“Beauty is truth–truth beauty–that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.” From “Ode to a Grecian Urn” by John Keats.
For next week, I ask that you review the section on The Romantic Poets. Choose one poem from this section and discuss the main idea of the poem, your favorite line, and a particularly good use of figurative language or other poetic device. Go to the bottom of this site, and search from either “British Romantic Poets” or “Seminal Poems.” Choose one poem to discuss. Be sure to also review the biography of your poet.
For a review of poetic devices see Elements of Poetry .
Please post your comment by pressing “comments” (above), putting your comment in the reply box, and “posting.”
View: Brooklyn Based Pakistani Poet: Arooj Aftab
Read: Biography and Poem by Rumi
Watch: “Last Night My Beloved”
Please also read about America’s first published poet: Phyllis Wheatley
Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
In Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”, Shakespeare writes the most “unflattering” love poem for his mistress possible. The sonnet centers on the unnamed mistress, who is described throughout by the poet. Love poems from the 16th century often speak on the fairness of the author’s beloved, with words set about to describe her as what would be considered to be the traditional standard of beauty. In contrast, Shakespeare does not speak in such ways on his mistress, emphasizing how much she does not fit those standards. One of my favorite lines in the poem is: If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;”. She’s described as having breasts with a dun appearance, which would indicate a tan/non-fair appearance. Due to the nuance of word meaning and the evolution of language, one could have various interpretations about who the mistress is intended to represent and what she may actually look like. With the choice of “dun”, one could make the argument that Shakespeare is describing a Black woman, but this would also divorce the word from the cultural context of the time period that Shakespeare lived in. The Elizabethan era favored the use of things like “Venetian Ceruse”, which would make the user deathly pale, and subsequently would make anyone who did not employ its use look dun by contrast. It’s an unflattering description, as are the rest of the lines used in the sonnet until you come to the end where Shakespeare essentially speaks on how the mistress “belies” anyone else. An exceptional line, which illustrated great use of figurative speech, in the poem is “I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.” The comparison seems, again, insulting as he is directly stating how much of a goddess his mistress is not, by removing any possible deification from her by making it a point to mention how she walks on the ground like a normal person. In this way, I think that Shakespeare goes as far as to show how much he truly loves her. He is not placing his mistress on a pedestal, but rather seeing her humanity and natural wholeness, and loving her as she is. It is easy, to love perfection, and easy to fall for the vision that one sees through rose-colored glasses. In this sonnet, Shakespeare does not see his mistress through rose-colored glasses. He sees her as a fully fallible person, with as many imperfections and natural failing, and finds her to be precious beyond what others he’s seen. Shakespeare essentially writes about a plain jane, whose voice isn’t especially melodic or lips as red, and how he loves her dearly for having those qualities and traits.
I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud.
This poem is all about figurative language as the very beginning of the poem is marked by the poet comparing himself to a lonely, desolate cloud. This is important because being lonely means that one is without any disturbance and only in such a state is it possible for one to actually experience situations fully, without fragmentation. The poet used beautiful imagery and metaphor when he stated that the Daffodils were “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” I would call this excellent use of figurative language as it paints the picture of flowers beautifully unfurling their beauty in the gentle wind and it communicates the feeling that the poet experienced when he was in that particular situation. I feel that is a key factor, transplanting your feeling onto your readers, to using figurative language. My favorite line in this poem is “I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:” because it shows how much we overlook situation in our daily lives. Even something as simple as seeing and appreciating the beauty of a flower, we are not aware of ourselves. We are never aware of our present moment. Instead we may think of a past that is non existent and waste the present or we may think of a future that is non existent and waste the present. I believe that the argument here is that we appreciate the beauty of things only after they have perished. “For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;” he had to lie down on his couch for the wonderful appreciation to dawn upon him.
William Shakespeare starts sonnet 97 with a feeling that someone is melancholy. The speaker is describing what it feels like when he is separated from his loved one, a fair youth. Shakespeare uses figurative language throughout this sonnet to show the in-depth meaning of this sorrow. He begins with a simile by comparing this isolation to winter. In the second quatrain, the speaker says that in reality it was late summer when the season starts to welcome autumn. In this quatrain, personification was used to portray and compare spring to the birth of a child after his father has died. He then proceeds to say that this issue is his false hope as a child faces life without a father figure. The argument in this poem translates to the idea that although it was summer when the speaker is away from his beloved, it feels like winter to him. My favorite lines would have to be the last three “and thou away, the very heirs are mute; or if they sing, ‘it’s with so dull a cheer That leaves look pale, dreading the winters near”. The speaker exaggerates that even the birds stopped singing with this isolation and if they do sing, it will be such a sad song the leaves start to turn pale dreading the approach of winter.
