The narrator is on his "death-bed" and recognizes that his youth was good and he lived a good life. The "glowing of such fire" seems like it would relate to Hell, but really it refers to the fire and passion of youth, that burns out as people grow older, and is extinguished entirely by the time a person has lived a long life and is ready to die. He recognizes he "must expire," and that his life will be consumed by the joys and youth that nourished it when he was younger. Again, the narrator seems to be reassuring the other person, and telling them that he lived a long and good life, he enjoyed the passions of youth, and that he is now ready to die, and that death is inevitable.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long

These…...

The rhyme scheme of this sonnet follows Shakespeare's usual structure, wherein the quatrains all have an independent alternating rhyme (ABAB CDCD EFEF), and the final two lines form an heroic couplet (GG). This adds to the feeling of receiving discrete steps of an argument, and enhances the divisions of the versification. There is also a noticeable prevalence of "l's and "s's in the poem, particularly in the first and third quatrains. these sounds make up the basics of the word "lies," which is itself used as a rhyme and is repeated in the poem, and which forms one of the major themes of the sonnet. In this way, the alliteration subconsciously reinforces the meaning and feel of the poem. There are also instances of repeated words, such as "love" in the lines "O love's best habit is in seeming trust, / and age in love, loves not to have..." (lines…...

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Works Cited

De Grazia, Margreta. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. New York: Cambridge University Press 2001.

Evans, G. Blakemore and M. Tobin, eds. The Riverside Shakespeare. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 138." In the Riverside Shakespeare.

Jewel Stairs' Grievance: Li PO / Ezra Pound
We can assume from the poet's heritage that the speaker is an Asian woman. However, there are further contextual cues that aid in the understanding of "The Jewel Stairs' Grievance." For one, the opening line refers to "jeweled steps," which indicates a place of some wealth or importance. There is sexual innuendo throughout the poem: the dew, the gauze stockings, and the "crystal curtain" symbolize female sexuality. The moon is also a female symbol, corresponding with her monthly cycle. The moon also corresponds to the fact that it is late, signifying that the speaker is likely to be a concubine.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 73

The speaker is likely to be an older or mature man. He states, "In me thou seest the twilight of such day." The first half of the sonnet is filled with imagery of autumn, symbolizing aging and even possibly impending death.…...

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References

Jewel Stairs:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178420 

Shakespeare Sonnet 73:  http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/73.html 

Shakespeare Sonnet 3:  http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/3detail.html 

Shakespeare Sonnet 18:  http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/18.html

Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound and My Father's altz by Theodore Roethke
Ezra Pound's poem In the Station of the Metro and Theodore Roethke's poem My Father's altz both reflect the darker side of human nature. Though these works paint a very different picture, they each allude to the desperate conditions that we all face from time to time as human beings.

Pound's poem compares faces in the crowd at the metro to apparitions or ghosts, like petals on a wet black bough. The imagery evokes dark feelings of foreboding and death. It may be interpreted as a reminder that we are all born only to face the same inevitable end. The poem is constructed much like a Japanese haiku as is of only three lines. This simplicity adds to the poem's texture and adds power to the message. The reader is left to interpret the intent of the…...

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Works Cited

Dickenson, Emily. Wild Nights.(1861). 9 August 2012.

Pound, Ezra. In the Station of the Metro.(1913). 9 August 2012.

Roethke, Theodore. My Father's Waltz (1942). 9 August 2012.

Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 73, (That time of year thou mayst in me behold). (1609). 9 August 2012.

He "almost" despises himself but still seems not to think that his actions were absolutely wrong. Furthermore, the narrator of the Shakespeare Sonnet finds solace and comfort in thinking of his lover. By thinking of the one he loves, a human being, the narrator feels absolved of any wrongdoing. The narrator of the Shakespeare Sonnet is more concerned with the consequences of his actions, such as being an outcast, than with whether the action was right or wrong. For Herbert, morality is quite the opposite. Herbert suggests that the human condition is itself a state of sin.
Therefore, a central difference between secular and religious morality as expressed in Elizabethan poetry is between absolute and situational ethics. For Herbert, morality is based on a set of absolute values that God and only God can create. God is the "Just Judge" and God's judgments transcend any human laws (l 12). Moreover,…...

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Works Cited

Herbert, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. "Psalm 51." Retrieved July 15, 2009 from  http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/psalm51.htm 

Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 29." Retrieved July 15, 2009 from  http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/29.html

Finally, the sestet ends with a question about whether any moral lessons can be learned from this little scene in nature: "[w]hat but design of darkness to appall/if design govern in a thing so small." In other words, the speaker is asking whether he should even try to draw any conclusions from the spider's destruction of the beautiful moth.
The final lines of the poem not only call into question the beneficence of nature; they also call into question the ability of human beings to draw lessons from nature. (Bagby, pp. 73-74). Ultimately, the poem raises questions about the Darwinian metaphor more than it does about the Darwinian theory. (Hass, p. 62). Frost is trying to suggest that there is a limit to what human beings can learn from nature and to their ability to draw their own moral lessons from it.

