Comparison Between Remember And Sonnet

In the two sonnets, “Remember” by Christina Rossetti and “The Cross of Snow” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the authors address death and remembrance indicating similarities when exploring grieving process but also demonstrate its differences through literary techniques. They both utilized symbolism, imagery, and metaphorical language but showed differences in tone.

As one of the most frequently used themes, death has been portrayed and understood differently throughout modern history as well as by poets Christina Rossetti and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in “Remember” and the “Cross of Snow.” It appears in literature as the preeminent dilemma, one that is often met by emotions such as grief, hopefulness, depression, and one that can encompass the entire essence of any writing piece. However, despite Rossetti’s “Remember” and Longfellow’s “Cross of Snow” employing death as a universal similarity, the tones, narratives, and syntaxes of the poems help create two entire different images of what the works are about in the readers’ minds.

In the first stanza of “Remember”, Rossetti allows the reader to explore the narrator’s thought about death. When she writes “……Gone far away into the silent land;/ When you can no more hold me by the hand….” the narrator believes that death is final because that connection cannot ever be re-established regardless of how much one wants it. The “silent land” and “gone away” are metaphors for death, and when the narrator says that no one will be able to “hold me (her) by the hand”, this symbolises the one thing death takes, the physical presence of the person. Likewise, Auden’s “Stop all of the Clocks”, explores death with imperatives. Auden writes “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,/ Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,/ Silence the pianos and with muffled drum/Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.” Because the narrator wants life to cease, because with the death of their loved one, there is no purpose in life and it simply cannot (……..) .

Throughout his poems “Forgetfulness” and “On Turning Ten,” Billy Collins establishes a melancholic tone that is rooted deeply in the concept of forgetting. While Edna St. Vincent Millay establishes a similar melancholic tone, the sadness conveyed throughout “Sonnet II” is rooted not in forgetting, but rather in remembering.

There are many forms to write a poem, and two distinct ways are as a sonnet or a villanelle. These two style of poetry have their own way in expressing the author’s message to the reader. In fact, sonnets, according to the text, are “defined as . . . lyric[s] (reference to moods and feelings) poem of fourteen lines. The sonnet will follow one or another of several set rhyme schemes. . . . [T]he sonnet came to life as a vehicle to convey love messages and passions.” By this definition, I can say that sonnets provides the poet with a tool, which they use to share a strong, emotionally based, statement.

In modern times, youth and beauty is an image seen everywhere. For example, a Versace billboard, magazine ad, TV commercial, all of which displays images of beautiful people. But what happens when this beauty fades? Shakespeare in his 12th sonnet talks about his experience and fading beauty. The purpose of this poem is to encourage a young man to not lose his beauty to the ravages of time. In order to do this, one must reproduce so beauty will live.

The second poem is “Home Burial”, by Robert Frost. The poem is about a couple, Amy and her husband, losing their son causing Amy to go through emotional turmoil. Amy is trying to avoid the situation by trying to leave, but her husband is trying to pull her back, so he can figure out what’s wrong with her and as the poem continues the drama increases. The topic of the poem is sadness, which ties into the theme of Amy and her husband’s relationship is on the rock. The theme in this poem is that everyone goes through sadness, but bottling it up doesn’t help the situation. This is due to the death of their son and as the story continues the husband is trying to understand, why Amy is acting the way she is but she receives the message as rude and offensive. Most of the tension is coming from the graveyard, which resigns on their lot that contains their relatives and son. In lines 1-2, it expresses my theme because it has both

