Theme Of Sonnet 55

A distinguished sense of hollowness, and darkness is discernable in George Elliot Clarke’s poem “Blank Sonnet”. This poem expresses, the author’s difficult and awkward communication with a lover through a broken relationship. word choice and imagery is imperative to the overall effect and tone of the poem. The usage of an atypical sonnet stylization, broken sentences, forms of metaphors, symbolism, sensory language, and alliteration form strong imagery, and a sense of disconnect. The overall effect leaves the reader with a resonating feeling of emptiness.

In the third quatrain, the metaphor becomes one of time as a personified force, a ravaging monster, who digs trenches in beauty, devours nature, and mows down all that stands with his scythe. Clearly, these images develop from one another: the first describes the way time passes, the second describes the way a human life passes, and the third describes the way time is responsible for the ravages in human life. Each quatrain is a single four-line sentence, developing a single argument through metaphor: time passes relentlessly, human life is cripplingly short before it quickly succumbs to age and decay, time is the ravager responsible for the downfall of men’s lives. This is one of the great themes of the sonnets.

Poetry can help authors bring forward many different emotions through just the themes that they choose to deliver. Some poets show their sadness, disgust, unashamedly talk about their romantic relationships, and most of the time love. Poets can change the entire poem just by the mood that they set, the tone that they are using, or the imagery that they use to describe. Shakespeare is a big example of using different themes, tones and imagery. In three of his sonnets they deal with romantic love and they have been very widely popular throughout many years even though some of his writing can be hard to decipher.

The author, between the anaphora “fear no more” and the epistrophe “come to dust” (6), proposes the benefits of accepting death; The minutiae and worries that effect all during life are inconsequential in death. Illustrating Shakespeare’s literary prowess, the effect of the epistrophe and the anaphora paired together contributes to the choice that humanity has to accept death. Because in each stanza and sentence “fear no more” and “come to dust” are parallel to each other, Shakespeare is able to equate them to one another and show the reader how choosing to accept death and the power of death itself are just as

In “Sonnet II,” by Millay, the speaker describes how time has gone on and she still misses her former boyfriend. Similar to that, in “Sonnet 73,” by Shakespeare, the speaker describes how time has gone on, taking his youth away. Overall, through the use of gloomy imagery and a dreary tone, Shakespeare and Millay present time’s negative effects on a person, within their dismal sonnets.

The Shakespearian English sonnet is the rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, eded, gg. The sonnet seems to be addressed to a young lover. The theme is something we love is going to be gone soon. That is, the person appreciates something or love someone more than it is fading, or even more when it's actually gone.

James Simmons’ poem ‘Sonnet for the Class of ‘58’ displays the conditions and society modern men live in. The poem develops its idea by giving examples of the graduates’ lives in adult world that is completely different from what they expected. As the speaker talks about how the ideal changes into only basic things in life, his words provoke the reader to think about their lives and compare them with their lives. The poem suggests the collapse of the ideal that young people have as they grow older and gain more experiences about reality of life.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a work of art so prolific that many consider it as one of the best tragedies ever written in the history of literature, in which ideas and motifs of sickness and decay embed the entire plot of the story. Each unique character then conveys these ideas by the way they converse with other characters, their actions, and their use of figurative language. These create a unominous tone that is carried throughout the story, which helps the audience in fully grasping Hamlet’s truest emotions. These also help the reader know each character as well as to understand the how the figurative elements of the play translate to real life circumstances. From the start of the play, Shakespeare establishes a tone of uncertainty and

Background/Context: Shakespeare is considered to be the best writer in history. His darkest, and shortest play Macbeth is his greatest work. No other poem has been written and translated so many times as this one. It has no subplot, but is the most dramatic and dark with multiple references to death. Shakespeare was born in April of 1564 and his birth is celebrated as the same day as his death in 1616. He was the oldest of nine children, and married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18. Their first child was already on the way by the time they got married, twins were born and Anne spent the majority of the time with them in Stratford while William worked in London. During his twenties it is unknown what he did or how he made a living but in 1592

Made up of three quatrains and couplet in iambic pentameter, Sonnet 1 contains the common thread of encouraging procreation, however each has a small topic shift that defines the tone of the quatrain. The first quatrain is an axiom, ending with the line “His tender heir might bear his own memory” signifying to the reader the speaker’s purpose behind their argument. By structuring the sonnet this way Shakespeare uses a structure that is similar to some persuasive arguments in real life. The rhyme scheme also helps to reflect this as Shakespeare uses the ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme to draw the reader’s attention to word that strengthen the speaker’s argument. An example of this is the rhyme between ‘’spring’’ and ‘’niggarding’’ in the third quatrain.

This idea of memories of the deceased fading with time is touched upon in Shakespeare’s Hamlet as well. Shakespeare explores the dependence of memory not just on the mind, but on a physical presence in the world, and the potential for a person to be forgotten when either of these elements is missing. Beyond a mental or corporeal recollection, Shakespeare shifts to focus on an artistic one in “Sonnet 18” wherein he elucidates that a person’s beauty can be preserved against the decay of time through writing. All three works contend that in spite of mortality, the dead leave physical representations of themselves behind. Nevertheless, these immortalizations do not mean the deceased are impervious to fading from the memory of the living because these depictions can be destroyed, lost, or forgotten as

In “Sonnet 42,” Edna St Vincent Millay speaks of various love affairs coming to an end and the forlorn and remorseful feelings linked to them. She expresses her longing attitude towards her lost loves by employing melancholic diction, contrasting seasonal imagery, and natural metaphors. The melancholic diction creates the longing attitude toward the speakers past loves in the poem. Words such as “forgotten” (line 2) and “unremembered” (7) all stress the speaker’s attitude because they have negative connations that convey the remorseful and longing feelings.

In the second quatrain Shakespeare uses strong imagery of war and destructiveness. He says that no war or physical damage to the world will erase the memory of the poem. Nothing will ruin “the living record of [his] memory” (Shakespeare line 8). In the third quatrain he reiterates the idea of immortality and image of destruction and waste is continued. Shakespeare writes, “’gainst death and all-oblivious enmity/ shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room” (Shakespeare lines 9-10).

     The sonnet, being one of the most traditional and recognized forms of poetry, has been used and altered in many time periods by writers to convey different messages to the audience. The strict constraints of the form have often been used to parallel the subject in the poem. Many times, the first three quatrains introduce the subject and build on one another, showing progression in the poem. The final couplet brings closure to the poem by bringing the main ideas together. On other occasions, the couplet makes a statement of irony or refutes the main idea with a counter statement. It leaves the reader with a last impression of what the author is trying to say.

In sonnet 55, Shakespeare uses a metaphor in lines 2-4 in order to show that his poetry is the only place memory can and will be preserved. When he states “Not marble, nor gilded monuments/shall outlive this powerful rhyme/But you shall shine more bright in these contents/Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time” he is exaggerating that monuments and statues will be destroyed in life(2-4). However, one’s memory can last in the words and meaning of his poems unlike them being destroyed. He says that memories cannot last through gravestones because such statues and monuments get demolished as time goes on, but Shakespeare's rhymes are so powerful that they can last forever; as of now, people are still studying his poems which supports the claims he has made in sonnet 55. By using this metaphor, Shakespeare is making a point that nothing can last after death other than his poetry. In other poems, he has also used metaphors to get a point across.