William Wordsworth's Lucy Gray Losing a loved one is one of the hardest experiences every person must go through. The experience does not end with the loss though, but begins with it. The loss of a dear person leads those left behind into a downward spiral of emotions and memories. A poem entitled “Lucy Gray” by William Wordsworth focuses on that loss and the emotions that follow it. By reading the poem one can objectively experience both the grief that Lucy Gray’s death brings on but also her parents’ acceptance of her death. The poem in brief summary allows us to experience an outsider’s view of the death of Lucy Gray and her parents’ grief. The character narrating the poem tells the story of Lucy, a girl who was sent by her father with a lantern to light the way home, for her mother in town. On her way to town a snow storm hits and Lucy is never found neither dead nor alive. The fact that a stranger is narrating the story as opposed to one of the parents telling the story, allows the reader to witness the tragedy of Lucy Gray without feeling too tangled up in the parents’ grief. By having an outsider who is in no way involved in the tragedy tell the story, the writer of the poem William Wordsworth, gives the reader an objective point of view on the tragedy as well as room to relate the reader’s own experience to the poem without feeling uncomfortable. Had the poem lacked objectivity the reader would have surely felt uncomfortable and stifled by emotions of the parents’ or a parent telling the story of their daughter’s death. As well as that, the objectiveness of the stranger narrating gives the reader almost a communal experience. It is as if the reader was in a small town one day, and a local just happened to... ... middle of paper ... ... to accept that nothing can change the fact that Lucy is dead. What really makes it apparent that Lucy’s parents refuse to let her fade away, is the fact that the stranger is telling the story. The stranger is narrating it as if it was told to him by one of the parents, word by word, to be repeated and spread throughout the town, so in a way Lucy is always kept alive. In words of Wordsworth: - Yet some maintain that to this day She is still a living child; That you may see sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonesome wild. (57 – 60) Though Lucy died at such a young age and under such unfortunate circumstances she is still remembered by the town’s people as well as the reader now. Works Cited William Wordsworth. “Lucy Gray.” English Romantic Poetry .Ed. Stanley Appelbaum. New York: Dover Publications, 1996. 33 – 4.
“Pass On” written by Michael Lee is a free verse poem informing readers on grief, which is one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome not only when losing a loved one, but also in life itself. “Pass On” successfully developed this topic through the setting of an unknown character who explains his or her experience of grief. Despite Lee never introducing this character, readers are given enough information to know how they are overcoming this difficult obstacle. In fact, this unknown character is most likely the writer himself, indirectly explaining his moments of grief. One important piece of information Lee provides is the fact that he has experienced loss twice, one with his grandfather and the other a friend who was murdered by the
Teenage suicide seems to be the underlying tone in this short story. Several signs of a distressed teen are illustrated through the character of Lucy. Usually a teen that commits suicide is one who is admired. The first time Lois meets Lucy, she thought of her as an exception. Lucy says the only reason she is at the same camp as Lois is because her mother went there. Lois immediately feels like Lucy is above this camp but since Lucy is good-natured she will make it work. She thinks about the fact that Lucy had a full time maid while her own family only had someone twice a week. Lucy adores her father and tells Lois about the neat patch over his eye. Lois tries to offer something up about her family that may interest Lucy. She tells Lucy that her father plays golf. Lucy just answers by stating that both her father and mother play golf. These ...
Lucy Elizabeth was Russell’s symbol of strength, a pillar of confidence. She was a fierce woman who was not afraid to speak her mind, and when she did she spoke it in an educated manner. He may have been bothered by her strict ways, but in reality she was his idol. Her strength brought Russell and his sister Doris through many hard times, and her will to succeed and be the best was instilled in him for life. There are many examples of such strength in the text of Growing Up to fill fifty pages, but I will only list what I feel are the most important ones. One of the biggest struggles Lucy Elizabeth had to endure was the fact that she conceived Russell out of wedlock. Unlike the present day, in 1925 this was sternly looked upon, especially for schoolteachers such as herself. Her pregnancy cost her, her job and forced her into marrying an alcoholic with an overbearing mother. Lucy’s life changed abruptly a few years after Russell’s birth when her h...
Kenyon’s choice of a first person perspective serves as one of two main techniques she uses in developing the reader’s ability to relate to the poem’s emotional implications and thus further her argument regarding the futility of mankind’s search for closure through the mourning process. By choosing to write the poem in the first person, Kenyon encourages the reader to interpret the poem as a story told by the same person who fell victim to the tragedy it details, rather than as a mere account of events observed by a third party. This insertion of the character into the story allows the reader to carefully interpret the messages expressed through her use of diction in describing the events during and after the burial.
Dickey is a mastermind at truly evoking mental images and feedback from the reader through his brilliant writing style. By the end of the poem, the reader has felt as if he or her has ridden on a roller coaster of a keen portrayal of the reality of death, the sentiment felt by those left behind by the dead, and also the power of faith. The ending line of the poem now makes sense to the reader. The son has come down from his father. He has accepted the fact that his father will die and can now be at peace with it.
