Death is terrifying. This is the argument made by John Keats in his poem “A Draught of Sunshine,” in which he details the inevitable string of emotions which every man must experience on his deathbed. Keats uses a combination of religious allusion, ironic imagery, and an anxious tone to convey this message.
Without the speaker’s religious allusions, the reader would have a difficult time recognizing the speaker’s fate in the poem – death. Only when the speaker mentions the “glory and grace of Apollo” and that “to thee my soul is flown” does it become clear that he is speaking about his own passing. “It is an awful mission,” the speaker says, relating his fear of death to the reader as he asks the “God of Song” to “bearest me along,” helping him on his way to death.
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Ironically, the narrator precedes his description of death with a painting of other bright, airy pictures in the reader’s mind – his “bowl is the sky,” he drinks “at my eye,” he sits upon “the green of the hill” and drinks in “golden sunshine.” The latter quote connects back to the title, “A Draught of Sunshine,” while also serving as one of the most vivid pieces of imagery in the poem. Abruptly, however, the speaker switches to a more morbid topic, stating that “to thee my soul is flown, and my body is earthward press’d,” in short telling us that he is dying. Juxtaposed with the clean spring and summer imagery, the idea of death almost seems acceptable. In fact, the speaker’s tone in the first half of the poem seems almost happy for death. “My wine overbrims a whole summer,” he says, as if he is boasting about the superiority of his wine, death, over the other, “earthly,” wines, which only put people in a temporary
if you look at his poem. After the 1st half of the 3rd stanza, all the
As people near the time of their deaths, they begin to reflect upon the history and events of their own lives. Both John Keats’ “When I have Fears” and Henry Longfellow’s “Mezzo Cammin” reflect upon the speakers’ fears and thoughts of death. However, the conclusions between these two poems end quite differently. Although both reflect upon Death’s grasp, Keats’ displays an appreciation and subtle satisfaction with the wonders of life, while Longfellow morbidly mourns his past inactions and fears what events the future may bring.
Chuck Palahniuk once said, “The first step to eternal life, is you have to die.” In William Cullen Bryant’s poem “Thanatopsis”, he does not mention eternal life or anything religious, but speaks about death. He tells his readers that death is a natural thing and they should not worry about it. William Cullen Bryant, in his poem “Thanatopsis”, portrays a comforting view of death. Throughout the poem, Bryant encourages his readers by explaining that in death they are not alone, that death, like life, is a natural process, and that they will be among some of the finest people who walked the earth.
One characteristic embedded in the minds of almost all humans is that of succumbing in pursuit of one’s aspirations, especially with the approach of death. The fear and enigmatic mystery of death at the brink of this shortcoming may cause one who is near death to re-evaluate life as a wasted opportunity or a broken path of dreams because of the inability to find any type of success. The sonnets “Mezzo Cammin” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and “When I have Fears” by John Keats examine the thought processes of two people who submit to the struggles of life in a depressed way. While communicating a very similar foundational message and mood in a different way through diction and structure, the speakers in “Mezzo Cammin” and “When I Have Fears” identify their despair through likewise differing literary elements which complement and bring out the message intended by these troubled individuals.
While both Keats and Longfellow often reflect on their own unfulfilled dreams and impending deaths, the poems however contrast on their own dispositions towards death and the future. Here, Keats expresses a fear of not having enough time to accomplish all that he believes he is capable of doing, but as he recognizes the enormity of the world and his own limitations of life, he realizes that his own mortal goals are meaningless in the long run of things. On the other hand, Longfellow speaks of a regret towards his inaction for allowing time to slip away from him in his past and is at a crossroads for the ominous future that looms ahead of him. Through the use of light and dark imagery, and personification, Keats and Longfellow similarly yet also differently, reflect on their own ideas for death and the futures that lay ahead of them.
