In Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”, Herrick writes to youthful virgins, emphasizing that time is quickly passing and they should seize opportunities while they are still young. He is able to illustrate his point with great detail with his use of metaphors from nature. Furthermore, Herrick writes of mortality and death as swiftly approaching, and that the virgins should marry before they are too old, and time has gotten away from them. Herrick uses metaphors and the construction of the poem in a simple yet memorable way to show the importance of seizing youthful opportunities and the paradox of life as it leads to death.
The rhyme and meter of “To Virgins” is fairly simple, just like the message the poem conveys.
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Iambic trimeter has three feet containing one unstressed and one stressed syllable. The final unstressed syllable at the end of the even numbered lines assists with the tone and musicality of the poem. It is not an afterthought syllable, but is purposefully placed to add to the musicality of the poem. Herrick’s construction of the rhyme and meter makes “To Virgins” memorable and simple, without being ordinary.
In further support of the musicality of the poem, Herrick keeps the flowing tempo of the lines upbeat and spirited. The beat of the poem when read aloud is catchy, much like one’s favorite tune. A subconscious association is made in one’s mind between the poem’s message and a song, lending itself to becoming memorable, and allowing one to react positively on a metaphysical level with the text. This auditory response is directly linked to the simplistic structure of the poem’s rhyme and meter, and effectively transfers the poem’s message of seizing the day to the reader.
Herrick uses flowers and marriage to build metaphors reflecting the essence of the Latin sentiment carpe diem, the central theme of the poem meaning seize the day. For example, Herrick uses roses to symbolize the good times to be had by the young, imploring them to go out and “gather ye rosebuds while ye may” (Line 1); meaning to enjoy life’s opportunities while they are still young. Furthermore, Herrick specifically writes “And while ye may, go marry” (14) urging the virgins to marry
The repetition of something can develop an attachment. The Imagery of the poem ‘And when the loaded ute bumps down the drive” It can be observed that they had a quick and practical reaction to their departure, which only develops when there were previous occurrences .
The memories in the poem maintain a cohesiveness and continuity of experience through repeated motifs such as the violets and the ‘whistling’. Memories also give us a recovered sense of life, as shown through the final line of the poem ‘faint scent of violets drifts in air’. This example of sensory imagery also creates a rhythmic drifting sense linked closely to the “stone-curlews call from Kedron Brook”. It echoes images of the speaker’s mind drifting into reflection and aurally creates transience between the present and the past.
The meaning of the first stanza is do the things you need to get done because tomorrow the opportunity may not exist. It states this by saying gather rosebuds while you can because that beautiful flower “tomorrow will be dying” (Herrick 385). The next stanza talks about the Sun’s life from dawn to dusk. By describing it’s race against time it is telling a person that there is not much sunlight so make the most of it To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time and Carpe Diem
Herrick was very successful in conveying the key elements of human nature by expressing them through the themes, grief, environmental influence and coming of age. The poetic techniques Herrick used to explore these themes are clearly shown throughout his verse
The poem is separated into two parts, each with sixteen lines, and is loosely based on an iambic pentameter metre. The rhyme scheme is ABAB throughout the poem, with the noticeable exception of the last four lines of part II, in which it changes to
The fact that enjambment is used throughout the poem such as in the lines, “like a colour slide or press an ear against its hive” portrays a lack of structure and therefore emphasizes the initial enjoyment one feels when reading a poem before the chore of analyzing it begins. This is also emphasized through the fact that the poem is a free verse poem.
Prompt: Write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how the poem's organization, diction, and figurative language prepare the reader for the speaker's concluding response.
Apart from that, the poem consists of a series of turns that reflect different parts of the speaker’s feelings and the experiences he had. The significance of these turns is made possible through the use of stanza breaks. For example, the first
Unlike other forms of literature, poetry can be so complex that everyone who reads it may see something different. Two poets who are world renowned for their ability to transform reader’s perceptions with the mere use of words, are TS Eliot and Walt Whitman. “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” by TS Eliot, tells the story of a man who is in love and contemplating confessing his emotions, but his debilitating fear of rejection stops him from going through with it. This poem skews the reader’s expectations of a love song and takes a critical perspective of love while showing all the damaging emotions that come with it. “Song of myself”, by Walt Whitman provokes a different emotion, one of joy and self-discovery. This poem focuses more on the soul and how it relates to the body. “Song of myself” and “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” both explore the common theme of how the different perceptions of the soul and body can affect the way the speaker views themselves, others, and the world around them.
The poem progresses from mourning of the deceased to praising of his achievements and fate to die before his glory withered. Therefore, the tone shifts from somber and quiet to upbeat and positive. Such shift of tone is achieved by Housman’s use of sounds. In first two stanzas, Housman describes the funeral procession as he remembers the time when the young athlete was proudly brought home after he won a race. Then, he solaces the mourners by reminding them it is better that the athlete “slip betimes away from fields where glory does not stay” (lines 9 and 10) because the laurel “withers quicker than the rose” (line 12). The soft “s” sound stands out especially in second and third stanza and it creates a sense of calm and quiet tone and evokes an image of townspeople mourning the death of their “hero”; Consonance of “s” sounds is present in words “shoulder, set, threshold, townsman, stiller, smart, slip, betimes, fields, does, stay, grows, withers, and rose.” In addition to consonance, soft sound alliteration in “road all runners” (line 5) helps to create a quiet tone. As the poem progresses into praising of the young athlete in stanzas four through seven, the consonance of hard “c”, “t”, and “f” sound become prominent. Readers can immediately detect
symbolic richness, but at the same time the poem supplies the reader with a wide
“Wish for a Young Wife”, by Theodore Roethke, may seem to be more than just a simple epithalamium, for the way the poet presents his writing compels the reader to question his true intentions. Nevertheless, although it is easy for the reader to trip down this path, a closer reading, in which one pays particular attention to aspects such the poem's imagery, rhyme scheme, meter, and parallelism, allows them to acknowledge that as the poet appreciates his wife and elaborates on what he wants for her, it is in fact the ambiguity of the poem that doubles the effect of his sincerity and love for his young wife.
In the last stanza, the narrator witnesses the young "Harlot" (prostitute) cursing and reprimanding "Blasts" the infant's cries and "tears" at what could be the result of being fatherless. The soldiers' deaths leaving mothers widowed, turning the joyful occasion of marriage (also personified) into a depressing event “the Marriage hearse”. This stanza has a very different rhyme structure to the previous ones. It is half octameter and heptameter, making it slightly off beat. Lines thirteen and sixteen are slower (octameter), while lines thirteen and sixteen (heptameter) have a rapid, excited tone.
The short stanzas containing powerful imagery overwhelm the readers forcing them to imagine the oppression that the speaker went through in