In Sonnet 18 “Shall I compare thee to summer’s day?”, Shakespeare is arguing if he should compare a young man to a “summer’s day”. “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,” In line three Shakespeare is refusing to compare the young man to the “darling buds of May”. In line five he uses summer as a symbol and is saying that summer doesn’t last long enough to represent the young man’s life. My favorite line is line five where he says “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines” as he is making a comparison between summer and when a human life ends. An excellent use of figurative language in this poem is line 14 where he uses alliteration with the words “lives” and “life” as they both state a connection between the eternal life of the poem and the young man’s eternal life.
In Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” Shakespeare writes an inverted love poem about his mistress and about how beautiful she is. Shakespeare uses a lot of forms of figurative language such as irony, hyperbole, metaphor, simile, and personification in his poem. Shakespeare mainly uses irony as shown in the poem when he says one thing about his mistress but actually means something else. For instance, he compares her eyes to the sun, her lips with coral, her breast with snow, and her blackness with wire hair. I also noticed that he used many similes in a negative way. As an example, he talks about how “her eyes are nothing like the sun.” I feel like he does this to show how he does not want to exaggerate this woman’s beauty to the full extent, or in other words sound unrealistic. One of my favorite lines from the poem is when the author says “I love to hear her speak, yet well I know that music hath a far more pleasing sound.” The reason why I love this line is because the meaning behind it is so imperfectly perfect. Although her voice may not be as pleasant as music, he still loves it. I loved the overall message of this poem because it is very beautifully written.
Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116: ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds”
This sonnet portrays the absolute ideal of passionate love, which never changes or fades. It’s hardly true love if someone quit loving you because of bodily changes, especially because we all change over time. It is not true love if it changes when things get tough. This sonnet attempts to define love, the speaker says “it is the star to every wand’ ring bark”, telling what love is through a metaphor. The first quatrain says what love is not, the second quatrain says what it is and the third quatrain says more specifically what it is not. The speaker claims that true love has the ability to stand strong through any circumstances.
Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
By: William Shakespeare
In Shakespeare’s sonnet, he compares his mistress to the beauties of life. However, he isn’t describing her as beautiful as those things, but rather that her features don’t compare to the perfection that they consist of. Shakespeare states, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red” (Shakespeare). In this line, he’s describing the mistress’s eyes and the color of her lips. Her eyes don’t compare to the beauty of the sun, and her lips aren’t red enough. My favorite line in the poem, states, “ And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare; As any she belied with false compare” (Shakespeare). This is where Shakespeare brings up his argument that even though her beauty doesn’t reach the perfection of the things he compares her to, she’s still good enough for him. He loves and accepts her for who and what she is. He’s able to see his lover for what she is and she’s perfect in his eyes. She has a realness to her that is incomparable to the unachievable beauty others expect from a woman. She doesn’t try to enhance her beauty to look perfect for him, but rather stays true to her natural beauty. He loves that about her, and knows that what they have is truly real love for one another.
I chose the poem First Love by John Clare. The main idea behind this poem is how he fell in love at first sight. He was describing his love for her. When he first saw her, he fell in love with her smile, face, and the instant connection they had. My favorite line would be “ She seemed to hear my silent voice, Not love’s appeal to know.” It shows she understands him deeply without the help of any words. One figurative language Clare used was when he compared her face to a sweet flower as it includes “Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower.” This means her face is bright and her smile lit up like a blooming flower that caught his eyes.
“First Love” by John Clare
John Clare was an English poet most famous for his romance poems. His works portray his adoration to his wife and his childhood sweetheart Mary Joyce whom he was not able to marry due to parental opposition. In his poem “first love” he talks about falling in love at first sight and the pains that come along with it. The speaker falls in love with a woman and is amused by her beautiful face. This was the first time he’d felt like this. He admires her beauty with a simile that compares her face to that of a bloomed flower expressing the way her face lit up or her blushed cheeks. “her face it bloomed like a sweet flower.” He used figurative language to describe how she made him feel in that very first moment. “My face turned pale as deadly pale”. A huge wave of emotions surround him and he is incapable of controlling his emotions. The way she makes him feel as she turns to look at him has him on the verge of passing out. He wants to express his intense feelings and emotions in his heart but is not able to. In the last stanza of this poem the speaker claims that his heart has left his body and will return anymore meaning he has lost it to her. The use of figurative language in this poem elaborates the intense meaning of love the speaker is facing, It brings us deeper to the meaning of the poem. my favorite line would be “And blood burnt round my heart” which compares love to that of a burning fire, fierce. The main idea of this poem is unrequited love. The speaker is battling himself to speak to the woman he has fallen for but does not seem to express himself. He claims his loved one hears his silent voice yet does not respond, causing him to thimk she does not feel the same way.
