Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

The deceased are often remembered in either the best of themselves or the worst. Family and friends usually look back and reminisce on the most striking qualities held by their lost loved ones. Death is a shocking and confusing period for those affected by it and the whirlwind of emotions, such as the various stages of grief, catch many by surprise. Born in 1908, Theodore Roethke was an American poet who was deemed one of the most proficient and leading poets of his generation. In his poem, “Elegy for Jane”, Roethke uses a variety of poetic devices to express the different themes of love, happiness, and grief. His use of imagery, symbolism, persona, tone and word choice, contribute to the deeper meaning of the poem, assisting in the expression of the speaker’s feelings for Jane and of how, Jane, herself felt.

Alliteration is a procedure which points out how word sounds in connection to one another. Alliteration was used to produce a tuneful action. For example, “The delicious singing of the mother, or the young wife at work, or the girl sewing or washing” Whitman Walt (1819-1892, p 750).The author meant that no matter the task at hand everyone went about it with happiness and satisfaction in fulfilling their daily task. It contributed to the tone of the poem by making it a joyous and happy moment despite the fact that each individual

“Eugenia W. Collier uses elaborate use of diction, interesting and unique syntax, and very imagery and poetic figurative language to create a didactic, optimistic, and abstract tone in her writing of Marigolds” As the story begins, the author uses a very abstract feeling and tone towards the subject of poverty. In the quote, “Surely there must have been lush green lawns and paved streets under leafy shade trees somewhere in town; but memory is an abstract painting—it does not present things as they are, but rather as they feel” (1) it talks about how the memory of poverty is elusive. The second part of the sentence, “but memory is an abstract painting—it does not present things as they are, but rather as they feel” shows what the writer feels

Trethewey knew that what she felt at her mother’s funeral wasn’t as simple as a one-word descriptor. No, it was a combination of thorough thought processes and feelings that filled her mind in such a despairing time. The structuring of Trethewey’s poem is familiar yet unique in its own right. This

In this passage written by the novelist Jane Eyre, Eyre creates emotion and feeling throughout the passage with the use if literary elements. She uses elements such as imagery and alliteration to create feeling and intrigue the reader further into her story. Eyre uses imagery to depict her words into images. These description details give the reader an image to grasp on and use throughout the story. For example “…the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so somber and a rain so penetrating.”

The speakers in “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” and “A Nocturnal Reverie” present themselves as somewhat

Elegy for Jane which is one of Roethke’s most famous poems was published in The Waking: Poems 1933-1953 (DiYanni). An elegy is defined as a poem written in memory of a deceased acquaintance (Dictionary.com). Throughout the whole poem there is a mournful and dreary mood being conveyed. Roethke describes the girl in the poem and mentions elements of nature, but neither are described or portrayed as beautiful. The first line Roethke wrote “I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils” is not a very beautiful sounding description, and he mentions a wren and skittery pigeon neither of which are birds of beauty. In the poem the girl dies and the narrator, her teacher, is at her funeral feeling a little misplaced. Roethke

The three authors, Edgar Allan Poe, Anne Bradstreet, and Emily Dickinson, had poems in which they explored the common theme of death. Their unique views on death, as reflected in their poems, tells us of the different ways people looked at death during their respective times. In this essay, I will explore and explain three poems of Edgar Allan Poe, and one from Anne Bradstreet and Emily Dickinson respectively, and then compare the differences between the three authors.

Passage one in the description of the Caddagat garden alliteration is used to describe the condition, smell and beauty of the day and the garden. ‘soothed by the scent’, ‘soft spring sunshine which streamed’, ‘revelled in rich’ and ‘lapfuls of the lovely’ all have the alliteration of a different sound, the first two quotes being the ‘s’ sound to making it more flowing and smooth is then followed by the ‘r’ sound to put more expression on the start of the words and the sentence its self. This is then finished with the ‘l’ repetition to put forth the rolling off the tongue in some form of pleasantry to the reader. The second passage then uses ‘bold, bad’ with popping of the ‘b’ to send a sense of urgency and extremity on the situation and emotions that are being expressed, this is the same with ‘don’t dare’ and the use of the alliteration in the ‘d’. (Did you like that bit Mrs.Burrows?!). This is then followed with the ‘s’ in the words ‘sex is sufficient’ putting a strong confirmation on the words and their meaning behind it. This is also continued into passage three with the ‘a peasant, a part’ and ‘flood, fire’ with the view focused on that starting letter of ‘p’ and ‘f’.

. . should burn and rave at the close of day”(2). This means that old men should fight when they are dying and their age should not prevent them from resisting death. Another example of personification in the poem is “Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay”(8). This line personifies the men’s frail deeds by saying that they could have danced. This means that the potential actions of the men could have flourished and contributed greatly to their lives. The metaphor “. . . words had forked no lightning. . .”(5) is about how the men had done nothing significant with their lives. They had not achieved anything great or caused a major change. The simile “Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay” is about how even grave and serious men will fight against death for as long as they can. Another notable example of figurative language within the poem is “. . . blinding sight”(13). This oxymoron details how the men can see very well and it is very obvious to them that they will die soon, but they know that they can control how they will leave this world. There is an abundance of imagery within this poem, a few examples of which are “. . . danced in a green bay”(8), and “. . . caught and sang the sun in flight”(10) . These examples of imagery are both appealing to the sense of sight by using descriptive words such as “Green” and “danced” in the first example and words such as “caught” and “flight” among others. The second example also appeals to the sense of sound by

The title of the poem Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost, sums up the idea that nothing good lasts forever, and that everything happy in a person’s life fades away as they grow up. The speaker of the poem is assumed to be the narrator speaking in third person omniscient. He is impersonally describing the process of life that every reader can relate to in his or her own way. The intended audience of this poem is essentially everyone, considering every human experiences the loss of innocence as they grow up. The poem relates to the common idea of coming of age and losing a perfect childhood.

Elegy: (Kirszner, & Mandell, 2012 p. 352) a sad poem that grieves a subject death, but ends in consolation. For example, in the story of Emily Rose, she was grieving for her father, but the story did not end with the grief related to her father but the pain of never finding the right guy to marry or suitor.

There are some things that we do know about this poem. It is most often referred to as an elegy because of the mood of mourning and regret. Upon further reading I discovered that this poem is like others of its time period. Many

The elegy is written in free verse; it does not rhyme or have any regular meter, not employing a consistent pattern. The poem has no structure and is free throughout, which emanates Whitman’s attitude throughout the elegy: the embracement of death. One technique he uses the most is repeating the word “O”, for an example:

Elegy: A poem of mourning, usually over death of an individual. It may also be a lament over the passing of life and beauty or a meditation over nature of death. An elegy is a type of lyrical poem, usually formal in language and structure and solemn or even melancholy in tone.