Joanna Huynh
Dr. Caneen
English 1315-009
12 December 2017 Though I Am Young and Cannot Tell
“Though I Am Young and Cannot Tell” is a poem written by English playwright, Ben Jonson during 1640. The poem was featured in a play that he wrote called, The Sad Shepherd. It can be classified in the genre of a lyrical because in the play, the poem is being sung by a character named, Karolin. Lyrical poems are known to be musical and they generally evoke emotions. When read aloud, “Though I Am Young and Cannot Tell”, touches on topics of love and death, and has a melody that brings upon feelings of curiosity and discovery. Ben Jonson wrote the play in a meter called iambic tetrameter, which is when a line of poetry consists of
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In “Though I Am Young and Cannot Tell”, the speaker’s role is to explain the connection between love and death, and analyze the relationship that they have to one another and to life. The poem starts off with the speaker claiming that he does not know much about love and death. But as the poem progresses, the reader is able to see how the speaker’s curiosity results in him comparing and contrasting the two different subjects. The poem mainly focuses on the similarities of the effects of love and death. The poem explains that both love and death cause wounds, but the author then goes on to explain that love ultimately leads to the result of death. On the surface, we see that love and death can be easily tied together. One is described as heat, and the other is described as cold, and together, they have an effect that is “extreme to the touch” (8). Although they seem like they are complete opposites, through literary devices and specific choices of words, we can see that love and death are parallel.
The poem does not have a physical setting, but one could say that the thoughts are occurring in the speaker’s mind. The author uses personification multiple times throughout the poem in order to connect the reader with the concept of love and death. “Yet I have heard they both bear darts/ And both do aim at human hearts” (3-4). When the author
“since feeling is first” can be defined literally and figuratively. The poem literally talks about a man who is deeply in love. An example would be stanza 1, where the man is trying to show how much he loves his women by telling her that feelings come first and if someone were to pay attention to trivial things then the feelings are not considered to be something deep. On the other hand, the poem figuratively talks about life being sensible if we were to go with the flow, and not thinking about reasons for everything that’s happening in life. For instance ; stanza 1, emphasizes how a person should consider his feelings first to entirely live his life. If he pays attention to minute details in life he may leave a major part in life. If you want to make sense of everything you do, you will fail to understand the true meaning of it. It also compares our life to a paragraph (line 15). In paragraph the ideas should be coherent, but in life there is no logical order. Sometimes lines can overlap in life. The same thing can be repeated over again. The last line “And death i think is no parenthesis”, tells us that death is not an interruption. In paragraphs, parenthesis are interruptions that come in between but in life the only parenthesis is death and it’s a full stop. Death is final and we can’t refrain from death.
In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.
When a reader grasps a theme throughout any piece of literature, he or she never clearly understands the intent without knowing where the theme came from. The theme that is portrayed in the poem is, often times reconnecting with a loved one cannot only bring happiness, but it can also bring sorrow. This theme was emphasized throughout the poem and without knowing the historical context of the poem, one could not necessarily understand where it came from. In the text it
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
This contrasts sharply to the attitudes portrayed in ‘A kind of love some say’. The last stanza of the poem shows the persona talking about emotional pain, ‘Sadists will not learn that Love, by nature, exacts a pain, Unequalled on the rack. This shows us that the emotional pain of love can be worse than the actual physical pain described in the poem. This shows the
Two literary pieces, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by, Dylan Thomas and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by, Emily Dickinson are both poems that discuss the topic of death. While there are some similarities and comparisons between the two poems, when it comes to the themes, both poets writing styles are quite different from one another which makes each poem unique. Thomas and Dickinson both use identical figurative language devices and other literature symbolisms as they explain their main themes which contrasts the differences to the concept of death. These distinct variations between poems are apparent in both the form, and how the choice of words is used in the poems. Both of the authors have presented two very different ideas on death. The poems are well distinguished literature devices, they share minor similarities and differences between each other and how they present the meaning of death to a toll.
The two poems are similar in their corresponding feeling of dread for death. Using diction,
Love through relationships can be represented in many ways, for example romantic love and platonic love. In “A Bolt of White Cloth” by Leon Rooke, the couple has many types of love relationships. The wife loves her husband in a passionate way, the wife also has a deep connection and love for their cat that passed away. A relationship with a child is also mention by the man, however we soon discover they are unable to conceive. The evil apparent in the relationship with the cat is death, death by the actions of mankind. When the man inquires about their love and what they have loved, the woman replies, “Last year this time I had me a fourth, but it got run over. Upon the road there, by the time tall trees, by a man who didn’t even stop” (Rooke 3). Even after the passing of the cat the women's love was unconditional, it states, “She’d dug a grave under the grapevine and said sweet words over it. She sorely missed the cats” (Rooke 3). Death is inevitable, someday the passing of our loved ones will come. Death of the cat symbolizes the evil present in their love relationships.
Regardless of race, caste, religion, or age, every human has wondered about the one fact of life that unifies us all: What is death? Both poems, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” by Margaret Atwood and “Because I could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson share a common subject of death. Using figurative language, both poems illustrate distinct takes on a similar topic.
First, one similarity the novel and poem both share examples of the initial pain after a loved one has passed away.
He explains that their love is so strong that it will survive the distance. One example he uses to compare being away from each other is death in the literal sense. The main theme of this poem was the love between husband and wife, with a metaphorical theme to death. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” contains both themes, their roles are reversed. Death is the main theme continuing throughout the poem and is personified.
This is expressed by the multiple examples of old men whom regret certain aspects of their lives and defy death even when they know their time is up. The speaker is urging his father to fight against old age and death. The meaning and subject of the poem influence the tone and mood. The tone is one of frustration and insistence. Thomas is slightly angry and demanding. His words are not a request, they are an order. The mood of the poem is is serious and solemn due to the poem focusing mainly on the issue of death. This mood and tone is created by words such as “burn”(2), “Grieved”(11) and “rage”(3) along with phrases such as “crying how bright”(7), “forked no lightning”(5), “near death”(13) and “fierce tears”(17). The insistent feeling is also created by the repetition of the lines “Do not go gentle into that good night”(1), and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”(3). The figurative language used also affect how the meaning, tone and mood are interpreted.
This poem is written in ballad form which is odd because one would think of a ballad and think a love story or an author gushing on about nature not an allegory about personified Death. Dickinson both unites and contrasts love/courtship with death, experimenting with both reader’s expectations and the poetic convention dictating specific poem form. This is why Dickinson is widely hailed because of her unconventional writing methods.
The poem that I have selected for this essay is “Talking to Grief” by Denise Levertov. I chose this poem because it talks about grief. It also talks about the place that grief should have in a person’s life. The poem describes grief, and compares it to a “homeless dog.” It also describes how a dog deserves its own place in the house, instead of living under a porch or being homeless. This poem talks about how a person can be aware that grief is present, but that it is not always acknowledged and accepted. We all experience grief in different ways, and for different reasons. Everyone deals with grief in their own personal way. This poem describes a point in a person’s life when they are ready to accept grief as a part of their life
Poems are like snowflakes. While no two are the same, they all have common structures and themes. One prevalent theme in poetry is that of death, which is present in both “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. Dickinson perceives death as a gentleman, while Frost perceives death as loneliness, which provides insight on how the time periods of the poems, the genders of the authors, and the authors’ personal experiences influence literature.