A Prayer for My Daughter: the Poem

In the first stanza of the poem, the girl is portrayed to be happy, as she is playing with flowers near her door. Her to-be husband too is shown to enjoy everyday life, as he is throwing green plums around the neighborhood on his toy horse.

· In the first line of the poem, the speaker expresses her feelings towards men by using the word “Anger”(1). From just the

The author persuades people to use their head before just using the words heart or love to give the word its true meaning. Carruth also displays what happens to words when they tend to be misused which is that they usually lose their value over time if they are not of great importance. Through his writing style in the poem, Carruth shows how people freely use the word “heart” and how it affects the meaning of the word. He opens and closes the poem with a question, refers to the heart as 'it' in the first stanza, and shows uncertainty of the importance of the heart in the first stanza as well.

In the first lines of the poem Yeats describes this woman as “old and grey and full of sleep” (Yeats). The speaker of the poem addresses his beloved saying that when she is aged she should read a particular book which will remind her of her youth. She will remember the

In the poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan is filed with metaphors and symbols that represent the feeling of a child growing up and moving out onto their own. There comes a time when every parent must send off their child into the world, and these parents feel a multitude of things when sending them off. It paints a picture of a father teaching his young daughter to ride a bike, but uses this image to represent a child growing up. The mixed feeling of pride and fear as the child grows up and moves out of the nest. The use of first person past tense shows us that the narrator is recalling the time they taught their child to ride a bike and are reliving that experience with the child moving out again. The fright of watching your child speed down the road towards life is portrayed from the start and continues throughout the poem. A good parent is always worried about their child’s wellbeing; they will always worry as they watch their children head straight to the destruction that comes with living life. Though the good parent will try their best to teach their child how to ride their bike into adulthood. This poem uses imagery, word choice, and metaphor to express the fears a parent has when sending their child out on their own into the world.

William Butler Yeats is one of the most esteemed poets in 20th century literature and is well known for his Irish poetry. While Yeats was born in Ireland, he spent most of his adolescent years in London with his family. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he later moved back to Ireland. He attended the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and joined the Theosophical Society soon after moving back. He was surrounded by Irish influences most of his life, but it was his commitment to those influences and his heritage that truly affected his poetry. William Butler Yeats’s poetry exemplifies how an author’s Irish identity can help create and influence his work.

Harwood revolves this poem around change, through the use of a motherly character she is able to construct a life style that has dramatically changed from free to a fairly constricted. Harwood uses the conversations of two people to get this message across, with the conversation discussing life’s progression with an old lover. “But for the grace of God…” suggests that the ex-lover is somewhat thankful for not ending up as a father figure to these children, as he can see the effect it has taken on her from when he used to know her. “Her clothes are out of date” shows her appearance has altered in the bid to live as a mother, her children are now her identity and that is what she will live to be. This poem is revolved around the negativity of losing yourself through mother-hood and the factors that slowly show that it.

A deeper level is achieved in the mind of the narrator when she acknowledges her own mental state and that she is eager to leave her sad mood. While the man is described as animal-like and savage, she stands “In moody sadness, on the giddy brink” (9) full of contemplation and reflection on her own worldview. The poet is quite self-aware while the lunatic is not, and through her intelligent banter, the reader can see the extreme difference in personality. The poet’s own self-conception, however, is ironic in that she is wishing for ignorance that can only be achieved by lack of a self-concept. The catch-22 she experiences is perplexing, both to her and the reader.

The poem begins in a manner suggestive of a lover scorned. Yeats talks about how passionate women, which at this point in time is not necessarily a compliment, don’t consider love that is a sure thing worth their time and energy. Essentially it is a poetized version of the “Nice guys finish last” argument, along with the idea that people only desire what

In Bradstreet’s poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband”, Bradstreet mentions the reciprocal love her and her husband share and how she prays that God will realize the strong bond the couple shares and that their love will be ever-lasting and will persevere even after death. Bradstreet stressed how important it was to her to be a good and humble Puritan wife and her poetry exuded the beliefs, values, and ideals of Puritan life.

This poem is also about Art, and the Irish people's response to it. It is structured around the contrast between the Yeats' dream to write for the Irish people, and the reality.

The last stanza in this poem considers the woman's physical description and moral character. Her “so soft [and] so calm” flow radiates peace and goodness.

he joined the armed forces and wrote several of his lesser known poems. They all included a romantic theme which could be a result of being isolated from the opposite sex. The general subject or goal of the Romantic era was to compare the beauty of nature to an everyday object or person and to create a snapshot of the scene being described. “[Romanticism] Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature, prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication, and contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development,” (Langley 2-5) The importance of the comparison between the river is huge in this poem because the way the river is described as a “bright, clear flow”. It shows that this river in particular is special. The majority of rivers are muddy and murky which suggests that the maiden has a sense of purity about her.

It 's easy to just concentrate on the ornate language of ‘’Maud’’, but there 's a lot of drama in the narrative of the poem. There

The text of the poem is also important for the reader to understand. In lines 1-4 of the poem, the reader can see that Leda is being attacked. It goes in to detail about her thighs being caressed. At this point the reader is starting to understand that there is some sexual images in the poem. Yeats’ captures the image with “wings beating still above the swaggering girl” and “her nape caught in his bill”. Yeats contrasts those images with the soft images of “her helpless breast upon his breast”. In lines 5-8, Yeats shows the image of rape by the force that “her fingers” can’t push the “feathered glory from her loosening thighs”. In lines 9-14, again Yeats is giving the reader a graphic image of the rape, but also alluding to the fall of the Greeks and expressing the power of Gods over humanity.