In the second quatrain Shakespeare uses the day in the passage of time comparing his stage of life to that of " the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west,".Black night is personified as a taker of time untill finally Death's alter ego takes what time is left. It is important to note; the poet has changed his focus from aging, to dying, to death and narrowed his scope to the close of one day. In the third and final quatrain the author speaks of a "deathbed" of ashes which maybe interpreted as the ashes of his youth.The same ashes or embers; once the f...

• Word Count: 453
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

In the first stanza it is night and the speaker is comparing the colors shining into the room that he is in to "the colors of bushes/and the fallen leaves." ... To add a little suspense to this stanza the speaker notes the dark "color of the heavy hemlocks" as well as remembering "cry of the peacocks." ... "I saw how the planets gathered/Like the leaves themselves/Turning in the wind- The speaker then sees "how the night came, /Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks- Now the person in the poem is scared, and realizes that the "stars too seem part of this process of annihilation" ...

• Word Count: 619
• Approx Pages: 2
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

As the baby begins to cry into the wee hours of the night, the mother carries her to a window and the two watch the night turn to day. ... The child tries a "handful of notes" and Plath relates the sounds of the vowels to a group of balloons rising. ... Lines seventeen and eighteen read, "Your handful of notes;/ The clear vowels rise like balloons.... It begins, "All night your moth-breath/", taking the silent action of a moth's wings and explaining the child's quiet breath. ... Not to mention the beautiful simile that ends the poem, "Your handful of no...

• Word Count: 1571
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Sidney Colvin notes in the book John Keats: His Life and Poetry "in the light of the tragedy to come its two first quatrains now seem to thrill with prophetic meaning" (259). ... Asking, "Why did I laugh to-night?" ... Moreover, "Why did I laugh to-night" chooses specific words to modify the poet's moods. ... In "Why did I laugh to-night", the sentence "Yet would I on this very midnight cease," (11) lets us picture that Keats is being alone in the dark black night accepting his impending death. ... On the other hands, in "Why did I laugh to-night," the poet has dilemma between facing mora...

• Word Count: 1233
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

To begin with a macroscopic look at the poem, we note that it has thirteen questions (i.e., sentence fragments): seven question marks in the first half, and six in the second – an almost perfect numerical equilibrium. ... The next point to note is that all stanzas except the fifth one contain adjectives: "immortal", "fearful", "distant", "dread "(twice), and "deadly". ... I claim that this emphasis on the fifth stanza and line 20 suggests the existence of an equilibrium between the binaries by which we understand the world, one that indi...

• Word Count: 822
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Notes in the margin of my book, defacing the text, made it hard to read, but I could decipher some of my scribblings outlining the way the change had occurred. ... My notes had become almost indecipherable as I turned to '"'Nightfall'"'. ... The yearning is heightened by the number of single syllable words in the final stanzas, such as her realisation that '"'your night and day are one'"'. ...

• Word Count: 743
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

.), in a voice of lost innocence, brings a new note and a harsher irony with kindred' (as if the sweet flower and the spider had conspired to arrive at exactly that height and place). ... Though the repetitions in the octet can be matched in other poets, the surprise comes with the rhyme in line 9, which is picked up again in 'height' and 'night.' ... link the ingredients of this witches' broth in insidious confusions (white=blight=right(rite)=height=night). ...

• Word Count: 834
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

In the next stanza, he mentions a frozen lake, and that it is the darkest night of the year. Now we have a lake, and the dark night sky. ... While snow may represent a peaceful, calm evening, the night is described as the darkest of the year. ... The darkness of the night is death. ... Frost must continue through the snow, into the night. ...

• Word Count: 1767
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

All night I feel their absence and I burn. " (21-24). ... When the maid notes at the end that she burns in the absence of the pearls that stay in her mistress' room, she may be hinting towards the fact that she actually burns to be in the bedroom with her mistress as well. When the maid notes that she feels the absence of the pearls, it could symbolize the longing and lust for her desire for the mistress to be in the bedroom with her. Even though the maid is not technically sleeping with her mistress, she might take joy in the fact that the pearls still contain her lingering body odor, a ...

• Word Count: 1696
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

The speaker in the poem is standing on the cliffs of Dover at night over looking the sea. ... At this point he has someone to "come to the window"(6) and enjoy the "sweet night air"(6). ... With the "slow"(13) rhythm of the waves it "[brings] /the eternal note of sadness in"(13-14), we start to feel sorry for the speaker as his emotions bring feelings of sorrow. ... With the sea now retreating his "breath/of the night-wind"(25-26) makes him feel "naked"(27) and bare. ...