In the poem “I Hid My Love” by John Clare, it talks about how the poet hid his love from a girl he really liked when he was younger. He first speaks about how he couldn’t look her in the face and tried to forget her. Then he talks about how he met her and fell in love. Lastly, he speaks about how hard it was to hide his love because it felt so great. This poet is well written because it speaks as if he is telling a story about the three stages of his love life. My favorite line from the poem is “As secret as the wild bee’s song, She lay there all the summer long.” I really love the way this line is put into words because it shows a perfect moment of how she lays with him in private. My favorite use of figurative language in this poem is when he says “The fly’s bass turned a lions roar.” This shows the use of irony in the poem.
Ah, sun-flower by William Blake
I chose the poem “Ah, sunflower” by William Blake. William Blake was an English poet and painter. He was a special figure of the Romantic Era. My favorite line on the poem was the second line, ” where the travelers journey is done”. In the fist stanza of the poem, he begins by directing the sunflower. “Ah” denotes that the speaker regrets. Sunflower presents a man who is disappointed by worldly restrains the sunflower is tired with its earthy existence. it says, “weary of time” since it spends it’s days by counting the steps of the sun. the sunflower also represents a man who’s a traveler. As a result, the sunflower follows the globe of liberty, the golden world to which every young men and women pursues. The sunflower, the young men and the virgin are all on the lookout for the golden land. one of the figurative language Blake used a sunflower as a symbol for human beings and sun symbolizes life.
The poem I’ve chosen from the collection of works by Romantic poets is “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be” by John Keats. The poem centers around the concept of Keats’ mortality and how he effectively copes with the knowledge that he will one day succumb to death. A few significant lines in the poem are: “Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, [h]old like rich garners the full ripened grain;” Keats uses figurative language to express his fears regarding not being able to accomplish what he sets out to, specifically the use of metaphor. Keats compares his writing to a sown field that he is afraid he will not be able to fully harvest. His fear is lodged in not being able to write out his magnus opus before his life comes to its natural conclusion, or not even getting to set to paper all the magnificent ideas that have fruitfully grown in his mind. Keats does go on to provide a contrasting line to the ones that intialize the poem with my favorite line being “the shore of the wide world I stand alone, and think till love and fame to nothingness do sink”. After going through and witnessing the wonders of both the world and love in his poem, Keats contemplates his inevitable end but seemingly accepting it with a certain amount of bravado. Keats is toasting to his death, as it is reminiscent of a toast given to some sort of accomplishment. The poem deals with the natural affront that anyone would feel knowing that their time of existence is limited and that they may not fully achieve all that they propose to themselves as being their lifetime purpose, but still coming to appreciate that it was a pleasure to have had a chance to attempt that purpose at all.
I chose the poem called “First Love” by John Clare. This poem is about how the speaker suddenly fell in love. Their love was sweet and sudden. He was head over heels in love with her. While she’s beautiful as ever, his face would turn deadly pale whenever he saw her. His cheeks were flushed with embarrassment whenever she looked at him. He’s overwhelmed with emotions, his vision blurs and he is completely speechless whenever they’re together. His love for her is so real, and she has his heart completely. There’s no returning from this as she has full control of his heart. The use of figurative language helps deepen the emotions he’s feeling towards his love. In the poem it states, “Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower; And stole my heart away completely” (Clare). This explains how beautiful she is to him, and how deeply he’s in love with her.
‘ I Am’ by John Clare
This is a poem describing the speaker’s struggle with sadness and loneliness, as well as his yearning to find peace in heaven. The speaker openly admits to having darker thoughts and sentiments of grief for people who were formerly close to him. In the first stanza,’ I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me as a memory lost:’, he feels like no one knows him or understands him. This beautiful dark poem is an expression of the pain he felt after being rejected by his friends. He is sad because his friends are now strangers to him and now have no one to share his feelings with.
