The Widow's Sorrow

In ‘I kneel to pick frail melancholy flowers among ashes and loam’ a tone of loneliness and sadness is established as the persona enters. Harwood describes the violets as ‘frail’ and ‘melancholy’, terms that arn’t usually associated with flowers. This is also explored in the juxtaposition of ‘ashes’ and ‘loam’. Ash is symbolic of death and decay which contradicts the ‘loam’, symbolic of life and birth. The persona’s dark and unpleasant perceptions reveal their uncertainty and state of mind. The present tense indicates the persona’s adulthood and their sense of longing and unsatisfaction conveyed through the nostalgic delivery of

The seasons in the poem also can be seen as symbols of time passing in her life. Saying that in the height of her life she was much in love and knew what love was she says this all with four words “summer sang in me.” And as her life is in decline her lovers left her, this can be told by using “winter” as a symbol because it is the season of death and decline from life and the birds left the tree in winter. The “birds” can be seen as a literal symbol of the lovers that have left her or flown away or it can have the deeper meaning that in the last stages of our life all of our memories leave us tittering to our selves.

The poem describes the weather and its effect on cotton flower by pointing out the dying branches and vanishing cotton. The image of insufficiency, struggle and death parallel the oppression of African American race. The beginning of the poem illustrates the struggle and suffering of the cotton flower; which represent the misery of African Americans and also gives an idea that there is no hope for them. But at the end the speaker says “brown eyes that loves without a trace of fear/ Beauty so sudden for that time of year” (lines 13-14). This shows the rise of the African American race, and their fight against racism. The author used mood, tone and

In the poem “ A Bitterness”, Mary Oliver illustrates a case of crippling melancholy. Oliver depicts the speaker reflecting upon the troubled life and death of someone that they knew. The solemn tone of the speaker is maintained throughout the poem to verify their position on the matter upon which they are reflecting. By using consistent repetition and descriptive comparisons, Oliver conveys the general theme that the bitterness accompanying sadness and sorrow can envelop all aspects of life.

In the short story “The Scarlet Ibis,” James Hurst exhibits the narrator's sorrow throughout Doodle's life and death by utilizing the literary elements of mood and foreshadowing. Hurst creates a dark, negative, and ominous mood that evokes the narrator's feeling of sorrow through specific diction . The author utilizes specific phrases to foreshadow certain events which reflect the narrator's feelings of sorrow. Hurst creates the mood through specific diction and phrases to exhibit the narrator's feeling of sorrow. In the beginning of the story, Hurst uses phrases to describe the time period as summer being “dead but autumn had not yet been born, that the ibis lit the bleeding tree” (554)

By the end of the poem there is another shift in tone. The tone takes on a more hopeful meaning. Now, Bryant uses the spring season to compare to a new age. He mentions, “The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes/ In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,/ The bow'd with age, the infant in the smiles.”(68-70) The rebirth of human life compares to nature in the sense that when nature is reborn in springtime everything turns green. The reader ends the poem with an enlightened sense of feeling instead of the dark and gloomy feeling they felt at the beginning of the poem.

The poem that I have selected for this essay is “Talking to Grief” by Denise Levertov. I chose this poem because it talks about grief. It also talks about the place that grief should have in a person’s life. The poem describes grief, and compares it to a “homeless dog.” It also describes how a dog deserves its own place in the house, instead of living under a porch or being homeless. This poem talks about how a person can be aware that grief is present, but that it is not always acknowledged and accepted. We all experience grief in different ways, and for different reasons. Everyone deals with grief in their own personal way. This poem describes a point in a person’s life when they are ready to accept grief as a part of their life

There are some things that we do know about this poem. It is most often referred to as an elegy because of the mood of mourning and regret. Upon further reading I discovered that this poem is like others of its time period. Many

The story that is A Sorrowful Woman seems to be a story told from the point of view of a narrator who focuses only slightly on the inner conflict of one of the main charters in the story. The character of which I am speaking is never referred to by name, instead is called she, the woman, mommy, and wife throughout the entire story which lends credence to the conclusion of the viewpoint as being told from the outside. The first indication that the focus of the story will be not of a warm and loving nature is the line “The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to see them again”(1). This is where a hypothesis can begin to be formed as to who the antagonist of the story is, bearing the statement above in

As seen, "Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband" (Williams 7-8). With the wording being in past tense, it can only be assumed that the speaker's husband has passed and that the sorrow is actually grief. The next couple of lines are described with more fiery and bright colors, in a way showing the brightning of the speaker's attitude. As stated, "The plumtree is white today with masses of flowers. Masses of flowers load the cherry braches and color some bushes yellow and some red but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turned away forgetting" (Williams 9-19).

