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Comparing William Wordsworth's 'London 1802'

Satisfactory Essays

Writers and especially poets often use their media as a means to address political, social, and economical situations of their countries. In the case of the English poet William Wordsworth and the Saint Lucian poet and playwright Derek Walcott, that seems to be the case. In William Wordsworth 's “London 1802”, the speaker in the poem begins by addressing John Milton, a dead poet, regarding the dire and wayward situation that England is currently in. As for Derek Walcott’s “A Far Cry From America”, the speaker appears to be bewildered and indecisive between choosing the civilized Great Britain and choosing to support his native land as they are subjects to brutal treatment by the colonizers. Even though both both poems have distinct …show more content…

(line 10-14)
As presented in the final five lines of “London 1802”, the speaker makes several more claims about who Milton was in and the effect he had when he was alive. Thus, it is said that Milton had a powerful poetry voice which sounded like the sea, he lived his life like common people do, and was such a tremendous human being who was not frightened to take even the not so glamourous tasks that life presented him. So the poet John Milton was a humble person whom the speaker, which in this case is Wordsworth himself, is inspired by, and had such an infectious presence with his larger than life heart. John Milton was a beloved English poet and William Wordsworth did fail to show so.
In Derek Walcott’s “ A Far Cry From Africa” be begins by describing a gory and bloody scene where Mau fighters from east Africa are “Batten upon the bloodstreams of the [open country]” (line 3). The imagery of this bloodshed is cemented with the illustration of the corpses “ [which] are scattered through a paradise” (line 4). The native Africans are being slaughtered and annihilated like the Jews were during the Holocaust and the question in consideration is “What is that the white child hacked in bed?” (line 9). Thus, it appears that a white child has been killed and the ensuing bloodshed was the consequence paid by the native blacks. The violence that Walcott illustrates is gruesome and he draws a comparison between what is considered the wild beast and the “upright

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