John Keats was a medical professional, and he was a poet for the longest time of his life. He started poetry in the year 1816, where Charles Clarke introduced him and devoted himself entirely to poetry until his early death. The poem ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ that John Keats wrote is an artistic way of representing art’s everlasting beauty. Keats uses the beauty of a Grecian urn to portray the endless beauty in art, as evidenced in the last stanza through the line “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (Keats, line 49). The last two lines are the most recited and concentrate the meaning of the whole poem: “’Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’-that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” (Keats, lines 49-50). The two lines can exist separately and still bring out the meaning of the entire poem.
The poem uses a series of significant imageries that are described throughout the poem. The urn itself symbolizes beauty and contrasts the life of humans and their ending passions. The vessel is likened to a quiet bride, a silent child, and a cold pastoral when describing it. Although its beauty is everlasting, it cannot equate to the emotions and warmth felt by human beings. Imagery in poetry enables the persona to describe and imaginatively deliver the main themes of the poem. Other poetic devices are also used in the poem, including alteration, for instance, ‘what leaf-fringe legend’ (Keats, line 5). Alteration is commonly used in poetry to create repetition that brings out the rhythm in the poem. The alteration also sets the mood for the readers and helps the poem to be memorable due to its repetitive nature.
Work Cited
Keats John. Ode on a Grecian Urn. 1884. Owlcation. https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Ode-On-A-Grecian-Urn-by-John-Keats. Accessed 11 September 2020.
John Keats was a medical professional, and he was a poet for the longest time of his life. He started poetry in the year 1816, where Charles Clarke introduced him and devoted himself entirely to poetry until his early death. The poem ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ that John Keats wrote is an artistic way of representing art’s everlasting beauty. Keats uses the beauty of a Grecian urn to portray the endless beauty in art, as evidenced in the last stanza through the line “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (Keats, line 49). The last two lines are the most recited and concentrate the meaning of the whole poem: “’Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’-that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” (Keats, lines 49-50). The two lines can exist separately and still bring out the meaning of the entire poem.
The poem uses a series of significant imageries that are described throughout the poem. The urn itself symbolizes beauty and contrasts the life of humans and their ending passions. The vessel is likened to a quiet bride, a silent child, and a cold pastoral when describing it. Although its beauty is everlasting, it cannot equate to the emotions and warmth felt by human beings. Imagery in poetry enables the persona to describe and imaginatively deliver the main themes of the poem. Other poetic devices are also used in the poem, including alteration, for instance, ‘what leaf-fringe legend’ (Keats, line 5). Alteration is commonly used in poetry to create repetition that brings out the rhythm in the poem. The alteration also sets the mood for the readers and helps the poem to be memorable due to its repetitive nature.
Work Cited
Keats John. Ode on a Grecian Urn. 1884. Owlcation. https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis- of-Poem-Ode-On-A-Grecian-Urn-by-John-Keats. Accessed 11 September 2020.
Review the Section on The Romantic Poets
John Keats was a medical professional, and he was a poet for the longest time of his life. He started poetry in the year 1816, where Charles Clarke introduced him and devoted himself entirely to poetry until his early death. The poem ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ that John Keats wrote is an artistic way of representing art’s everlasting beauty. Keats uses the beauty of a Grecian urn to portray the endless beauty in art, as evidenced in the last stanza through the line “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (Keats, line 49). The last two lines are the most recited and concentrate the meaning of the whole poem: “’Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’-that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” (Keats, lines 49-50). The two lines can exist separately and still bring out the meaning of the entire poem.
The poem uses a series of significant imageries that are described throughout the poem. The urn itself symbolizes beauty and contrasts the life of humans and their ending passions. The vessel is likened to a quiet bride, a silent child, and a cold pastoral when describing it. Although its beauty is everlasting, it cannot equate to the emotions and warmth felt by human beings. Imagery in poetry enables the persona to describe and imaginatively deliver the main themes of the poem. Other poetic devices are also used in the poem, including alteration, for instance, ‘what leaf-fringe legend’ (Keats, line 5). Alteration is commonly used in poetry to create repetition that brings out the rhythm in the poem. The alteration also sets the mood for the readers and helps the poem to be memorable due to its repetitive nature.
Work Cited
Keats John. Ode on a Grecian Urn. 1884. Owlcation. https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis- of-Poem-Ode-On-A-Grecian-Urn-by-John-Keats. Accessed 11 September 2020.