Is death a slave to fate or is it a dreaded reality? People differ on the opinion of death, some people view death as a new beginning which should not be feared, while many people perceive death as an atrocious monster. Death be not proud, by John Donne is a poem that challenges death and the idea of its ferocity. Donne’s work is greatly influenced by the death of his countless family members, friends and spouse. Donne was not only a poet, but he was also a priest in the Church of England, so his interest in religion and his belief in eternal life after death, also contributed greatly to his work. The poem Death be not proud, is a metaphysical poem about death, in which John Donne undermines, ridicules, and determines the meaning of death, according to his perspective.
Death: The Inescapable Death, something no one can escape, is one thing everyone has to look forward to in life. It does not matter who one is or what someone does in order to try and stop the one guaranteed thing in your life, it will happen. Death does not have any sympathy for who you are or what you are going through, if it is your time, then there’s no way for you to try and control your fate. A very well known author/poet, Edgar Allen Poe, often looked death in its face in his stories. In his short story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allen Poe uses multiple symbols to convey his hidden message which is that no one is able to escape death.
In both of the poems “When I have fears” and “Mezzo Cammin” both are based on death and have a depairing tone. However in “When I have fears” is different from “Mezzo Cammin” because the man in the poem is trying his best to reach his goal, but ultimately fails making feel hopeless. They both have different shifts and endings that occur making both poems different from each other by the end result by the way they react to death. Both Keats and Longfellow have the same idea of death in the beginning of their poems. Keats’s beginnings in the first sentence “When I have fears that I may cease to be,” is similar to Longfellow’s “Half of my life is gone.”
Keats was very aware of his own mortality and his poetry reflected the intensity and the passion of a man who didn't have very long to live. His poetry remains some of the densest prose ever penned because, like his brief existence, he had to condense so much life into so little space. The thought of impending death would be enough to make anyone fall into hopeless despair but Keats's incredible talents and commitment to live in the moment perhaps allowed him to three lifetimes.
The Poem begins with a personification of death as "kindly" (3). By doing this, the speaker introduces a portrayal on death that might have conflictions. Most of the times, death has a negative connotation. Whether it is an inevitable or tragic view, it opposes to what is seen in the poem. The speaker accepts death as a friendly invitation when the time is right, rather than something that is bound to happen. The speaker then joins immortality, personified as a passenger in a carriage. Immortality simply cannot be a passenger as it is a non-living thing. The reasoning for this could be that immortality ties together the link between the speaker and death, ultimately introducing the voyage to come. The first stanza sets a precedent of a meter to follow throughout most of the poem. The first line contains eight
The first line of stanza four “Or rather-- He passed Us—“ (l. 13) demonstrates that the speaker is uncertain about her existence in the world. Now she feels that her life symbolized by the sun is passing by. She becomes chilled by the “dews” (l. 14). Lines three and four in this stanza illustrate the reason for her coldness. The speaker is attired in a light “Gown” (l. 15) and cape or “Tippet” made of “Tulle” (l. 16), which is a kind of thin, transparent, open meterial. When people die,
Emily Dickinson once said, “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)”, “I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)“ and “Because I could not stop for Death—(712)”.
The poem I chose is a sonnet, John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 10. Around 1609, John Donne wrote a variety of religious poems called ‘Divine Poems” that included nineteen sonnets (1410). This literature reflected his interest in Jesuit and Protestant meditative procedures (1410). Although this sonnet is short, the message I received from it greatly influenced my idea of death. The story starts off as the speaker standing up to death. He tells death that it has no power over him and shows death’s comparison to sleep. Death will be short and the speaker will awake eternally in heaven. Since the day we were born, all we have feared was death. John Donne’s message states that Death is somewhat non-existent by realizing it actually holds no power over you.
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.
Poetry is an art form that has often been highly regarded. It brings together some of the most complex forms of writing in the English language. Two poems that focus on the same topic may sometimes, have completely different views and provide perspectives that may not have been considered by the other. Two of these Poems are Let Me Die A Youngman’s Death by Roger McGough and On Death by Anne Killigrew. The former poem by Roger McGough talks of how the speaker does not wish to die the peaceful death of an elderly person but rather the chaotic death of a young man. In death is nothing at all the speaker proposes that all should be as happy as before his death, and not view it in such a negative and secretive light.