley’s choice of words indicates that her directed audience was educated at a sophisticated level because of the language chosen. Her audience was assumingly also familiar with the bible because of the religious references used. The bible was used as a reference because of its accessibility. Wheatley uses religious references to subversively warn her readers about slavery and its repercussions and to challenge her reader’s morals.
Phillis Wheatley was born in Gambia, West Africa around 1753 (Andrews et al. 770). She was forced into slavery when she was about seven or eight years old and purchased by John Wheatley in July of 1761 (770) for his wife Susanna Wheatley, who named her Phillis after the vessel that transported the young slave (Samuels et al. 543). The Wheatley’s, with their two children, Nathaniel and Mary (Brawley 12), taught Phillis to read and write in English and also tutored her in Latin (Samuels et al. 543). Wheatley studied the Bible, the Latin classical works of Virgil and Ovid, astronomy, geography, and history (Brawley 13). Much of her poetry consists of elegies (poetry written as a reflection on someone’s life) and many of her works are...
In the poem, the author uses structure of the sonnet as well as patterns and rhyme to join the external form of the Petrarchan sonnet with the theme and tone. Brook's poem does not exactly follow the pattern we are used to which makes the reader follow every line closely for examination. Using a structured rhyme pattern to describe such a serious tone gives the sonnet a punchy feeling, simulating violence or pinch of strings in violin. Words like string, sing, hate, late, note, wrote, space, grace and many others all rhyme only using the last syllable, making them masculine. Also it draws attention to the ends of the lines which (the first four) she all ends with words related to music, furthering the theme of the poem. She also uses Petrarchan sonnet scheme to give the poem a lyrical quality emphasizing one of the themes of musical instruments in it. Finally, the poem is full of symbolism and imagery creating a strong connection between the way it is written and the message it carries.
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
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker starts by telling the reader the place, time and activity he is doing, stating that he saw something that he will always remember. His description of his view is explained through simile for example “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets of their branches” (Updike), captivating the reader’s attention
Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and the Mythology of “Elysian fields” in lines one through three, she leads the reader to the assumption that this is a calm, graceful poem, perhaps about a dream or love. Within the first quatrain, line four (“I wove a garland for your living head”) serves to emphasise two things: it continues to demonstrate the ethereal diction and carefree tone, but it also leads the reader to the easy assumption that the subject of this poem is the lover of the speaker. Danae is belittled as an object and claimed by Jove, while Jove remains “golden” and godly. In lines seven and eight, “Jove the Bull” “bore away” at “Europa”. “Bore”, meaning to make a hole in something, emphasises the violent sexual imagery perpetrated in this poem.
Another theory of basis for this poem is love and hope. When it comes to the topic of love, most of us will readily agree that everyone wants to love and be loved. One of Venus’ primary functions in Greek mythology was love, and in this poem the writer uses her to paint a picture of love with colorful symbolism. The Vigil of Venus opens with, “Loveless hearts shall love tomorrow, hearts that have loved shall love anew.” (642) This line is consistently repeated in the poem. In my view, this gives the reader hope, to love and be loved, whether or not they have experienced it before, a promise of things to
Mason, Jr., Julian D. The Poems of Phillis Wheatley. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
The first literary device that can be found throughout the poem is couplet, which is when two lines in a stanza rhyme successfully. For instance, lines 1-2 state, “At midnight, in the month of June / I stand beneath the mystic moon.” This is evidence that couplet is being used as both June and moon rhyme, which can suggest that these details are important, thus leading the reader to become aware of the speaker’s thoughts and actions. Another example of this device can be found in lines 16-17, “All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies / (Her casement open to the skies).” These lines not only successfully rhyme, but they also describe a woman who
For the most part of the poem she states how she believes that it is Gods calling, [Then ta’en away unto eternity] but in other parts of the poem she eludes to the fact that she feels more like her granddaughter was stolen from her [or sigh thy days so soon were terminate]. One of the main beliefs in these times was that when someone died it was their time; God needed them and had a better plan. Both poets found peace in the idea that God had the children now and it was part of the plan, but are also deeply saddened and used poetry as a coping mechanism.
result it has on people. In all three poems the last line of the poems
...vocal statement about the ?organic? possibilities of poetry than optimistic readers might have expected. ?Mayflies? forces us to complicate Randall Jarrell?s neat formulation. Here Wilbur has not just seen and shown ?the bright underside of? a ?dark thing.? In a poem where the speaker stands in darkness looking at what ?animate[s] a ragged patch of glow? (l.4), we are left finally in a kind of grayness. We look from darkness into light and entertain an enchanting faith that we belong over there, in the immortal dance, but we aren?t there now. We are in the machine-shop of poetry. Its own fiat will not let us out completely.
"Characteristics of Modern Poetry - Poetry - Questions & Answers." ENotes - Literature Study Guides, Lesson Plans, and More. Web. 09 Jan. 2012. .