This source discussed the sonnet and lyric (the basis of my project.) It states that a lyric is the genre of internal and individualized emotions. It’s seen as a moment of “personal experience.” (33) The traditional emotion that is associated with the sonnet is love. Both the lyric and the sonnet are connected with song and music. I want to go more in-depth on how loss and death can affect the lyric and sonnet as well, without going into elegy land. This source was very informative on the basics of a sonnet and a lyric—such as how the sonnet has a twist and the lyric is more problematic than one would think. What more goes into a lyric then? (MAYBE) The approach this source is taking is showing the ways a sonnet represents and doesn’t represent a lyric. How exactly are they different and the same? Sonnets are a lyric because of the emotional base put into them. It mentions that in the Romantic peiord, sonnets were not blank-verse and strayed from the conventional form. They used everyday language. That brings up the question as to how did that incorporate into Keats’ sonnets? This source also begs the question, which I agree with, “who determines when something is a lyric or a sonnet?” (28) The lyric was something that could be private or social. What made a sonnet more intimate between reader and poet (though many sonnets were published in newspapers, especially during the Romantic period.) The length can prove to be a problem for sonnets is an issue that this source

Likewise, the Victorian Era poet, Christina Rossetti credited with poems like ‘I wish I could remember,’ a feminist poem that was written from a woman’s point of view, a poem which used the Italian Sonnet form. Christina Rossetti has used both the English Sonnet and the Italian Sonnet, and this may be reflective of her background; she was born in England, but her father was Italian, so Italy, its language and customs had a strong influence on her life and her creativeness.

The poet begins with the question, "How do I love thee?"-and it is this which sets the mood of the sonnet, as she tries to quantify, and articulate the depth of her feelings towards her husband. She uses biblical references and religious similes throughout the verse, comparing and equating her love to be as unconditional and pure -as like unto God's. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

William Shakespeare's 18 Sonnet, more popularly known as the "Shall I Compare Thee" sonnet, is about a lover who is speaking to his beloved. Most sonnets serve this same function; to profess love from the sonneteer to some individual whom he loves. In these poems, the lover always uses the most amazing adjectives to describe the woman, or sometimes the man, that he loves. The poet describes every component of his beloved, such as her hair and her lips and her eyes. Although not a sonnet, Robert Burns' poem has the same function; it is a love poem from the unnamed narrator to the

‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare and ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay are both sonnets that discuss companionship and a glimpse of each poet’s experiences. In ‘Sonnet 116’, Shakespeare illustrates how capability is weakened by its metaphysical stereotype and ideals such as, love, while on the contrary, in ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” Millay feeds on the chaos between the ideal of love and its harsh reality, heartbreak. Both poets seem to be love struck but there is a significant difference in the two. I will compare and contrast ‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare and ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I will also inquire and analyze why this particular form of poetry established different effects.

The poem “How Do I Love Thee”, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed”, by Edna Vincent Millay are both well-known poems that both have themes of love. (LIT, Kirszner & Mandell, Pg. 490). In both poems the poet helps the reader experience a lot of emotion with the use of certain words. There are speakers in both poems. In Mrs. Browning’s poem, the speaker is undefined, leaving open that the speaker could be a he or she. Millay’s poem which is written in first person, the speaker is more defined leading the reader to believe it is a she who is talking about love in the past tense. Both poems are sonnets written with fourteen lines, and written in Italian style. When comparing these poems we will be looking at the use of rhyme scheme and metaphors and how they were used to express emotions in these two sonnet poems.

     The sonnet, being one of the most traditional and recognized forms of poetry, has been used and altered in many time periods by writers to convey different messages to the audience. The strict constraints of the form have often been used to parallel the subject in the poem. Many times, the first three quatrains introduce the subject and build on one another, showing progression in the poem. The final couplet brings closure to the poem by bringing the main ideas together. On other occasions, the couplet makes a statement of irony or refutes the main idea with a counter statement. It leaves the reader with a last impression of what the author is trying to say.

To begin with, the sonnets both share an obvious and similar subject, which is love. The message in each poem just are delivered in different ways. “The universal Heritage Dictionary, as “a set of attitudes toward love that was strong.’” Sonnet 18 is what you would call your classic love poem. He is explaining how the woman’s love is compared to a summer’s day. He is basically saying his love for her will never die and will always live on. While in sonnet 130, it comes off as very spiteful and mean in the beginning. It’s not your classic love poem that one would be used to. He is pointing out all of her physical flaws by comparing them to things. For example, in the poem he says “I have seen