Analysis: Edward Taylor's Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children, and Upon A Wasp Chilled With Cold

hour, to help them gain the strength to continue in their struggles, and to hope

Some examples of this include the hope of religion, looking up to a specific person/thing, meditating, drinking alcohol, engaging in illegal substances, etc. For me, looking to God helps me during hard times. My faith reminds me that God is there to help and he will create a path for me and direct me to it. Many of my peers feel this way about difficult times, however I understand that there are people who deal with their struggles in a different way.

Robert Frost and William Shakespeare have been celebrated by many people because of their ability to express themselves through the written word. Here we are years after their deaths analyzing these fascinating poems about life and death. It’s clear they had similar thoughts about this subject at the time of these writings, even though their characters could not have been more opposite. For both poets, life is too

Poets, Judith Wright, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickenson all express their views on life and death, however, do so in varying manners. Through imagery, Wright and Plath both consider life’s beginnings, however, Wright considers it to be a beautiful gift, whereas Plath views birth as an empty burden. Subsequently, through structure Dickenson and Wright each acknowledge life, expressing how in some cases it is difficult, yet in other circumstances it is celebrated. Finally, through tone, Dickenson and Plath convey their views on death, yet differ in that Plath believes it is purifying and holds a sick fascination with it, while Dickenson instead holds a unique curiosity about it. Therefore, whilst each poet recognises the journey of birth,

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

Bradstreet uses metaphors and analogies of her own experiences and struggles with life to show God’s grace. In her poem, “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House”, Bradstreet uses her skills to illustrate the destruction of her home and belongings. Like some may mourn the loss of their belongings,

The Songs of Innocence poems first appeared in Blake’s 1784 novel, An Island in the Moon. In 1788, Blake began to compile in earnest, the collection of Songs of Innocence. And by 1789, this original volume of plates was complete. These poems are the products of the human mind in a state of innocence, imagination, and joy; natural euphoric feelings uninhibited or tainted by the outside world. Following the completion of the Songs of Innocence plates, Blake wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and it is through this dilemma of good and evil and the suffering that he witnesses on the streets of London, that he begins composing Songs of Experience. This second volume serves as a response to Songs of

The poem, “Gospel” by Philip Levine gives a vivid description of what the narrator sees around them. The narrator focuses their description on nature. They make many references to types of plants like lupine and thistles. Throughout the poem, nature can be seen as and abstract creature. Nature is giving and lively. The conflict in the poem is between the speaker and nature. The narrator tries to show how nature can give nice outdoor views and how the earth gives people a place to walk on while people give nothing back to nature. Levine’s speaker uses repetition and comparisons to show how nature is constantly pleading for the narrators attention yet they cannot offer anything to the relationship they have with nature. The poem slowly evolves

Especially in the midst of suffering, God wants you to experience his amazing love (Ps. 90:14-15; Lam. 3:19-23

A lesson that Tim had learned from everything that happened was to overcome hardship. Tim went through more hard things in a few years then most people will in their whole lives. Tim lost his father (Life) who he had looked up to mightily and he also lost his brother Sam (pp.164 and 208). Both Sam and Life were two people that he looked up to a lot

Atwood’s “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” perfectly grasps the life-altering heartbreak that occurs after the loss of a child by utilizing literary devices such as imagery, personification, simile, and metaphor. In the poem, an image of a voyage is used to characterize a child’s journey from life to death. “The dangerous river”, is used as a metaphor to describe the birth canal which the child victoriously navigates, but after embarking upon the outside world, the child goes into a “voyage of discovery” (4) that results in his death in the river. “On a landscape stranger than Uranus” (14) emphasizes the estrangement felt by the mother without having any knowledge of the environment. Comparing it to Uranus she describes it to be just as strange as a another planet. In the ninth stanza, the mother reminisces the death of her child as she says, “My foot hit rock” (26) which is a representation that she has hit rock bottom and her life will now never be the same. The final simile of the poem, “I planted him in his country / like a flag” (28-29) identifies the relationship between the dead child and the land. It ties the mother to the land in a way that had not been thought of, a way that is fraught with grief. An extended metaphor is developed throughout the poem, comparing the experience of giving birth that the character had, to a river and its contents. It helps to understand the different stages of birth by expressing the hurricane of emotions, and incidents that occurred with the use of waves expressing times of difficulty and pain.

However, in contrast to Emily’s poem, the speaker undervalues death’s supremacy as its power is actually not in its own control. It is a contradictory to Emily’s poem. In line 9 "Thou’art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men" indicates death as a slave as it does what has been ordered from the superior ones. Death takes human’s life not because he is willing to do so but because he is forced to do so. In line 10-11, “And dost with poison, war and sickness… can make us sleep as well” the speaker associates death with poison, war and sickness as death is not the only factor of human’s deceases which then the speaker posts rhetorical question for death to stop being proud. Also, the usage of rhetorical questions like in line 2 “For thou art not so” makes death fragile. Further, the last line in this poem “And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die” points out that at the end, the only one who dies is death itself which will be discussed in the element of Christian theology in this essay. The ending also eventually argues that death is weak and vulnerable, not in control and that is the reason why human should not fear death. All the arguments made by the speaker in this poem creates death less powerful and less control of itself which illustrates a condescending tone to elucidate death’s incapability to kill.

In Edward Taylor’s “Prologue” he seeks to demonstrate the inferiority of man in respect to God’s glory. Taylor begins his piece by creating a metaphor in which his own subsidiarity to God is described in terms of physical stature and uniqueness. He then purposefully includes phrases with erroneous meter and imperfect rhymes to demonstrate that his inferiority extends to his abilities as a writer. Taylor further attempts to establish his lack of authorial skills by including repetitious words, implying that he lacks an extensive vocabulary. When combined these tactics serve to support the idea that Edward Taylor has many shortcomings, both as a human and a poet, especially in comparison to the greatness of God.

Edward Taylor, in his poem “Upon a Spider Catching A Fly”, uses his vast knowledge of the English language to portray the Puritan belief of the omnipotent and indomitable Christian God through the a conceit of this poem. In the second stanza Taylor characterizes a wasp as being “pettish” describing how the wasps’ movement is conveying its fractious emotions. He then goes on to say, in the third stanza, that the wasp is “afraid, remote” adding to Taylor’s description first description of the fretful wasp. Through his diction it is implied that the wasp is a metaphor for a human being, apprehensive about death as he has sinned during his time on earth. With knowledge of the Puritan society in which Taylor lives in, he insinuates that God is merciless

Blake also airs his issues with the church’s policy on the spiritual status of “unsaved” people who die, children and adults alike. He addresses the “spiritual status of babies” in several of his poems (Dilworth, 43). The child in “A Cradle Song” is depicted as an “Angel mild” in whose face the