In the poem, “After the Winter” written by Claude McKay, the speaker is expressing the beauty of spring and summer to his love. The speaker describes the beauty of the summer isle, “Where bamboos spire the shafted grove/ and wide-mouthed orchids smile” (lines 7-8). The speaker conveys the image of bamboos spiring, and orchids smiling to show the beauty of nature during this time of season. In addition the speaker notes the beauty of nature surrounding their cottage “And we will seek the quiet hill/Where towers the cotton tree” (9-10). The speaker is emphasizes the seclusion of their summer cottage.

Home burial focuses on a rural husband and wife and examines their reaction to a sudden, unexpected discovery, namely the death of their infant child. While the wife undergoes profound personal change, supporting the previous two paragraphs, the husband, a pragmatic farmer used to death, experiences no change. The husband’s lack of reaction to the death is evident in the line “Three foggy mornings and one rainy day will rot the best birch fence that a man can build” which is significant at those are his first words after finishing his own child’s burial. This trivialisation of this confronting discoveries establishes the sheer lack of impact that it had on the husband. Further evidence can be seen in the divide that emerges between the husband and wife after the child’s death. The poem starts out with the two separated, with the husband “Advancing toward her” to cross both the physical and emotional divide between them; however, the wife soon “Withdrew” and restored the divide. This divide emerges as the wife, who experiences great change, is pushed far away while the husband remains stationary and unaffected. The discovery has so little effect on the man due to his experiences as a farmer which have likely accustomed him to death. Discoveries differ vastly between people due their unique experiences, and as shown

Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” has often been linked to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Written in the form of an elegy, the assassination itself provides the occasion, whereas the subject is broader than the occasion. Lincoln’s name is never mentioned throughout the poem, allowing the historical considerations to give way to universal significance. This is demonstrated when Whitman transitions, “Nor for you, for one alone. Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring.” While it is significant that Lincoln’s name is never mentioned, it is also important that the manner of death, assassination, is also never mentioned. Though the poem mimics the journey of Lincoln’s coffin, few people lose their lives to assassination. Not mentioning the name of Lincoln or the assassination, allows the poem to be applied to death in general.Whitman uses three nature images throughout the poem. These three images include lilacs, star, and a thrush. Alternating between nothing more than a broken twig and something left to all those who have been laid to rest, the lilac sprig is an offering to the deceased.The lilac also reveals the poem’s setting, springtime, which is generally a time associated with renewal. The dead come back to life. The star, Venus, as noted in the footnotes or also commonly associated with Lincoln, represents a man who has died. Whitman uses nature as a way to explore death as a release from the sufferings of life. This rationale does not

I remember times in my personal life when overwhelming grief or shock seized me – nothing in the world looked right, certainly not happy or pleasant. While Mrs. Mallard was slouched in a chair her experience didn’t feel that tragic at all – her mood was rather peaceful and relaxed. A peaceful picture that Louise saw out of her window – “trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain … sparrows … patches of blue sky …” – was definitely not emblematic of grief. Those things told me that she was seeing her life as if having a new look.

The aster flower represents the absence of love and patience. Witch-hazel, meaning pliant or bendable, signifies that both parties in the relationship are unwilling to be flexible and understanding of each other’s wants, needs, and desires. Their hearts are “aching to seek,” (62) but they are in denial of any possible way to make the relationship work. The relationship between the “last lone aster”, “witch-hazel”, and the narrator connect the life and death cycle that is viewable in nature to his relationship. Frost recognizes that “knowledge of nature and man’s self-knowledge were thus interdependent.” (63) By understanding this, he can apply the wisdom to his relationship. A flower, as well as a relationship, need to be tended to or will begin the “wither.” Nevertheless, the life of the flower or relationship is never guaranteed. In love, one must remain flexible, knowing that even as a flower begins to “wither”, there may still be a way to bring it back to life.