To me, the poem appears to be comparing our youthful years as being as valuable as gold. We are to enjoy our time when we are young for it is the "…hardest hue to hold…" on to. It is also saying that our childhood years are very short and feels like "…but only so an hour…" As we grow older, our garden of "…Eden sank to grief…" The beginning of our life will quickly end as "…dawn goes down to day…" So in the end "…nothing gold can stay…" which refers to the end of our innocence. (All quotes taken from…
Keats, John. "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2014. .…
Bruce Dawe uses this epigraph as a metaphor for birth and death. It tells us what the rest of the poem is about. A life cycle.... everyone’s life cycle.…
The first line contains an image of a “bronze butterfly” sleeping on a trunk. This stagnant description of such a beautiful creature demonstrates a slowly moving life, one of which hasn’t achieved much. The trunk that the butterfly is sleeping on is colored black, representing the man’s missed opportunities to leave the farm. The next line portrays a leaf blowing down a ravine found behind an empty house. Obviously the empty house and the later heard cowbells in the distance (implying that the cows are leaving the farm) are clear images of the man’s loneliness. The speaker moves on to spot some horse manure. This dung, after being left for over a year, has dried and is turning into stones. The changing of this manure symbolizes the man’s changing into an old, lifeless man. Just as the manure does, the longer the man sits there and waits for something, the more prone he is to dry up and waste his life. Before the last line of the poem, the speaker mentions the setting sun and the evening that approaches as he lays back in his hammock. A chicken hawk, a well-known hunter, flies by the man and looks for his home, just as the man is looking for his home — or the place where he belongs. As the evening envelops the man, all of these apparently “beautiful” images (yet symbolically depressing messages) pushes the man to realize that his life has become…
In the three stanza poem, the poet commemorates the first anniversary of seeing his beloved. He begins by using imagery from the political world: the royal court of “All Kings”. He juxtaposes this image with the supremacy of the “sun”, the true ruler of all mankind – without which the human race would die; this encompasses the highest concepts of the world. However, the poet then goes on to comment that even the mighty sun and the all-powerful kings have aged “a year” since he and his loved one “first one another saw”. Thus stating that the only thing not susceptible to “decay”; is the narrator and his loved one’s “love”: “our love hath no decay”. Their passion has “no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday” suggesting their mutual love is timeless and beyond the reach of mortality.…
The two poems are similar in their corresponding feeling of dread for death. Using diction, Keats reflects on how he “may cease to be” and how he “may never live.” Similarly, Longfellow states that “[h]alf of [his] life is gone” and that the “years slip from” him. Both narrators then continue to lament their fears of not accomplishing everything they had once aspired to do. Keats uses an anaphora of “when” in order to illustrate the various and wide-ranging fears that are related to death. He also uses the anaphora of “before” in order to further accentuate his concerns of dying before he is able to accomplish various educational yearnings. Similarly, Longfellow also acknowledges his failure in fulfilling “the aspiration of [his] youth” or in building a “tower of song with lofty parapet.” This tower symbolizes a success of literary prowess and legacy the speaker had once hoped to wish for. He realizes that he will not accomplish everything he had once wanted. Both of these poems are ultimately similar in that they both illustrate men who fear that their lives will be coming to an end.…
Both Keats and Longfellow were poets during the Romantic period. The two compose poems in which they reflect on their inability to live up to their creative potential and the idea that death could intervene at any moment. Longfellow is disappointed in his failures and sees comfort in the past rather than an uncertain future. Moreover, Keats fears he won’t accomplish all that he wants, but sees possibility and realizes his grievous goals won’t be important after death. While Longfellow’s tone is fearful, Keats’ is appreciative and hopeful about what life has to offer right now. In both poems, the poets use the literary devices parallelism and symbolism, to depict their particular situation in their own lives, while also using diction with characteristics of romantic poetry, reflecting their time period.…
In the sixth stanza, Keats completely overthrows rationality by having the speaker claim, “for a many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death” (Lines 51-52). If rationality is all about self-preservation, and if many philosophers looked down on suicide as a desire rather than any real need, Keats has created a speaker that is seemingly entranced by death, thinking it “rich to die, / To cease upon the midnight with no pain” (Lines 55-56). The transcendence of death from a physical plane to an entirely metaphysical plane is described as “an ecstasy,” which is entirely drawn from emotion (Line 58). Additionally, Keats mentions an auditory sense with the “high requiem,” but seemingly makes an allusion that either he is “a sod” since…
Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More 2012, Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood 1804, accessed 15 October 2012…
The poem has rhyming quatrains bringing a celebratory mood to the concept of death. It accentuates the temperate, collected nature of death which is then changed in the 4th stanza when the mood changes to a more supernatural, ghostly feel. In the last stanza, when the persona has moved into death, the imagery becomes abstract, revealing the veiled and mysterious nature of death.…
In this poem, Keats is writing about his fears in dying. He was dying he was afraid of three things, (1.) He was afraid he would cease to exist, what he means by this is he was afraid people would forget about him and the poems he wrote. (2.) He was afraid he would never be able to read anymore books, and (3.)…
Many people don’t realize what is happening in the world. People choose to ignore what is really important, for example, human suffering and death. Others can’t seem to forget loved ones that have passed away and of course people don’t know what happens after death. Both poems “Musee des Beaux Arts” and “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” themes are about death.…
The poem, “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be”, by John Keats, uses metaphor, romantic imagery, and figurative language to reflect the speaker’s fear of dying without accomplishing what he aspires for in life which is success and fame in his writing and the love of one who will never love him back. In his writings, I think he is also saying to live you life to the fullest. To try to experience every little thing in life and to take advantage of it because we only live once. John Keats died at a young age from tuberculosis. The speaker, aware of his approaching death, expresses his fear that he will deprived of the three things he most greatly values: to write poetry of his many ideas, to experience the wondrous mystery of nature and gain…
The first 3 lines in the third stanza of the poem are extended metaphors for the deceased used to describe how much he meant and how he was everything.…
The poem has religious comments throughout and it reminds us of Jesus and how he came forward to sacrifice his life for humanity. In the end he is chained and dragged to his death which again commemorates the experience of…