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Robert Herrick’s “to Daffodils

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Robert Herrick is generally considered the greatest of the Cavalier poets, and like most of this group of poets his works show a large amount of wit and dryness. One such poem "To Daffodils" which was in a collection of poems entitled "Hesperides," (tad bit presumptuous on his part) is a perfect example of Herrick’s sophisticated and direct nature. The poem is broken into two stanzas, the first addressing the daffodils and the second moving on to people and life in general. The poem moves along in such a way that the daffodils addressed then they eventually die, and likewise we, as people, follow the same pattern. The poems unusual rhyme scheme, diction as well as the voice of the speaker emphasizes the poems stoic nature and its eventual …show more content…

Even the lovely daffodils wither away, so our eventual demise should not fret over.
This poem mirrors the idea of a simple solution to a complex problem by having simple diction set inside a complex rhyme scheme and overall structure. The majority of the Rhymes within this poem are one syllable and at a grade school level of complexity: See, soon, sun, dry, day, we . . . etc. but the rhyme scheme is Very complex, ABCBDDECAE, and repeated over the next stanza. The interesting part is that though these rhymes initially look rather cliché and obvious they are done in such a way that
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they merely show a mastery of prose. Herrick weaved into his poem that clear dichotomy between the words rhymed and the scheme itself. A dichotomy which further validates the simple solution to the eternal problem everyone feels about dieing. Along with the Rhyme the meter presents an interesting insight into the poem. The rhythm if fairly simple and is mainly iambic in nature up until the “Stay! Stay!” which jarringly disrupts the natural rhythm, and again in the second stanza starting with “We die” and continuing to “. . . and dry /away”. These breaks from what the reader expects from the rhythm of the poem put an unusual emphasis of the words. And if you notice the words emphasized are trying to convince the daffodils to not pass away and are talking about

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