Midsummer Symbolism

In the poem “XIV”, Derek Walcott recalls a memory in which he visits an elderly storyteller. The reader can understand the significance behind the journey as Walcott uses poetic devices such as imagery, metaphors, and personification to establish tone and highlight symbolic aspects in the poem. The overall intriguing tone of the poem adds

The appreciation of nature is illustrated through imagery ‘and now the country bursts open on the sea-across a calico beach unfurling’. The use of personification in the phrase ‘and the water sways’ is symbolic for life and nature, giving that water has human qualities. In contrast, ‘silver basin’ is a representation of a material creation and blends in with natural world. The poem is dominated by light and pure images of ‘sunlight rotating’ which emphasizes the emotional concept of this journey. The use of first person ‘I see from where I’m bent one of those bright crockery days that belong to so much I remember’ shapes the diverse range of imagery and mood within the poem. The poet appears to be emotional about his past considering his thoughts are stimulated by different landscapes through physical journey.

In the poem there is also an idea of man verses nature, this relates to the survival of the fittest. John Foulcher shows this through the use of first person point of view. For example in the second stanza “Then above me the sound drops” this again possesses sensory imagery creating a deeper human aura throughout the poem. Foulcher further uses a human aura to build a sense of natural imagery for example in the last stanza : “I pick up these twigs and leave them” adding closure

The speaker also chooses her diction precisely, so that there is clear contribution to the overall idea that the poem is indeed about the quest for change and longing from escape from the swamp. Two very different forms of description are used to represent this source of dread: once by the simple name, swamp, and

Both speakers ply nature as setting to express their emotion.the speaker in the poem “The Lonely Land”apply “cedar and jagged fir’s action” as setting to express the lonely environment of the poem and the negative attitude.

Once his heart is lifted, he sees the true beauty of nature and it’s true meaning.

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

Within the second stanza, the symbolism of black smoke, dark streets, and asphalt flowers, prompts the reader to feel smothered by urbanization and industrialization. This was most evident within the juxtaposition of asphalt and flower, which shows urbanization has gone so far whereas its replaced nature

Imagery was also used in the poem.  I found that the yellow in the first line represented that the future the writer was facing was bright and warm regardless of his choice.  The undergrowth was, as undergrowth in any forest, damp and dank smelling, but not necessarily unpleasant, just something that the writer would have to face.  The image of traveling through a forest also brings to mind thoughts of birds in flight, chirping and singing.  Squirrels dashing through trees, rustling leaves and dropping the occasional acorn or nut also create an image of sight and sound.  The sun reflecting through the trees, casting shadows and creating pockets of warm and cool air and the occasional breeze stirring through the trees are also brought to mind by this poem.  The end of the poem brings to me

The reflection of each poet's childhood is displayed within these lines helping to build a tone for the memories of each narrator.

symbolic richness, but at the same time the poem supplies the reader with a wide

The poem begins with the poet noticing the beauty around her, the fall colors as the sun sets “Their leaves and fruits seemed painted, but was true, / Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue;” (5-6). The poet immediately relates the effects of nature’s beauty to her own spiritual beliefs. She wonders that if nature here on Earth is so magnificent, then Heaven must be more wonderful than ever imagined. She then views a stately oak tree and

“Storm Warnings,” true to its literal subject matter, possesses flowy sweeping syntax created by the strategic use of commas and phrasing to draw parallels between the physical oncoming winds and the gales of life. The author crafts a long run-on sentence that spans the first stanza and carries on into the latter portion of the second to mirror the continuous flowing of windy weather and the forward motion of life. Once the speaker notices the brewing storm, they “walk from window to closed window, watching boughs strain against the sky.” In this portion of the affromented run-on sentence, alliteration, rhythm, and the repetition of words all contribute to the impression of movement. The various “w” sounds at the beginnings of words and the repetition of the word “window” create a sensation of continuously flowing forward, especially when read aloud; the comma adds a small swirling pause to the rhythm, which is then soon after resumed with the word “watching.” Just as the poem rhythmically moves forward with its long phrases connected with frequent commas, so must life carry on with each additional experience, whether it be misfortunes or joys. The elongated syntax allows all these elements to work together within sentences to highlight the similarities between physical storms and emotional struggle and to stress the inevitability of predicaments in life.

By analysing the structure (shift from external to internal landscape), language (tenses, pronoun), and presentation of the experience of seeing the daffodils, I seek to demonstrate that feelings of the sublime are only evoked when the narrator’s imagination participates in the scene he has internalized in his memory. While the first three stanzas exemplify a merely physical stimulus and response mechanism to nature, the last stanza shows how active poetic imagination enables man to recreate and amplify emotions encountered, thus resulting in feelings of the sublime. Why does the observer not recognise the ‘wealth’ the scene brings in that moment? How does poetic imagination connect the physical eye and the inner eye to allow for sublime, transcendental experience? Hess argues that the poem “depend[s] for [its] power on the narrator’s ability to fix a single, discrete, visually defined moment of experience in his mind, to which he can later return in acts of private memory and imagination” (298). An example of the recapturing of emotions is seen where “gay” (I. 15) is recaptured as “pleasure” (I. 23) at the end. Active imagination, which draws inspiration from memory of the initial encounter, is now a permanent possession that

Judith Wright extensively uses the structure of her poems to convey many ideas and themes. The structure of a poem is crucial to delivering its key message as it determines both the tone and how the poem is read. She shows the reader throughout the poem how the dust, which is symbolic of the barren emptiness that has “overtaken… dreams” of beauty and comfort as well as financial dependence, will consume the earth if the current environment is not conserved and protected. Wright’s use of title emphasizes this point in the clearest way she can and re-enforces her major concept to the audience. Another example of how structure is used in this poem is juxtaposition. The first and second stanzas are strategically placed next to each other because of their greatly opposing descriptions. In stanza one, the new world of dust and wind, many negative adjectives are used, such as “harsh”, “grief” and “steel-shocked”. Stanza two, which talks about the past, contains a wide range of positive adjectives such as “good”, “kinder” and “beautiful”.