Loveliest Of Trees By Edwin Denby, And William Blake

The theme of early death is accompanied by sorrow in Housman’s poem, and can be seen as a reflection of Housman’s own experiences with death throughout his life (Holzberger 2-5). The death of Housman’s mother, Sarah Jane Housman, on his twelfth birthday showcases the early death of the poet’s mother, and what William G. Holzberger believed was a first of many personal catastrophes that would poison the poet’s chances of a normal and happy life (Holzberger 2). The poem presents a young runner in the prime of his life, and much like Housman’s mother, they were both suddenly taken by death. Another instance of early death in Housman’s life was that of his close friend Adalbert Jackson (Holzberger 5). The death of Jackson, who was also in his prime, mirrors that of the young runner’s death, and highlights the theme of early death in the poem as well as the poet’s own life.

is unable to beat the game of death. One can rage as much as one

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

“Time has a wonderful way of showing us what really matters.” A.E. Housman grew up in a small town in Worcestershire, London. His childhood ended at the age of twelfth because his mother passed away. Then he went to this University where he fell into a dark love and made him depressed. He worked really hard and got a job as a professor at the University College in London. Although he does all of his teaching and helping scholars he is most known for his poetry. His poems display deep feelings and are emotionless. His poems usually affected the reader like a shiver down the spine or a punch in the stomach. I am going to be talking about three messages from the poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman.

This poem talks about nature and death. William Cullen Bryant shares that nature can make death less painful. He says that when we start to think about death, we should go outside, and look around and listen to the natural earth sounds. This is supposed to remind us that when we die, we will mix back into the earth. The poem tells us that when we die, we will not be alone. We will be with every other person that has ever been buried, In the ground, which in this poem is called the “great tomb of man”. It also tells us that even those that are still living will soon die and join in the great tomb of man. This poem is meant to comfort those that are afraid of dying and death in general. At the end of the poem, we are told to think of death as

Mary Oliver’s poem, “Sleeping in the Forest,” presents a peaceful and vivid representation of death and its relationship with nature. As the poem begins, the reader is introduced to the earth welcoming the speaker back into the realm of nature. Man was created from the dust of the earth and when we die, our bodies return to the dust. However, this poem presents a more beautiful image of what death is composed of. Death is often portrayed as being frightening and disturbing. When individuals are presented with the thought of death, they often push this thought away out of fear and ignorance. Everyone will die someday whether we ignore the thought of death or not. However, Oliver creates a relaxing and welcoming image for the reader on what death (ideally) is. Obviously, since Oliver is still alive, she doesn’t know what death feels like. However, the way she describes death, I hope that it feels like sleeping in a forest; full of stars and enchantment.

Everyone has someone they consider family. Sometimes people bond solely with their blood relatives, but more often than not we choose who we consider to be our family as we grow older. This happens most often when people find a spouse, but many also adopt children as their sons and daughters, peers as their brothers and sisters, and role model figures as aunts and uncles. The Bean Trees is written by Barbra Kingsolver and is set in the early 1980 's. It tells the story of a young woman named Taylor, and the life she builds in Tucson Arizona. Far from home, she meets many great people and finds a place where she belongs. Kingsolver shapes her message of the importance of families both blood and found through her use of character archetypes

A. E. Housman was a well known poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Within his two most famous publications, A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems, Housman effectively uses his adept understanding of language, its usage, and style to portray the significant themes behind all of his poems. To an Athlete Dying Young is a perfect example of Housman’s ability to convey his message to the reader through his use of diction, syntax, and tone.

The narrator gives more instances of what Death might be doing, like “making arrangements, tampering with air brakes, scattering cancer cells like seeds, [and] loosening the wooden beams of roller coasters,” (Collins 5-8). The first part of this quote is making arrangements, and this shows as to how Death has his own schedule on what he is going to do for that selected day and who is he going to take. Furthermore in this stanza, the narrator mentions if Death is actually going to visit his cottage. The narrator explains that his cottage is hard to find, and he wonders if Death is even going to look for it because it is so

Life is a very special thing given to everyone. Life is something that needs to be treasured, regardless if it is a human or animal. Just with life, death is a special thing. Death is something that is shrouded in mystery that humans explore. Since humans know that they are going to die, they are interested in how others died. They explore their life and the possibility of how they lived, and then their death. In the poem, Traveling through the Dark by William Stafford, and The Black Snake by Mary Oliver, both share a common theme of life and death.

In Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, a boy rebels against his father by climbing up trees, where he spends the rest of his life on, without ever touching the ground again. The philosophical residue is the idea that reason advances the human knowledge, which is a powerful influence to individuals, making people seek for it through books and logic. Accordingly, it is necessary for the improvement of society that it should govern people with justice and reason, not through sovereign authorities.

This is expressed by the multiple examples of old men whom regret certain aspects of their lives and defy death even when they know their time is up. The speaker is urging his father to fight against old age and death. The meaning and subject of the poem influence the tone and mood. The tone is one of frustration and insistence. Thomas is slightly angry and demanding. His words are not a request, they are an order. The mood of the poem is is serious and solemn due to the poem focusing mainly on the issue of death. This mood and tone is created by words such as “burn”(2), “Grieved”(11) and “rage”(3) along with phrases such as “crying how bright”(7), “forked no lightning”(5), “near death”(13) and “fierce tears”(17). The insistent feeling is also created by the repetition of the lines “Do not go gentle into that good night”(1), and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”(3). The figurative language used also affect how the meaning, tone and mood are interpreted.

Edward Thomas was a war poet who wrote all of his poems while he served in World War I. His poems have been thought to make up “an elaborate suicide note”, ironic to his death by a bomb (Priory). As prevalent to his situation as death was, Thomas wrote of death as a process. Allusion, rhyme, and diction develop the theme of journeying into death in Edward Thomas’s “Lights Out”. Thomas is not forthright.

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

He knew no haste. ”The poet hints at death being always there and never going away by writing that the characters drove slowly. In this quote and several others also the poet refers to death as a kind and gentle person which adds to the thought that dying shouldn’t be fearful. The whole poem points toward the opinion that the reader should be content with death and it is just a part of