The Speaker

Through Sidney's extensive use of figurative language and repetition, it is made clear that the speaker clearly despises desire due to the horrible things desire can lead to. This expresses the idea that people must look inside themselves to gain true happiness rather than desiring for things that can never be. The speaker's negative attitude toward desire is established early on in the poem as the speaker compares desire to many dreadful things in an almost ironic way. Desire is first described as

Oliver’s “Crossing the Swamp”, the speaker compares a swamp to the struggles and hardships in life that fight against her. The speaker repeatedly contrasts herself to the swamp to emphasize the vastness of the swamp, conveying how the speaker understands the hardships that come with life. The speaker describes the swamp as a “wet thick cosmos [...] ーthe nugget”. The paradox compares the vast “cosmos” with a small golden “nugget,” contrasting how the experience the speaker is going through may be on a

In the poem, Thou Blind Man’s Mark, the speaker, Sir Philip Sidney, conveys his complex attitude toward desire by using irony, rhyme scheme and metaphors in his writing style. The speaker first tells how awful having desire is, bashing all of those who have these wants, calling them ignorant “blind” fools and defining desire to be worthless. Eventually the speaker himself ironically craves desire himself. When the speaker says, “Desiring naught but how to kill desire”, he has a realization that

1. The speaker could be any man but particularly a persistent man. The speaker is very persistent as he constantly pushes the idea of having a sexual relationship to the woman he is talking to before time runs out and they die. The speaker seems to require more attention than a normal person would as he spends the whole poem requesting a sexual relationship to the woman he is talking to. The speaker also seems to be paranoid with the idea of time especially time running out and him dying. 2. The

the poem, it is important to keep in mind that the title is “The Road Not Taken,” as opposed to “The Road Taken.” The added “not” is important in the interpretation of the poem, for it emphasizes the doubt that the speaker later reveals towards their choice. As the poem begins, the speaker creates a calm mood as they write of “two roads” diverging “in a yellow wood” (1.1-2). Yellow is an archetype of contentedness, and as

In “Thou Blind Man’s Mark,” Sir Philip Sidney dramatizes the conflict between the power of desire and man’s attempts to combat it. The speaker begins the poem by saying, “Thou blind man’s mark, thou fool’s self-chosen snare.” Diction is important here because the speaker refers to man as “blind” and as a “fool.” This suggests that is possible for man to fight desire, but is often ignorant and gets involved with it, despite its evils. The poem then uses alliteration saying, “...cradle of causeless

good to know that I am loved and that I am not alone. The speaker begins the poem with the metaphor of God as a shepherd (Anonymous 1). A shepherd was someone who watched over and cared for sheep. The speaker is using a shepherd to symbolize God. The speaker is using sheep to

The speaker in Wledon Kee’s poem “For My Daughter” expresses his desire to not have a daughter as he believes that life on earth is simply full of adversity and atrocity. The speaker employs imagery that provokes unpleasant sensations to demonstrate that life is full of adversity. The use of diction that demonstrates the speaker’s certitude in the forthcoming disasters and sinister metaphors reveal the speaker’s pessimistic views on his daughter’s future. The imagery, diction, and metaphor materialize

Mitchell it shows a journey of the speaker going from uncertainty to confidence. In the poem, “Stop Saying Sorry” the speaker was uncertain about her painting of Jennifer’s daughter, while in the passage “Grocery Run”, the speaker was uncertain of how his parents perceived his ability to take out the Zodiac on his own. These two pieces of writing are very similar to each other, but at the same time also have some small differences. In both of these passages the speaker goes from uncertainty to confidence

comparing them to false comparisons. The speaker was not afraid to be blunt about his mistress instead of how other men use false comparison and fill their mistress head up. William Shakespeare gives the speaker a blunt tone in Sonnet 130 to convey that he was not bragging on his wife saying she is all this and that. He said things that others compare their mistress to. That is what make his love for his mistress unconditional and very special. The speaker did not brag about his mistress saying she