In his narrative poem, Frost starts a tense conversation between the man and the wife whose first child had died recently. Not only is there dissonance between the couple,but also a major communication conflict between the husband and the wife. As the poem opens, the wife is standing at the top of a staircase looking at her child’s grave through the window. Her husband is at the bottom of the stairs (“He saw her from the bottom of the stairs” l.1), and he does not understand what she is looking at or why she has suddenly become so distressed. The wife resents her husband’s obliviousness and attempts to leave the house. The husband begs her to stay and talk to him about what she feels. Husband does not understand why the wife is angry with him for manifesting his grief in a different way. Inconsolable, the wife lashes out at him, convinced of his indifference toward their dead child. The husband accepts her anger, but the separation between them remains. The wife leaves the house as husband angrily threatens to drag her back by force.
Stephen Gill, editor. The Oxford Authors: William Wordsworth, pp. 67-80. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
William Wordsworth ‘Preface to Lyrical Ballads’ in D. J. Enright & Ernst De Chichera eds. English Critical Texts: 16th Century to 20th Century (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 166. (All further citations from this preface are from this edition and are referred to as Preface Wordsworth in parenthesis.)
Your poem, Tears, Idle Tears, stood out to me and connected to me more than you will ever know. At first when I read this poem, I was confused about the meaning of the tears. Are they happy tears of memory, sad tears of loss, tears of frustration or confusion, or each of these in turn or together? That is when I realized that what you did in this poem was truly exceptional and showed your ability as a writer and poet. You were capable of capturing what it is like to lose someone close to you: the mixed emotions, the pain, the hardship of wanting to hold on to the pass versus moving on and letting go. It must have been even harder for you, knowing that the death of your friend led to some of your most infamous pieces of work, which were later collected and published as In Memoriam in 1850 and included ove...
The speaker starts sadly with a little anger, but sooner after that she changes her tone to accept God’s will. She believes that he is not going to be alone because he will meet the other deceased in the eternal life. She proclaims: “ Three flowers, two scarcely blown, the last i’th’ bud, / Cropped by th’ Almighty’s hand; yet is He good” (3-4). She is happy because her grandchildren will be more secure in heaven under the grace of God. She begins to accept God’s will: “Such was His [God] will, but why, let’s not dispute” (6). She knows it is a sin to interfere and complain about God’s plan for the universe. Thus, she reforms her hypocrisy and dissatisfaction and considers God to be “merciful as well as just”
Elegy in a Country Courtyard, by Thomas Gray, can be looked at through two different methods. First the Dialogical Approach, which covers the ability of the language of the text to address someone without the consciousness that the exchange of language between the speaker and addressee occurs. (HCAL, 349) The second method is the Formalistic Approach, which allows the reader to look at a literary piece, and critique it according to its form, point of view, style, imagery, atmosphere, theme, and word choice. The formalistic views on form, allow us to look at the essential structure of the poem.
Davies, Hugh Sykes. “Another New Poem by Wordsworth.” Essays in Criticism XV(2) (April 1965): 135-161. Web. 18 Sep. 2011.
William Wordsworth is a British poet who is associated with the Romantic movement of the early 19th century. Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. Wordsworth’s mother died when he was seven years old, and he was an orphan at 13. This experience shapes much of his later work. Despite Wordsworth’s losses, he did well at Hawkshead Grammar School, where he firmly established his love of poetry. After Hawkshead, Wordsworth studied at St. John’s College in Cambridge and before his final semester, he set out on a walking tour of Europe, an experience that influenced both his poetry.
Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden is a short poem that illustrates the emotions that he is dealing with after the love of his life passes away. The tone of this piece evokes feelings that will differ depending on the reader; therefore, the meaning of this poem is not in any way one-dimensional, resulting in inevitable ambiguity . In order to evoke emotion from his audience, Auden uses a series of different poetic devices to express the sadness and despair of losing a loved one. This poem isn’t necessarily about finding meaning or coming to some overwhelming realization, but rather about feeling emotions and understanding the pain that the speaker is experiencing. Through the use of poetic devices such as an elegy, hyperboles, imagery, metaphors, and alliterations as well as end-rhyme, Auden has created a powerful poem that accurately depicts the emotions a person will often feel when the love of their live has passed away.
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a poem composed by Thomas Gray over a period of ten years. Beginning shortly after the death of his close friend Richard West in 1742, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was first published in 1751. This poem’s use of dubbal entendre may lead the intended audience away from the overall theme of death, mourning, loss, despair and sadness; however, this poem clearly uses several literary devices to convey the author’s feelings toward the death of his friend Richard West, his beloved mother, aunt and those fallen soldiers of the Civil War. This essay will discuss how Gray uses that symbolism and dubbal entendre throughout the poem to convey the inevitability of death, mourning, conflict within self, finding virtue in one’s life, dealing with one’s misfortunes and giving recognition to those who would otherwise seem insignificant.