• Word Count: 854
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

The youth of Hughes is brought out by his poem "Harlem Night Club-, a piece that describes living in the moment. ... "Harlem Night Club- is unique in that it describes the integration of blacks and whites in a positive tone. ... Like the earlier poem "Harlem Night Club-, it is a fast-paced, forceful piece. ... For Hughes, it would appear that his life ended on a dejected note. ...

• Word Count: 1313
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

They would get up early in the morning to sweep dirty, black chimneys until night. ... from poem 1, and the line: "Crying " 'weep, 'weep," in notes of woe" from poem 2. ... This can be seen in the second stanza, and the first two lines of the third stanza: Because I was happy upon the heath, And smil'd among the winters snow: They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe. ... The third line in the second stanza in poem 2 is one example of how the colour black functions as a destructive element: "They clothed me in the clothes of death, And tau...

• Word Count: 2076
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The reader must note that the poet who wrote "Cousin Kate" was a wealthy lady, and so could not have encountered the situation in her poem, whereas the poet for "The Seduction" could quite easily have experienced a teenage pregnancy. ... One the night of the party, the girl fell in love with the idea of being in love, not with the boy. ... She rips up all her "My Guy and her Jackie photo-comics" and breaks the heels of the high white shoes which she had worn that night. To the reader, it seems like she is trying to destroy the memories and what happened the night of the party. ...

• Word Count: 1725
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

Despite the speaker's negative wandering thoughts, he wants to treasure the night with his lover. ... For the purpose of this discussion it is important to note Auden's sexual orientation; he was gay. ... It is functional to note that the rhythmic lines changes later in the poem, just like the rhyme scheme. ...

• Word Count: 1813
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

This is seen in the lines: Our brains knive us Wearied the night is silent Low our memory of the salient Worried by silence nervous ... It is interesting to note though, that Owen at the end of this description of sudden movement, ends this stanza (as he does most of the stanzas in the poem) with the words but nothing happens. ...

• Word Count: 2437
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

She described how she would sit and gaze at him when he perused the newspaper or how she would leave sweet notes in his lunch pail. ... The poet expresses her love for her husband, Robert Browning, who is also a poet who wrote "Meeting at Night. ... " (l.5-6) Browning is saying she loves him whether it is day or night. ...

• Word Count: 1336
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

At night when all the colours die, they hide in pairs and read about themselves in colour, with their eyelids shut. -- Craig Raine Craig Raine Born in 1945 in County Durham located North of England. ... The auther notes that the Martian does not know the words for "cry" or "laugh", and he uses metaphors to describe how the reader reacts to the effects of books "eyes to melt" (cry) and the "body to shriek without pain" (laugh). ...

• Word Count: 1520
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

At night when all the colours die, they hide in pairs and read about themselves in colour, with their eyelids shut. -- Craig Raine Craig Raine Born in 1945 in County Durham located North of England. ... The auther notes that the Martian does not know the words for "cry" or "laugh", and he uses metaphors to describe how the reader reacts to the effects of books "eyes to melt" (cry) and the "body to shriek without pain" (laugh). ...

• Word Count: 1520
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

In the last two lines, the speaker ends with the note that states "let those who never find true love keep saying that there's no such thing. their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.... The speaker almost shames the feelings that she presented in the previous stanzas in the last lines, where she basically states that if it makes it easier for you to get through the night to hold this grudge on true love and those who enjoy it, so be it. ...

• Word Count: 1213
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

It is important to note that the images here also give concrete detail. ... So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware. ...

• Word Count: 1579
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Wilfred Owen wrote Dulce et Decorum Est about the first World War, in which he had personally fought. It was addressed to Jessie Pope, a writer of other poems concerning the War. Specifically he wrote the poem to counteract her poem "Who's For The Game?". Owen felt that Pope did not comprehend the s...

• Word Count: 2354
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

In "The Raven,"" the persona begins his tale in his home on a dark and gloomy December night in this paraphrase: Once, during a dreary midnight, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many amusing and peculiar forgotten folk tales, I fell sleepy, nearly napping (1-3). ... "Go back out to the night! ...

• Word Count: 2508
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School

Allen Ginsberg's Motivation for writing Howl Richard Eberhart, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet of 1966, remarks, "Ginsberg's Howl ushered in a new generation." Many 20th century poets have attested to the freeing effect that Ginsberg's poetry had upon them in the late fifties. But to allege that Ginsberg's Howl "ushered in a new generation" of poetry is to degrade the true historical impact of his poetry. (Breslin 225) However, "Throughout the long history, poetry has relied on evolving rules about what a poem is, with new kinds of poetry building on earlier kinds to ...

• Word Count: 4095
• Approx Pages: 16
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School