Analysis of "The Sea"by James Reeves Essay

The different groups of people within the poem represent the different stages of life. At the beginning of the poem it talks about a young boy and his dog and swimmers. Several lines down it talks about “young lovers” and then families.

The poem begins with using “melodies” as an image. In the first phrase, “Like melodies draw it to me softly through the mind,” the word “melodies” seems to be symbolic of thoughts or memories. These melodies are like a tune that you cannot get out of your head, a memory that he is unable to forget.

Though written in a very light and simple manner, the poem comes across as something very profound, laden with meaning through its incongruities. The persona, wanting to see something, often goes to the well and looks down at the water to see it. This certain search below the water's surface can be compared to man's search beneath the human experience for meaning, for certainty.

The voice of the sea pulls her back with reminiscence of her childhood. Edna recalls an incident of running through "a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean" (Chopin 60) This connection of the seemingly endless field and the wide expanse of the ocean leads to a realization for Edna. Her life is no longer as plain and simple as it had been for many years. Suddenly, she feels like a little girl running through an unending field, "unthinking and unguided" (Chopin 61). She does not know what she wants from life anymore. She has a husband and children, but the thought of them lacks the feelings of pleasure and love that she should have for them. Instead, they are holding her back, preventing her from running across that wide expanse of grass which symbolizes freedom. She realizes this when she returns home, despondent over what seems to be a loss of her new-found freedom and despondent over the realization that Robert will never gie up society's traditions to be with her, a married woman.

“The Sound of the Sea” is a sonnet by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, describing the sounds of the sea and relating it to human inspiration. Through only auditory images of the sea and other powerful natural forces, Longfellow effectively alludes to the nature of human inspiration. Through detailed and sensory imagery, Longfellow communicates the subtle details of the human soul and how inspiration functions.

The appreciation of nature is illustrated through imagery ‘and now the country bursts open on the sea-across a calico beach unfurling’. The use of personification in the phrase ‘and the water sways’ is symbolic for life and nature, giving that water has human qualities. In contrast, ‘silver basin’ is a representation of a material creation and blends in with natural world. The poem is dominated by light and pure images of ‘sunlight rotating’ which emphasizes the emotional concept of this journey. The use of first person ‘I see from where I’m bent one of those bright crockery days that belong to so much I remember’ shapes the diverse range of imagery and mood within the poem. The poet appears to be emotional about his past considering his thoughts are stimulated by different landscapes through physical journey.

In this poem the poet uses many techniques to engage and hook the audience. Dan Ashlin expresses how the ocean has a life of its own through personification, an example is “it dreams, it mopes, it stretches”. I appreciate how the poet has used verbs in this technique as it positions me to feel like I can relate to human emotions, movements and

Sir Edward Elgar composed the song cycle, Sea Pictures, in 1899. The five songs in this cycle that will be discussed in detail in this paper are: “Sea Slumber Song” by Roden Noel, “In Haven (Capri)” by Caroline Alice Elgar, “Sabbath Morning at Sea” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Where Corals Lie” by Richard Garnett, and “The Swimmer” by Adam Lindsay Gordon. First, the life and early influences of Elgar will be explored, followed by a close look at the text of each poem in the song cycle. A compositional music analysis will be discussed as it pertains to providing a distinct picture of the imagery goals chosen by Elgar for his audience.

The poem contains two stanzas with two different settings. One might not know much about the first stanza; however, in the second one the speaker is next to an ocean, perhaps, at a beach. So, while the first stanza symbolizes the mindset of the speaker, the inner dream, the second stanza symbolizes the outer dream which is what we see; life. The poem

The third stanza which marks the middle of the poem begins, "The Ocean said, Come flow freely with me" with ten syllables written in pentameter accompanied by iambic, spondee and trochee syllables. A steady rhythm in meter is noted in the next four lines which declines to trimeter for all four lines. Line fourteen, "and the creatures in my seas." contains pyrrhic, trochee and anapestic syllables. The fifteenth line in trimeter, "Here your tears will disappear," contains for the first time in the poem, a dactyllic syllable accompanied by the iambic syllable. Line sixteen, "and your worries will cease." contains again the iambic syllable now accompanied by the pyrrhic syllable. The last line in the series of trimeter lines is line seventeen which states, "Be the element that I need.". concludes the metered pattern. In lines fourteen through seventeen the meter is measured the same, however there is a new element added to the syllables previously used in the beginning stanzas. The repeated trimeter is suggestive of familiar situation but the new syllable is

The writer compares his life to water on Rouge River that is heading towards dead end with unknown future. “And my reflection is dominated by water Coming to impasse, the teeter-totter Of decision” from the poem shows the seriousness and thought provoking idea i.e. contemplation probably related to meaning of life and what lies ahead. Moreover, “And plunging in we find a serene cavernous strength, And pressed to run its darkness at full length, We find our all”, reflects tone of believing in ourselves and the best we have in us. This means no matter the situation we can bring the best of us that is life. Tone of the poem helps writer to make the poem more appealing to the readers. It aids the poet to express his feeling more effectively and

Rather than exploring lighter tones in her stories, she can only express herself through trauma. Let’s now explore what methods Danticat uses to explore such literary cliché’s within ‘Children of the Sea’.

In the next stanza, the line "Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay", the poet is now using imagery with the waters, however it can also be a metaphorical representation of life due to

These lines use enjambment for the effect of the lines flowing into each other to make it seems like the sea. The first half flows smoothly, as does the second half, except for the final word. The letter "S" is used in both halves to bring them together - to remind the readers of Islands Man closeness to the sea. The letter "H" ("head") is a break from the "S's" and therefore the rhythm is lost. The third line ("to the sound of blue surf") has alliteration of the letter "S". The sound of this letter is very much like that of the waves to remind the reader of the sea. To insure that this comes across to the readers there is emphasis on these letters. There is also an emphasis on the word "head" here to make the readers realize that it is only in Island Man's head, as he also realizes the truth.

The swimmer finds himself past the point of no return in the quest, so to speak, and at the mercy of whatever he encounters, such as the shark Connelly suggests in the imagery of the last stanza. Finally, Connelly ended the poem by writing “But what we own beyond a shadow of a doubt is our fear of being eaten alive, torn apart in depths we have entered willingly” (20-27). This part of the metaphor uses the violent image of being attacked by a shark to represent the severity of our encounter with the sublime. In the quest for the ideal the only thing we can be certain of is that it will not be easy and the uncertainty of what will be there waiting for you. The shark in the ocean’s depth is an apppropriate symbol for the sublime as defined by Rousseau’s explanation of Kant’s philosophy: “something that is fearful and incomprehensible that one wants to resist” (“Kant’s Beauty and the Sublime” 1).