Life of the Soul Revealed in Sailing to Byzantium and Shadows

As Wendy Martin says “the poem leaves the reader with painful impression of a woman in her mid-fifties, who having lost her domestic comforts is left to struggle with despair. Although her loss is mitigated by the promise of the greater rewards of heaven, the experience is deeply tragic.” (75)

This allows the reader to understand how each phase in a person's lifetime is detrimental to creating a sense of true self. As the poem advances, imagery is used to show the man's growth through life. Shakespeare's begins the poem by using “At first, the infant, . . . And then the whining school-boy”(2.7.5-7), to allow the reader to imagine a boy who evolves into a man “With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,” (2.7. 17). This imagery shows the different stages he takes from boy to man, until his cycle is complete and he is left with “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” (2.7. 28). Since he must complete all seven ages before his cycle is complete, the man will learn who he truly is when he is left with absolutely nothing. This furthermore the idea that the growth made throughout the man's life is important for the discovery of his true self. Although both the metaphor and imagery proved in this poem show the stages of the man's life, the overall tone is quite depressing. As the man develops in each phase of his life cycle but only to result in ending where he began. The poem finishes with stating “That ends the strange eventful history, / Is second

of their humanity. Furthermore, the references to “dead time” and the “night” foreshadow the great loss that pervades this play (2.3. 99).

Robert Frost and William Shakespeare have been celebrated by many people because of their ability to express themselves through the written word. Here we are years after their deaths analyzing these fascinating poems about life and death. It’s clear they had similar thoughts about this subject at the time of these writings, even though their characters could not have been more opposite. For both poets, life is too

The wanderers experience with death leads him to face great sorrow which comes to be known as his only companion left. All of these examples together benefit the themes development by illustrating and elevating the wanderers’ level of loneliness.

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.

"Out, Out," by Robert Frost is a gruesomely graphic and emotional poem about the tragic end of a young boy's life. It is a powerful expression about the fragility of life and the fact that death can come at any time. Death is always devastating, but it is even more so when the victim is just a young boy. The fact that the boy's death came right before he could " Call it a day" (750) leads one to think the tragedy might have been avoided and there by forces the reader to think, "What if." This poem brings the question of mortality to the reader's attention and shows that death has no age limit.

Simplicity is an integral part of the young man’s union with the axolotl. But the simple creature the man comes to know and admire could not be without its neotenous characteristics. As the salamander grows it never reaches adulthood and seemingly never ages. In this feature of the axolotl, the young man comes to the realization that death is a part of life for all men. He is scared of facing aging and dying, unsure how to react or feel about the unknown, and wants to avoid the question that all men hate to face. Looking to the axolotl for answers, he gets a paradoxical result. The animal that never ages, the animal he transforms into to escape the question of death, is a representation of death. The axolotl is lonely, immobile, seemingly lacking life, inexpressive, and unable to communicate, all things we associate with death.

The theme of Dylan Thomas and W.B Yeats poems are about death. In Do Not Go “Gentle Into The Good Night” the author is telling his father not to die and to stay strong. He does this by repeating ”Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” In ” When You Are Old “The narrator said” And pace upon the mountain overhead And his face amid a crowd of stars.” The narrator is looking down on her from when he passed away.

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.

Robert Frost's deeply-rooted beliefs in nature influence him to view death positively. Through enticing images of solitude

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

As I researched life and death in his works, I assumed that he was fascinated with it. This belief is reflected in The Span of Life, a two-line poem that contains a whole lot of symbolism. It is the story of a dog that is too old to get up. The narrator is reminiscing of when the dog was a pup. This poem reminded me of an old man looking back on his life, wondering where all the years went. I translated these two short lines into a person's submission to life and death, accepting the fact that one must die sometime.

Poems are like snowflakes. While no two are the same, they all have common structures and themes. One prevalent theme in poetry is that of death, which is present in both “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. Dickinson perceives death as a gentleman, while Frost perceives death as loneliness, which provides insight on how the time periods of the poems, the genders of the authors, and the authors’ personal experiences influence literature.

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.