Sailing to Byzantium Essay

Tracing back to the simile that compares the “black bands” (4) to the “seams of lead in a Tiffany window” (7-8), a vigorous force underlies between the lines: the pieces of stained glasses are held together by the lead strips, a motif of unity. In addition, the speaker notes that the mackerels choose to be “flashing participants, multitudinous” (37-38), and seem “to be together, selfless” (50), reflecting on each other on the ice. Regardless of how beautiful the conformation of mackerel is, their own individuality, in the end, means nothing to them. The collective identity of being mackerel, however, stands still. Although beauty and collectivity are two completely different topics, they produce a unique harmony when the speaker put them under the same

While both Keats and Longfellow often reflect on their own unfulfilled dreams and impending deaths, the poems however contrast on their own dispositions towards death and the future. Here, Keats expresses a fear of not having enough time to accomplish all that he believes he is capable of doing, but as he recognizes the enormity of the world and his own limitations of life, he realizes that his own mortal goals are meaningless in the long run of things. On the other hand, Longfellow speaks of a regret towards his inaction for allowing time to slip away from him in his past and is at a crossroads for the ominous future that looms ahead of him. Through the use of light and dark imagery, and personification, Keats and Longfellow similarly yet also differently, reflect on their own ideas for death and the futures that lay ahead of them.

The poem, "Ithaca", is based loosely around the great epic the Odyssey by ancient Greek poet Homer. In the Odyssey the character Odysseus trying to make his way home to his kingdom, Ithaca. The character faces many vicious creatures

Furthermore, we have the use of first person, where the almost universal effect is to have an in-depth look into the character and their immediate response to a problem or dilemma. This poem no different, where in the first stanza we are ushered in with the use of anaphora in lines 2, 3 and 4 with the repetition of the word ‘’and’’. This specific use of anaphora is used to create the mindset and intelligible deduction of the traveller to the events and dilemma prescribed to him. Insofar as his immediate reaction be being presented with a choice. It shows his reaction of regret in that he is ‘’sorry he could not travel both’’ and explains what he wish he could do ‘’be two travellers’’ but also how he initiates his decision making process ‘’looked down one as far as I could’’. Also, the use of first person is used to connect with the reader, enforcing the affore-used notion that the reader substitutes their own personal truth into a positive

“When You Are Old” is about the love of a man for a woman whom he had on a pedestal. He felt this woman was loved by many with a true and deep love and loved by others with a false love. He felt this woman was loved much like people today love celebrities. Yeats wrote about this woman as though he knew her intimately. He asks her to “slowly read, and dream of the soft look, Your eyes had once and of their shadows deep” (Yeats). He wants her to remember how things were in her youth. He wants her to remember her dreams and think of how things were and how they may have been. Yeats is asking her to take her time and day dream about her glory days.

The Odyssey is one of the oldest well known stories to date, and it is believed to be written around 2000 years ago. Its age is not the most fascinating fact though, the epic poem is comprised of 12,000 lines of death-defying, adventurous tales that are separated into different episodes. The Character traits of the might Odysseus, the structure of The Odyssey, the diction within the epic poem will be explained in this essay.

“Great captain a fair wind and the honey lights of home are all you seek. But anguish lies ahead; the god who thunders on the land prepares it, not to be shaken from your track, implacable, in rancor for the son whose eye you blinded. … Though you survive alone bereft of all companions, lost for years, under strange sail shall you come home, to find your own house filled with trouble: insolent men eating your livestock as they court your lady. Aye, you shall make those men atone in blood! … Then a seaborne death soft as this hand of mist will come

Images in the poem reflect the difficulties of the choice the traveler faces. The difficulty is shown in the passage "long I stood" (3)

The multiple repetitions of the word “fish” embody the vulnerability of the abundance of prey (4, 6, 8, 12, 24). The threat within ecosystems is embodied through the continual use of “fish”. These fish not only represent themselves as being unlawfully preyed upon but also represent the collective term for prey in the poem. The prey within this scene are referred to as the prize especially if the “wisest and fattest fish” were caught (24). The significance of the prey is found within their role of their ecosystems. Where the fish seem to be vulnerable prey in the sight of the fisherman, the fisherman seems to be also vulnerable prey to the fish.

In the first stanza Yeats expresses his conflicting loathing and admiration for modernity through the juxtaposition of “vivid faces” and “grey houses”. This represents the possibilities that modernity can bring; the revitalising of the community or the destruction of tradition and age old energy already lost by the modifications in the city. The repetition of the phrase “A terrible beauty is born” in the first and fourth stanzas articulate this inner turmoil revolving around modernity. This oxymoronic declaration is emphasised throughout the text by Yeats’ confusion towards the rebellion and its necessity. The fourth stanza embodies this conflict, removing the previously represented idea that life in pre-rebellion Ireland was a “casual comedy”, alluding to an Elizabethan play where the characters were content. By asking the rhetoric questions “was it needless death” and “O when may [British rule] suffice?” Yeats parallels the unresolved contradiction of “terrible beauty”. However, this sensitive treatment of conflict allows the retainment of ambiguity and can be related to any change within life, hence allowing audiences to superimpose their own beliefs and ideas into the poem. Yeats continues to explore his aversion towards modernism in The Second Coming with the appointment of a new “gyre” standing as the symbol for a new age. The fear of

In the epic Greek home, the Odyssey, author Homer conveys a tale of a man, Odysseus, as he tries to get home after a ten-year Trojan war. The poem he has presented as the message of appealing to everyone's desire to make the painful and long journey home to be with their family. Homer depicts this message through his use of Homeric similes and it accomplishes his attempt of engaging into that desire of longing that everyone feels. The Author compares the subject of Odysseus and his son, Tele Maykus, meeting after Odysseus made the long journey home to a, "keen and fluttering as those of a great taloned hawk.

Yeats was a confessional poet - that is to say, that he wrote his poetry directly from his own experiences. He was an idealist, with a purpose. This was to create Art for his own people - the Irish. But in so doing, he experienced considerable frustration and disillusionment. The tension between this ideal, and the reality is the basis of much of his writing. One central theme of his earlier poetry is the contrast

Unlike the wandering narrator, the seafaring narrator focuses his descriptions of the community that is present in nature. The seafarer the utterly rejects the notion that a “sheltering family / could bring consolation for his desolate soul” (25-26). This “sheltering family” (25) that the seafaring narrator alludes to in this line is the exact form of close-knit family that the narrator in “The Wanderer” laments for desperately. While the seafaring narrator offers striking similar descriptions of the landscape being “bound by ice” (9), he does not focus on these descriptions to dwell on the loss of an earthly community. Instead, the narrator in “The Seafarer” finds the landscape that he inhabits wonderfully abundant with natural — even spiritual — elements that are commonly associated with an earthly community. In the barren landscape, the seafaring narrator discovers “the wild swan’s song / sometimes served for music” (19-20) and “the curlew’s cry for the laugher of men” (20-21). These vibrant and vivid descriptions of the natural world that the narrator discovers in the harsh,

     When You are Old, by William Butler Yeats, represents and elderly woman reminiscing of her younger days. A past lover whispers to her as she looks through a photo album. Basically, Yeats is showing that as the woman gets older, she is alone, but she does not have to be lonely. She will always have her memories for companionship.

The lines that follow deal with death and punishment.  Part 3, describes how the sailors' "throats unslaked, with black lips baked, We could nor laugh nor wail; Through utter drought all dumb we stood!  I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, And cried, A sail! A sail! "  Then all the shipmates die "Four times fifty living men, (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one."  And so the ancient mariner was "Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea!  A never a saint took pity on My soul in agony."  He sat