The Second Chance
Many times it is impossible to peer into one’s future when the present is so enticing. Because of this, many plan poorly for the future and are surprised by the circumstances that they are so inconveniently left to deal with. This notion is present in W.B. Yeats’s poem “When You Are Old” which tells the story of a woman who grew old and realized that the all love she thought she had was false and that only one man truly loved her but she never gave him the time of day. Thus, she died alone. The meter, rhythm, and imagery present in “When You Are Old” impose the possibility of the beloved’s lonesome future due to her constant repudiation of the speaker’s love, thus, strengthening the speaker’s entreaty. The poem begins
…show more content…
The rhyme scheme ABBA CDDC EFFE coincides with the monotonous actions of the beloved. The subject, being “old and gray,” makes slow and simple movements (1). She is described as partaking in activities such as “nodding by the fire” and “slowly reading” which are all expressed by a particularly slow and gradual movement. Such slow movements mirror the rhyme scheme as the aforementioned rhyme scheme, evokes a kind of simplistic, and monotonous rhythm. The envelope rhyme scheme of the poem has an end rhyme that mimics the rhyme of the first line of each stanza. For example, line one ends with the rhyme “sleep” and line four ends with the rhyme “deep” creating a cyclical pattern that repeats. The rhyme scheme simulates what is happening in the poem as the poem begins with the subject being old, then remembering remembering their youth when many “loved [her] glad grace,/ and loved [her] beauty false or true” (5-6). But this remembrance is ephemeral as she is returned to her lonely, old self because she wrongly pursued the love of men who were only infatuated with her instead of pursuing the “one man who loved the pilgrim soul in [her]” (7). Thus, the formal completeness of the rhyme scheme present in all four stanzas helps emphasize the lonesome future that awaits her as a punishment for rebuffing the poet-speaker’s true love. Although, the …show more content…
Each stanza has imagery that invoke completely different images. In the first stanza, the image created from the adjectives is of an old and lonely woman, sitting by the fire. She is “full of sleep […] nodding by the fire,” suggesting that she is at the ending of her life and about to fall into an eternal sleep and die (1-2). The first image is already quite alarming because it starts at the end of the subject’s life. This in return creates an uneasy feeling within the subject. As she picks up the book and slowly reads she starts to remember “how many loved [her] moments of glad grace,” this image sharply contrasts with the image of death in the first stanza. In the begging of the second stanza her uneasy feelings created by the first stanza are laid to rest. However, there is a shift in the second stanza. The stanza starts off with warm and pleasant imagery about the subject in her youth. But as the poet speaker states that only “one man loved the pilgrim soul in [her]” all of the suitors created by the previous image dissipate. And now, there is only one man standing before her and loving her and her “changing face” (8). Although there was one man who’s love remained pure for her throughout the passing of time the image in the third stanza paints her alone and old, “bending down beside the glowing bars” (9). The glowing bars could represent the
...he imagery of the more intensely-felt passages in the middle of the poem. Perhaps the poet is like someone at their journey's end, `all passion spent', recollecting in tranquillity some intimations of mortality?
When You are Old, by William Butler Yeats, represents and elderly woman reminiscing of her younger days. A past lover whispers to her as she looks through a photo album. Basically, Yeats is showing that as the woman gets older, she is alone, but she does not have to be lonely. She will always have her memories for companionship.
...represent the stages of one’s life. She focuses on the most extreme sense of ends-death, and rejects it as final. What the poem arrived at is that some aspect of life or form of existence continues after death.
The author is able to so descriptively express this common event by dedicating each stanza to a different perspective involved. The author begins the poem with a protruding inexplicit situation, captivating the reader’s interest and provoking curiosity to help create imagery. Much like a thesis of an essay, the author states “blurring to sheer verb” at the end of the first stanza, he restates the true simple nature of this topic. Wilbur next describes the surrounding in reaction to the fire truck, showing the reader the flamboyancy and power of the fire truck. At the end of the second stanza, the author italicizes the line “thought is degraded action!” This could be interpreted as the speaker’s thoughts, suggesting that those ringing bells remind him that thinking is but the inferior form of action. In the third stanza, the author focuses on the effects of the fire truck on the speaker, helping relate the reader to the thoughts of the speaker as he experiences this event. Corresponding to the ending of the second stanza, the speaker is reminded of the true nature of thoughts, thus letting go of his worries “I stand here purged of nuance and my mind a blank. All I was brooding upon has taken wing.”
The first stanza describes the depth of despair that the speaker is feeling, without further explanation on its causes. The short length of the lines add a sense of incompleteness and hesitance the speaker feels towards his/ her emotions. This is successful in sparking the interest of the readers, as it makes the readers wonder about the events that lead to these emotions. The second and third stanza describe the agony the speaker is in, and the long lines work to add a sense of longing and the outpouring emotion the speaker is struggling with. The last stanza, again structured with short lines, finally reveals the speaker 's innermost desire to "make love" to the person the speaker is in love
This essay is anchored on the goal of looking closer and scrutinizing the said poem. It is divided into subheadings for the discussion of the analysis of each of the poem’s stanzas.
