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AP English Poetry Prompt: There Will Come Soft Rain

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Francisco Nodarse
Shaw
AP English Literature and Composition
2 March 2017
Poetry Prompt: There Will Come Soft Rain
Nature has long been recognized as therapeutic – Thoreau’s excursion served as a source of meditation and inspiration for generations of writers. Teasdale, taking a hint from her
Transcendentalist predecessor, uses the peaceful imagery of the natural world to juxtapose the evil of humanity with the innocent beauty of nature, reminding the audience of its inevitable transience and urging it to make its time on Earth constructive instead of destructive.
The opening couplet immediately immerses the reader in the all-encompassing calm of the wild. Teasdale utilizes all kinds of sensory imagery in these opening lines: the eponymous, …show more content…

The intensity of the imagery emphasizes Teasdale’s love for nature and her desire for humanity to emulate it. Adding to the ambience is the use of alliteration, which lends a calming fluidity to these lines, and the simplistic rhyme scheme.
Yet Teasdale is driven to write this poem because the paradise she describes is being threatened and overshadowed by the vile influence of humankind, as the third couplet makes clear. Humanity is indirectly introduced through the fence-wire that serves as the robin’s perch.
The “feathery fire” of the bird may also hint at the war Teasdale references in the following lines, which praise the animals’ obliviousness to the conflict. The fact that “not one/Will care at last when it is done” serves the dual purpose of establishing that the war will indeed end, as all

wars do, and that the trifles of humanity are not a worry for the inhabitants of nature. Teasdale admires their ignorance, going so far as to assert that these creatures would not notice the extinction of mankind – which further marginalizes the conflicts we pour so much hatred into.
The final couplet embodies this sentiment, as Teasdale personifies Spring. By lending nature human qualities, Teasdale replaces humanity with the natural world

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