The Darkling Thrush

Analyse (tell me how the poet creates this image - choice of words, literary devices, implication etc)The idea of a freezing, harsh climate is emphasized with "winter's city" and "winter's leaves". The poet uses words like "death" and "terrible" to highlight the freezing, barren winter.

Frost further points out that the stretch of woods being viewed is very rural. This is made possible by the reference to the location between the woods and frozen lake. In closing the final sentence of the second stanza Frost reiterates the fact that this occurs on “the darkest evening of the year” stating the darkness of the mood.

     Frost moves onto autumn and shows what little life is left begins to wither and fall, or as he put it in the first line of the third set ?Then leaf subsides to leaf.? The playful spirit of the young is lost in time as age quickly pours what seems like endless duties upon adults. Things once learned are forgotten and the sun creeps slowly below the horizon. Time once again takes it toll on all things living

Once more, the poet anticipates his own death when he composes this poem. But in each of these quatrains, the speaker fails to confront the full scope of his problem: winter, in fact, is a part of a cycle; winter follows spring, and spring returns after winter just as surely. Age, on the other hand, is not a cycle; youth will not come again for the speaker. In the third quatrain, the speaker resigns himself to this fact.]

Robert Frost takes our imagination to a journey through wintertime with 
his two poems "Desert Places" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". These two poems reflect the beautiful scenery that is present in the snow covered woods and awakens us to new feelings. Even though these poems both have winter settings they contain very different tones. One has a feeling of depressing loneliness and the other a feeling of welcome solitude. They show how the same setting can have totally different impacts on a person depending on 
their mindset at the time. These poems are both made up of simple stanzas and diction but they are not straightforward poems.

     Last stanza of the poem talks about the emptiness that is so overwhelming that even when Frost looks up to the sky, all that he could see or feel is still loneliness and emptiness. But then Frost mentions that the emptiness or loneliness that he fears the most isn’t the one that exist on

As we read through, the reader can begin to see a change in the tones of the poems. In A November Landscape, the tone is very dark and sad until it hits the third stanza. The speaker talks very sad then, the author adds the word “yet” to show the reader it is not all what it seems. He then finishes the last stanza by saying “April lured the crocus through snow” which shows signs of spring. The tone in Winter brightens up and talks about how “spring must take its place” but then is quickly switch around and the speaker says “I tell you no” and ends the poem with absolutely no hope and says “who watch each other with the winter’s look, touch with his hand, speak with his bitter breath”.

why he stopped, may be he doesn’t know himself. May be, he is comparing the beauty of nature to something, but on a symbolic level, the snow strongly reminds me that the poem is set in winter, and which is also widely represented as the image of death.

Winter is a time of cold, when forests die and animals hide from the shrieking winds and biting cold. Winter is a time for survival against the odds. How apt that the speaker is struggling against the "lovely, dark and deep" woods to remember that he has "miles to go before [he] sleep[s]." The "easy wind" calls to him, and the "downy flake" beckons him to a comfortable sleep. If the speaker had paused on a bright summer day, the sleep might be just a short rest, but the poem is set on the "darkest evening of the year" while the "woods fill up with snow," and any rest taken in the "lovely, dark and deep" woods would result in the eternal sleep of death (474).

“Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost dramatizes the conflict that the speaker experiences with the outside world, which has rejected him, or perhaps which he has rejected. The poem is composed of fourteen lines and seven sentences, all of which begin with “I have.” Frost’s first and last line, “I have been one acquainted with the night,” emphasizes what it means for the speaker to be “acquainted with the night” (line 1; 14). The speaker describes his walk in the night as journey, in which he has “walked out of rain—and back in rain” and “outwalked the furthest city light” (line 2-3). Through the depiction of the changing weather conditions, Frost signifies the passage of time, perhaps indicating that the narrator has been on his journey for a lengthy period of time and has traveled through many cities. Furthermore, the imagery of the rain at night creates a forlorn atmosphere in the poem.

Wordsworth, like many beggars, is found outside of the house of the protagonist, only he comes with a much stranger request. He asks to look at the bees in the grugru trees of the boy’s yard. As odd as it is, B. Wordsworth divulges in the boy that he is “the greatest poet.” He spends the majority of his days admiring with his gaze the wonders of Nature; an assortment of bugs and even morning glories, and cries over them. We learn, from the curiosity of the boy, that the ‘B’ in the poet’s name stands for Black, and that his brother is “White Wordsworth” and they “share on heart.” White Wordsworth is the name given to the famed poet of the Romantic Age, Williams Wordsworth. Seeing that he calls him ‘White’ based on his skin colour, we can carefully deduce that ‘Black’ is not his real name. It is a name taken on by him. In the face of invasion, Black forsakes his Trinidadian identity and embraces a new, more ‘appropriate’ one, based on a traditional English poet. Like his ‘brother,’ we see the strong admiration for Nature in

Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” was written in 1922 then later published in 1923. In the poem, the speaker expresses his feelings and thoughts of the woods during the darkest night of the year. The speaker and his horse makes a random stop in a certain area of the woods. The speaker seemed very interested in the scenery of that part of the woods. Although the speaker wants to stay, he has to keep his promise and continue on. Frost uses personification, imagery, and alliteration to express the feelings and moods from the snowy night in the woods.

As a simile, Frost compares the birds singing “(thrush music…)” to the invitation, per say, “to the dark and lament” (16), in which he refers to death.

This is a cold poem in more ways than one.The subject matter is seasonally icy and so is the tone of the speaker. The insouciant delivery suggests

The Structure, style and poetic techniques of a poem contribute greatly to the development of the central idea of a poem. Three poems with central ideas that stood out to me were ‘The Darkling Thrush’ by Thomas Hardy, ‘Days’ by Philip Larkin, and ‘Remembrance’ by Emily Brontë. The central idea of each of these poems revolve around the idea of time and change. Firstly, I will discuss how in ‘The Darkling Thrush’ the simple and traditional structure, the bleak yet straightforward style and techniques such as vivid imagery and capitalisation combine to develop the central idea of change. The same can be said for the simple structure and style used in ‘Days’ which combine with poetic techniques such as metaphors to develop Larkin’s argument against time and change. Finally I will discuss how the idea of time is developed through techniques such as vivid imagery and symbolism in ‘Remembrance’ along with changing styles and a slow, consistent rhythm.