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...
One of the more confusing parts of the poem for me was the last two lines in the second stanza. Stephen Mitchell has a mystic almost dark tone when he is translating the following:
John Keats is an early nineteenth century Romantic poet. In his poem “When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be,” Keats makes excellent use of a majority of poetry elements. This sonnet concentrates merely on his fear of death and his reasons for fearing it. Though Keats’ emphasizes his greatest fear of death, he offers his own resolution by asserting that love and fame lacks any importance. Keats uses articulate wording to exemplify his tone, while using images, figures of speech, symbols, and allegory to illustrate his fear of death. His use of rhythm, sounds, and patters also contribute to his concentration of fear and the effects on his life. As one of the most famous Romantic poets, John Keats utilizes the elements of poetry in “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” to convey his fears and allow the reader to realize how much these fears affect him.
Stanzas one and two of the poem are full of imagery. The first stanza sets the scene for the poem “in a kingdom by the sea” (Poe 609) which makes you feel as if the story is going to have a “romantic” (Overview) feel to it. Then Annabel Lee comes into the story with “no other thought than to love and be loved by me” (Poe 609); This sentence is full of imagery in the sense that it makes you feel the immense capacity of love Annabel Lee had for the speaker if that was her only thought. In the second stanza the imagery takes a turn that shifts from loving and inviting to pain; The love between Annabel and the speaker was so strong that
In order to experience true sorrow one must feel true joy to see the beauty of melancholy. However, Keats’s poem is not all dark imagery, for interwoven into this poem is an emerging possibility of resurrection and the chance at a new life. The speaker in this poem starts by strongly advising against the actions and as the poem continues urges a person to take different actions. In this poem, the speaker tells of how to embrace life by needing the experience of melancholy to appreciate the true joy and beauty of
The poem says that "since feeling is first" (line 1) the one who pays attention to the meaning of things will never truly embrace. The poem states that it is better to be a fool, or to live by emotions while one is young. The narrator declares that his "blood approves" (line 7) showing that his heart approves of living by feeling, and that the fate of feeling enjoyment is better than one of "wisdom" (line 9) or learning. He tells his "lady" (line 10) not to cry, showing that he is speaking to her. He believes that she can make him feel better than anything he could think of, because her "eyelids" (line 12) say that they are "for each other" (line 13). Then, after all she's said and thought, his "lady" forgets the seriousness of thought and leans into the narrator's arms because life is not a "paragraph" (line 15), meaning that life is brief. The last line in the poem is a statement which means that death is no small thi...
There are several death related motifs present in the poem. For instance, the poem opens with a passage from Dante’s Inferno, foreshadowing the theme of death in the poem. The speaker says “I know the voices dying with a dying fall.” He also references Lazarus from the Bible, who was raised from the dead, further developing the death motif. The speaker also seems to be looking back on life, referring to past experiences and his aging, as if he believes his death is imminent. He seems to have an obsession with hiding his age. According to the Psychoanalytic Criticism Chapter, the greater our fear of something is, the greater our obsession becomes (24). The speaker's fear of death has lead him to wear clothes that are fashionable for young people, such as rolling his trousers, and goes to great lengths to cover his age in other ways, such as parting his hair behind to cover a bald spot. The last stanza of the poem has a rather depressing and sad ending, a result of fear of
The ABAB rhyme scheme is a pattern that can be recognized by many individuals; therefore, it relates to the message that motivation is needed by everybody. Two ABAB rhyme schemes make up each stanza, which symbolizes the positivity and negativity that battle throughout the poem. Guest breaks the rhyme scheme once by rhyming “failure” with “you”. This strategic action emphasizes the different methods that negative individuals use to destroy a person’s ambition. Internal rhyme is included in many lines of the poem to create fluidity and sound pleasing to an audience. The poem is composed of a qualitative iambic meter, giving the syllables a sound of da DUM. A pleasing flow is observed through the fairly consistent line length and line syllable number. The lines throughout the poem end in both stressed and unstressed syllables, referencing the battle between discouragement and
In the second quatrain, the speaker depicts a moving image of a twilight that can be seen fading on him as the sun sets in the west and soon turns into darkness. Symbolizing the last moments of life the speaker has. In the third quatrain the speaker depicts an image with a similar meaning as the previous, except for one distinct last thought. The speaker depicts a living image of a bonfire extinguishing and turning into ashes, ashes that may represent his well lived youth. The image gives the idea that ashes represent what once was a beautiful life to the speaker.