Comparing The Passionate Shepherd To My First Son

Poetry can elicit various emotions from the reader, and not everyone will find the same meanings to the poems. For example The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, The Sky is low, The Clouds are Mean by Emily Dickinson, and Harlem Night Song by Langston Hughes all have different themes. Of the three my favorite is The Road Not Taken because it offers its audience a chance to make life choices.

As we get older we tend to reflect more on our life and get our priorities together. We tend to realize who and what is important, the people who mean the most to us and the ones we can’t live without. Who would those significant individuals be for us? For most people it would be their parents. In the poems “My Father’s Song” by Simon J. Ortiz, and “My Mother” by Ellen Bryant Voigt, both writers express their emotion towards a parent. The poems are similar in many ways simply because they share a parent child relationship, they are also vastly different. “My Fathers Song” is a poem about a son who lost his father and is grieving and referring back to old memories, reflecting on their past and the wonderful time he had with his father. “My Mother” on the other hand is a poem about a daughter who lost her mother and is having a difficult time coping as she reflects on the decisions she made as a child and how that affected her relationship with her mother. Despite their differences, the two poems share a true connection of love towards their parent. Most notably “My Fathers Song” and “My Mother” differ in the relationship with their parent, the settings in which the memories they hold of their parents take place, and who they are mourning over, yet the two have a strong emphasis on love.

Not only do these poems share differences through the speakers childhood, but also through the tones of the works.

The couplet of this sonnet renews the speaker's wish for their love, urging her to "love well" which he must soon leave. But after the third quatrain, the speaker applauds his lover for having courage and adoration to remain faithful to him. The rhyme couplet suggests the unconditional love between the speaker and his

The poem’s structure as a sonnet allows the speaker’s feelings of distrust and heartache to gradually manifest themselves as the poem’s plot progresses. Each quatrain develops and intensifies the speaker’s misery, giving the reader a deeper insight into his convoluted emotions. In the first quatrain, the speaker advises his former partner to not be surprised when she “see[s] him holding [his] louring head so low” (2). His refusal to look at her not only highlights his unhappiness but also establishes the gloomy tone of the poem. The speaker then uses the second and third quatrains to justify his remoteness; he explains how he feels betrayed by her and reveals how his distrust has led him

The reflection of each poet's childhood is displayed within these lines helping to build a tone for the memories of each narrator.

Unlike other forms of literature, poetry can be so complex that everyone who reads it may see something different. Two poets who are world renowned for their ability to transform reader’s perceptions with the mere use of words, are TS Eliot and Walt Whitman. “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” by TS Eliot, tells the story of a man who is in love and contemplating confessing his emotions, but his debilitating fear of rejection stops him from going through with it. This poem skews the reader’s expectations of a love song and takes a critical perspective of love while showing all the damaging emotions that come with it. “Song of myself”, by Walt Whitman provokes a different emotion, one of joy and self-discovery. This poem focuses more on the soul and how it relates to the body. “Song of myself” and “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” both explore the common theme of how the different perceptions of the soul and body can affect the way the speaker views themselves, others, and the world around them.

The significance of the rhyming couplets at the end of the poem emphasizes the pain that the speaker feels, he laments, “So that I wink or else hold down my head, because your blazing eyes my bale have bred” (13-14). These rhyming couplets portray the feeling of desire and the torture inflicts on

I also felt that the poems were appealing and insightful because of the differences they had in common and how the use of different symbolic objects can transmit a similar message. For example, at first, I did not comprehend the connection between the titles

For me, the themes of the poem’s keeping moving forward and always do your best. The most interesting line’s “There’s standing tough and moving tough (14).” That line’s important because nobody should never give

In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by

Several poems in the anthology explore the intensity of human emotion. Explore this theme, referring to these three poems in detail and by referencing at least three other poems from your wider reading.’

When reading the title, we often associate a love song as something jaunty,pleasureable, and celebrating, or its other extreme, regretting, nostalgic, and full of pity for the singer’s troubles in love. With Williams the singer, the main idea revolves around the concept of an incomplete union in first person point of view, which makes the reading more personal as the reader is using “I” instead you or he. From this concept stem the ideas that this poem is about hopelessness or happiness, communal sex or masturbation. Delving into history, literary techniques, association with the author, and own opinion of it, there is easily more to it than meets the eye.

Crying is described in both poems as “‘weep!” This cry forms an end rhyme and an internal rhyme in Innocence–the cohesion of sounds lessen the emotional impact of the cry. Whereas, in Experience, “‘weep” does not rhyme with anything, and

The lover, the second speaker of the poem, starts his/her song with an almost dreamlike and blissful tone of the everlong emotion of love. The lover begins his/her song with “‘Love has no ending’” (Line 8), he/she already opens with a sense of ignorance. The lover continues with the use of personification on a river and salmon then he/she references several hyperboles about how his/her love will not stop until “...the ocean/ Is folded and hung up to dry/ And the seven stars go squawking/ Like geese about the sky” (Lines 13 to 16). The lover ends with a simile comparing how quickly the years will pass to how quickly rabbits run. The lover’s song consists of a constant use of hyperbole and consonance to draw all of the song together. Upon the lover finishing his/her song, the speaker shifts.