Themes: Death Type: Villanelle Background Written by Dylan Thomas when his father was dying, and the poem is addressed to him It is a vigorous, impassioned diatribe against the inevitability of death The poet is encouraging his father to fight against death with all this strength Describes valiant and praiseworthy behaviour of different kinds of…
“Rowing the Bus” is a short story and a post-modern piece of fictional text, written by Paul Logan in 12 November, 2013. The story orbits around the idea of how childhood traumas could, such as school bullying, affect the personal conduct of the human being. The author manages to elaborately explain to his readers, through…
Prayer before Birth is a postmodern work, as seen in both its innovative structure, style, and themes. Readers can depict signs of postmodernism in every stanza; however, before one goes into details, the structure of the poem, as whole, is, on the one hand, very innovative, and, on the other hand, represents the core of…
The father recounts watching his son play football for the first time and feels worried about his son as he watches him walk away from him. 18 Years later he still feels upset but realizes that it’s part of nature and he must accept it. Ideas and Themes: Family relationships Getting older Memory Structure: The…
The emotional and advising lines of Kipling are often considered a set of rules for moral and personal integrity, self-improvement, and achievement in life. It was first published in the “Brother Square-Toes” chapter of Rewards and Fairies, as a collection of verse and short stories. While the poem is addressed to Kipling’s son John, it…
Langston Hughes, born in 1902 and died in 1967, wrote some of the most well know works during the Harlem Renaissance. His poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” is one of his writings from this time period. The poem, if literally interpreted is about rivers, but it holds a much deeper meaning to a trained…
In Langston Hughes’ poem “Ruby Brown,” the title character was too pretty, too good for the city of Mayville but the oppression of African-Americans during this period forbade her to take control of her life and realize the dreams she had. She had two options in her cruel and desperate life. In a nutshell, one…
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” is a melancholy poem of one man’s frustrated search to find the meaning of his existence. The speaker’s strong use of imagery contributes to the poem’s theme of communion and loneliness. The Poem begins with an invitation from Prufrock to follow him through his self-examination. The…
“The Wanderer” is an Anglo-Saxon poem about a lonely wanderer hopelessly alleviating his woes in the posthumous period of his fallen lord. Characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon period, the poem portrays themes of fraternity and loyalty, allegiance, and the tradition of a warrior’s passing. The imagery of the warrior, “the byrny-clad warrior, / The prince in…
The statement that “Beauty is truth; truth, beauty” does not hold to be a correct implication for everyone as far as life goes or the poem “London” goes. This poem written by William Blake, is about life as he saw it in that time frame and environment of society. In Blake’s, poem the reality or…
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam presents an interesting challenge to any reader trying to sort through its heavy symbolism and not-so-obvious theme. Not only does the poem provide us with a compelling surface story, but a second look at the text can reveal a rich collection of separate meanings hidden in the poem’s objective descriptions…
Toad. The word conjures up images of a grotesque, little amphibian and yet it is this little animal that Larkin decides to base his poem on. He describes two toads. One is the exterior influence that society has on an individual level, and the other is the interior or personal prompting to work. He takes…
In the poem “Daddy”, Sylvia Plath says that there are women who, due to early conditioning, find themselves without the tools to deal with oppressive and controlling men. They are left feeling helpless and hopeless. For some women, the struggle is never resolved, others take most of a lifetime. For a lucky few, they are…
“The Indifferent” by John Donne is a relatively simple love poem in comparison to his other, more complicated works. In this poem, “he presents a lover who regards constancy as a ‘vice’ and promiscuity as the path of virtue and good sense” (Hunt 3). Because of Donne’s Christian background, this poem was obviously meant to…
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” written in 1797, has been widely discussed throughout literary history. Although critics have come up with many different interpretations of this poem, one idea that has remained prevalent throughout these discussions is the apparent religious symbolism present throughout this poem. “The Ancient Mariner” contains natural,…
This poem is about a man who loves his country dearly. The country is England. He believes that if he should die on a faraway battlefield; that people should remember that he was English. Brookes says in his fourth line, “In that rich earth a richer dust concealed.” This means that if he is to…
John Masefield’s poem “Sea Fever” is a work of art that brings beauty to the English language through its use of rhythm, imagery, and many complex figures of speech. The meter in “Sea Fever” follows the movement of the tall ship in rough water through its use of iambs and hard-hitting spondees. Although written primarily…