Lycidas

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.

In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.

The pastoral tradition is the literary celebration of life among nature -- whether it is on a farm, in the English countryside, or deep within a forest -- and stretches back to the time of Virgil in ancient Rome and through the works of William Wordsworth in the 18th century to contemporary writer Rick Bass’ short stories. Bass carries on the pastoral legacy established by his predecessors through his admiration for the pastoral lifestyle involving physical labor and specialized knowledge, his establishment of both fear and beauty as essential elements of the pastoral experience, and his skillful use of memorable pastoral moments.

The poem, “Gospel” by Philip Levine gives a vivid description of what the narrator sees around them. The narrator focuses their description on nature. They make many references to types of plants like lupine and thistles. Throughout the poem, nature can be seen as and abstract creature. Nature is giving and lively. The conflict in the poem is between the speaker and nature. The narrator tries to show how nature can give nice outdoor views and how the earth gives people a place to walk on while people give nothing back to nature. Levine’s speaker uses repetition and comparisons to show how nature is constantly pleading for the narrators attention yet they cannot offer anything to the relationship they have with nature. The poem slowly evolves

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 themes of the elegy are the emphasizes on the difficulty of losing a loved one and learning how to change after they are gone. The speaker uses memory, his relationship with his mother, mortality, and the imagery of nature to show the silent pain he carries on. The antecedent scenario of the elegy reveals an equilibrium that is disturbed and unsettle by the idea of mortality, which provokes the speaker to become uttered and at disbelief of the close relationship he had that made him

Debora B. Schwartz in her article, "Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Comedy" highlights the fact that the major themes which are typically discussed in pastoral poetry include: "love and seduction;… the corruption of the city or court vs. the ‘purity’ of idealized country life…" (par. 2). In the poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," the theme of the "'purity' of idealized country life" is explored when the male persona attempts to use words which conjure up images of an paradise which he and his love interest can escape to sexually gratify each other. The male persona entices his love interest to "come live" with him and be his love (l. 1). He desires that he and his lover's "prove" the various "pleasures" that "woods or steepy mountain yields" (ll. 2, 4). This argument is rebuffed by the female persona in the poem, "The Nymph's Reply to Her Husband," when she states the following: "Time drives the flocks from field to fold, /When rivers rage and rocks grow cold" (ll. 5-6). It should be noted that these lines reflect the following lines of Marlowe's poem: "And we will sit upon the rocks, / seeing the shepherds feed their flocks/ by shallow rivers…" (ll. 5-7). The female persona undermines the shepherd's idealization of the countryside and pastoral life since the passage of time, depicted by the seasons, will change the characteristics of these things described so positively by the male persona in Marlowe's poem.

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

Not only do these poems share differences through the speakers childhood, but also through the tones of the works.

Pastoral poetry is a lyric poem that idealizes nature while criticizing urban life.These two pastoral poems are example of the contrast between the easygoing countryside and the hustle bustle of a city. In the famous pastoral poetry, “The Passionate Shepherd to his love,” the Shepherd happily describes the beautiful natural image of a perfect life. He wholeheartedly believes that love is always joyful and nothing can ruin the serenity. This poem is criticized for its deluded perspective by the Nymph in a taunting way. She mocks his fantasy life that has everlasting flowers, melodious birds and finest wool gown. The Nymph’s view on her ideal love is infinite, nonmaterialistic and realistic which contradicts the Shepherd’s view on ideal love—youthful, acquisitive, and blinding; these incompatible views tear a relationship into pieces especially when the problem is addressed in a cynical tone.

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:

The passionate Shepherd to his love is a pastoral poem that focuses on the Shepherd who tries to win the love of his crush ( the Nymph ) by telling her of all the joys and pleasures of nature, the Shepherd also tries to win the Nymph’s love by offering her materialistic items. The Shepherd tells the Nymph that if she comes to be with him then he will do all these wonderful things in nature with her like: “we will sit upon the rocks, seeing Shepherds feed their flocks,”( line 6) “and I will make thee bed of roses. And a thousand fragrant roses.”( line 9) Along with offering the Nymph a bunch of things from nature he also offers her a bunch of materialistic items such as a buckle made of gold,( line sixteen) and a gown made of wool.(line thirteen) The Nymphs turned down the Shepherd’s love, because she says that the items that the Shepherd is offering to her have no long-lasting value. Because all the things that the Shepherd offers to the Nymph are not long lasting their love will not be long lasting either; all of the Shepherds offerings are things in nature that do not have long-lasting value to them; so the Nphm believes that their love will be no different.

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.

John Milton wrote most famous about pastoral elegy in 'Lycidas',which was written on the death of King Edward. Pastoral elegy which uses the pastoral elements to someone death or loss.

A sorrowful ode to his former colleague and close friend, John Milton’s Lycidas uses fruitful and fertile imagery to describe the watery death of his collegiate companion. Water in this poem functions both as it normally does, describing rebirth in a true baptismal fashion, and in an alternate way, in reference to the drowning and death of Edward King. The poem also takes time to discuss the malicious actions of the English clergymen, poetically described in traditional pastoral imagery, so in this way it is similar to what Milton does with the water imagery. Both are both traditional in one sense and a complete antithesis in another, while still using the same imagery.