In the final analysis, "Design" is a poem that…...

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Works Cited

Bagby, George F. Frost and the Book of Nature. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993.

Burt, Stephen & Mikics, David. The Art of the Sonnet. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2010.

Cramer, Jeffrey S. Robert Frost Among His Poems: A Literary Companion to the Poet's Own Biographical Contexts and Associations. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1996.

Frost, Robert. "Design," Rpt. In the Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Allison Booth, et al. Shorter 9th ed. W.W. Norton & Company. New York, 2005. 810.

" James a.S. McPeek
further blames Jonson for this corruption: "No one can read this dainty song to Celia without feeling that Jonson is indecorous in putting it in the mouth of such a thoroughgoing scoundrel as Volpone."

Shelburne

asserts that the usual view of Jonson's use of the Catullan poem is distorted by an insufficient understanding of Catullus' carmina, which comes from critics' willingness to adhere to a conventional -- yet incorrect and incomplete -- reading of the love poem. hen Jonson created his adaptation of carmina 5, there was only one other complete translation in English of a poem by Catullus. That translation is believed to have been Sir Philip Sidney's rendering of poem 70 in Certain Sonnets, however, it was not published until 1598.

This means that Jonson's knowledge of the poem must have come from the Latin text printed in C. Val. Catulli, Albii, Tibulli, Sex. Aur. Propertii Opera omnia…...

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Works Cited

Alghieri, Dante Inferno. 1982. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Dell, 2004.

Print.

Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. Routledge; First Edition, 2000. Print.

Baker, Christopher. & Harp, Richard. "Jonson' Volpone and Dante." Comparative

ordsworth
Returning to Nature

They looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.

-Exodus 16-10

The great Romantic bard illiam ordsworth loved nature. To him, nature was a place to return to, not just in a physical sense, as in a sojourn or expedition, but in an emotional and spiritual sense. Returning to nature meant to revitalize an essential part of one's humanity through the cathartic and transformative powers of nature. To help unpack this concept, this essay will analyze two of ordsworth's poems: "Nutting" and "The orld is Too Much ith Us."

"Nutting" is a Conversation poem, in the Coleridge tradition, between the Narrator and his Maiden (Rumens). Over the course of the poem, he's tells his Maiden about a day he spent gathering nuts in the forest and how, after gathering the nuts, he felt a sense of guilt for needlessly taking mother nature's bounty. He…...

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Works Cited

Cronon, William. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 1996. Print.

Rumens, Carol. "The Romantic Poets: Nutting by William Wordsworth." The Guardian.

Guardian News and Media, 28 June 0026. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

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Dante and Beatrice
An Analysis of the Relationship of Beatrice to Dante

Dante describes his meeting with Beatrice at an early age and in La Vita Nuova (The New Life) discusses and poeticizes the love he instantly held for her. Beatrice becomes for Dante a gate to the divine love that he examines in La Comedia, today referred to as The Divine Comedy. This paper will analyze the relationship between Dante and Beatrice and show how her role in his life is like that of a muse -- an agent of God, drawing the poet closer and closer not to herself but to the Divine.

The Vita Nuova

In the Vita Nuova, of course, Dante is drawn solely to Beatrice without anticipating the higher love that Beatrice reflects in her own person. It is this reflection in her that attracts Dante, although he does not place it as a reflection of the divine love…...

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Works Cited

Dante. The Inferno. [trans. John Ciardi]. NY: New American Library, 2003. Print.

Dante. The Paradiso. [trans. John Ciardi]. NY: New American Library, 2003. Print.

Dante. The Purgatorio. [trans. John Ciardi]. NY: New American Library, 2003. Print.

Dante. The Vita Nuova. London: Parker, Son, and Bourn, 1862. Print.

oad not Taken, obert Frost uses the setting, mood, and characterization to help illuminate the theme of choice symbolized by the road not taken.
The poem uses various literary devices to describe choice.

The poem is set in the woods, where two roads diverge.

The setting is symbolic.

The roads represent choice.

The poem has a contemplative mood.

Each of the choices is appealing

The traveler knows that choosing one road means choosing not to follow the other road.

The poem has a complex structure with:

Four five-line stanzas;

ABAAB rhyme structure;

Iambic tetrameter; and D. The use of some anapests.

Frost uses an unnamed narrator in the poem

A. Old enough to have made choices

Not an old person because the narrator expects to age

Poetry Analysis: The oad not Taken by obert Frost

In The oad not Taken, obert Frost uses the narrator's voice to describe a man looking back at his life and contemplating his choices. The narrator describes a pivotal decision-point…...

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References

Frost, R. (1916). The road not taken. Retrieved May 19, 2014 from Poetry Foundation website:

 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536