In the first stanza, it has an indication of time, which starts to slowly bring a picture into our heads. ... (line 3) This shows the time. ... In the last two lines it starts to show that it was someone close who has died otherwise they would not be taking it so badly. ... The poet is trying to create a picture in your mind of the body being innocent and just lying there helplessly. ... In the last line of the poem it is on its own like a stanza, but it is a short but powerful line: "A four foot box, a foot for every year." ...

• Word Count: 1950
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

Poets like Owen paint a picture of this emotional struggle through their diction and help readers to understand the hardships that face soldiers on a daily basis. ... It is the last few lines of the forth stanza that Owen points out that war is not all glory and honor. ... Although Owen has the skill of painting a gruesome picture of the front lines, he can also paint the picture of the after effects of the war. ... It has only been a year and his life has changed so much that he is no longer the same person; "He's lost his colour vary far from here,/Poured it down shell-holes till th...

• Word Count: 1643
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

The metaphor itself is simple in definition: "A word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar". ... The twelfth line and last of the stanza goes, "A far sea moves in my ear.... The very first line with the gold watch metaphor show the mother's removal of herself from the child. ... The last stanza does its best to paint a welcoming picture of the mother and her child. ...

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

In lines such as, "No more may gulls cry" (20) and a "break in the sun till the sun breaks down / And death shall have no dominion," (26-27) Thomas shows the reader that even if the sun never shines again death will not rule. ... He opens the poem like a storyteller and "presents an idyllic picture of childhood on a farm, filled with vivid imagery which presents a child's view of the world" (Tremlett 150). ... The turning point in the poem comes when the child realizes his youth will not last forever: "And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows / In all his tuneful tur...

• Word Count: 1651
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Here the poet makes use of poetic language that shows the speaker's love for his beloved: he finds him beautiful, because of his guilt and mortality, and not in spite of it. ... He says that "certainty" and "fidelity" (faithfulness), just like innocent beauty, do not last forever. ... By using this imagery the poet not only forms an imaginary picture of death and time, but the abstract speech also helps makes the poem more realistic. ... He asks the wind to "blow softly round [his beloved's] dreaming head"; that each day will show him a kind welcome and...

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