Poems / Analysis

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) by Dylan Thomas How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight - personification For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's - metaphor Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old grief’s, and with my childhood's faith. – oxymoron I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

theme: love message: the writer wants to show her love to his lover. How much she loves him, in every moment of his life. She loves him while only breathing, his height, his everything.\ tone: intimate, tender My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet130) by William Shakespeare My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. - symbolism I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. - simile I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; - imagery I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.      And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare - simile      As any she belied with false compare. theme: love message: he wants to show the reader that love is a feeling that never depends on the looks, that he shows that his love has really bad hair, with stinky smell, and dull cheeks and so on, but still he feels that weird feeling of appreciation to her tone: ironic Dulce et decorum est. By Wilfred Owen Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, - metaphor But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots – metaphor Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling - oxymoron Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And floundering like a man in fire or lime.-- Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. - onomatopoeia If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin, - oxymoron If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs Bitter as the cud – simile Of vile,incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est. Pro patria mori theme: war message: he explains during the world war , who opposes the heroic death during the war. He want to make people understand that when their sons are dead, it’s not a heroic death, but that they will never see them again, and he is trying to tell them to keep their child from going to the army tone: sorrow Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Do not go gentle into that good night,  Old age should burn and rave at close of day; - metaphor  Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - personification  Though wise men at their end know dark is right,  Because their words had forked no lightning they  Do not go gentle into that good night.  Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,  Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - repetition  Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,  And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,  Do not go gentle into that good night.  Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight  Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  And you, my father, there on that sad height,  Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. - oxymoron  Do not go gentle into that good night.  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  theme: war message: the poem means that each day, when a person gets older, he realizes he’s one day closer to dark times, and death’s arrival. An man gets wiser when he knows that dark is always right. tone: sorrow Disingenuousness By Mark R Slaughter Here lies another box for nature, - personification; he is talking the whole box, and is acting as if he is talking about the body Carbon ready;  Black to eyes down here,  where death is at its job. – personification ; the poet gave death, abstract thing, a job Up there you’ll hear a rhythmic sob - onomatopoeia or two from living yet-to-dies – A humming lachrymose – - allusion It all but cleans the eyes:  Forget it – The dismal show of grief – Life is only chemistry – - metaphor; comparison between life that it’s chemistry Our stay is only brief. It’s we who hype it up!  Diaphragms jerk again;  the jet monotone of hearses feeds the disingenuousness  of undertakers – They seem to stare at something up ahead – - alliteration for them, it’s in the blood,  to taxi off the dead. – Personification; it’s like that the soul of the dead need a taxi to go somewhere Theme of the poem: death The message: the poet wants to let everyone to understand that everyone is going to die sooner or later, and that there is no way to escape it what so ever, it’s unavoidable. The composer wants to wake people up, wake their consciousness that is dead in the part about death. Tone: depression A Drink By Mark R Slaughter With glass, I am a man – or so I think! – A role to play when blessed with courtly drink: - metaphor; he compared getting drunk with a dramatic play A gin or two, then vintage port or wine to pep me up and gift me with a shine.  - Alliteration I know it’s false, as I now must depend upon my daily shots with open end. Insidious, it all becomes routine to beg a drink each day for self-esteem. – Personification; the poet shows the alcoholic drink as someone who he can beg to get something Theme: tragedy of life Message: the writer shows that when starting to taste the first sip of a glass of wine, one  get attached to it and never want to stop ever again, until he becomes it’s slave, who desperately needs a drink to survive and continue working Tone: pain, soreness  Alcoholic By Mark R Slaughter Red bled the sun upon a dying day. – Symbolism I was red across the dial – in denial – Purple bags bemoaning alcoholics’ eyes – Blind, they still portray a depth of ruin  you’ll never understand. I boozed away until another trial, - onomatopoeia always doing wrong inside a wrong inside a wrong – forgetting all the rights – Fretting, drinking, pinking up, stinking: -enumeration Ah! The meths; I drank another round. Red eased into the night; black scoffed. I was black across the eyes – no surprise!  Ethanolic fumes resumed their nightly play. I couldn’t pray,  so crimson haemoglobin gave display of flush as vessels opened wide. Red gushed – oesophageal varices  Teased, eased the endothelium;  Brought it all to split. Erythrocytic fire flared across  a park of haggard flesh. I choked in red; died like a fish – simile; he describes his death like a fish’ Ripped, stripped by a shark artistically in dance through  Gritty clouds of death-blood. - Metaphor  Red spread the cold and solid ground. I was cold – a deathly mound  Surrounded by an audience of shuffling feet. Replete, my corpse had played its role. No more the alcoholic porn;  No more the savaged soul. Theme: life’s tragedy Message: he was drinking wine, until he got caught up to it and felt really dizzy, made the mistakes of his life, and at the end, he died, as he described like a fish Tone: sorrow and pain Smoker By Mark Raymond Slaughter I billowed calmly as a cloud -simile upon a course for acid rain,  when in the fog of smoking crowd,  my lungs collapsed in searing pain. Full of soot and black with tar,  I coughed in vain for chest to clear;  At least my lungs had got this far  despite my years of toxic air. But Smokers' Lounge was home to me,  Where fellow addicts puff with joy: - oxymoron  our pipes in hand, all friends are we,  ‘let’s fine cigars now share, my boy! ' ‘So gasp away! ‘My motto cries, - onomatopoeia ‘and light another cigarette before a further smoker dies, - irony  which happens often - you can bet! ' Theme: the sorrow of life and death Message: the lyricist is panting what smoking does to a person, how it fills the lungs with smoke and filthy air. In addition, the smoke that comes out of each and every person, which fills the air like dark clouds, a fog even. So people are still smoking knowing the consequences, lying to themselves, and ironically criticizing it, and saying, lights another pipe before you’re dead Tone: grief