Category: Poetry

Coleridge’s Philosophy of Imagination February 1, 2005 In Kubla Khan, Samuel Coleridge depicts the great Mongol ruler Kubla Khan creating a palace representative of his great power and ability to induce fear. But near the end of the poem Coleridge reveals that Kubla is a metaphor for an inspired poet. Thus Kubla’s palace is like…

In Samuel Coleridge’s “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” the speaker views the lime-tree bower he sits under as a prison, despite its beautiful description. He wishes to venture out with his friends and see the beautiful nature they will see, and as a result of desperately wanting to be somewhere else, he misses the beauty…

The zeitgeist of Romanticism, while notoriously broad in its philosophy, had definite universal views upon the concepts of the individual, nature and imagination; which constitutes the basis of what today are known as the main aspects of the movement. Such aspects, addressed in Samuel Coleridge’s “The Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”, include the focus upon the…

In The Golden Bough, Sir James George Frazer argues that contemporary science, while evolving from magical and religious attempts to understand and control the natural world, eclipses these frameworks[1]. To Frazer “magic” in the 20th century “is a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false…

Having subdivided the text into three distinct parts, namely, the State, the Church and the Commons, Gower’s Prologue addresses all three estates from its stylistic “medial” point. Although initially dedicated to the king, this poem addresses all people – the “lewed” as well as the learned, though with perhaps less of an emphasis on the…

‘Lines’ opens with a celebration of natural life and its exuberance, ‘the red-breast sings from his tall larch’. Here the singing robin is portrayed through metonymy giving a sense that it is something accessible and familiar to the common people. The singing ‘red breast’ and ‘tall larch’ are dual symbols of joy and renewal, linked…

During the first weeks of August 1902, Samuel Taylor Coleridge toured the hills of England near Scafell on foot. Ironically, the lines that “involuntarily poured forth” into a “Hymn” did not end up describing Coleridge’s ascent of Scafell, but rather a hypothetical scene in the Vale of Chamouni. The work, entitled “Hymn Before Sun-Rise, In…

The speaker in “Heritage” expresses profound emotions regarding an African-American perspective of the motherland. Countee Cullen writes in an irregular meter throughout the piece, consistently using seven syllables in each line. The speaker is effectually declaring the pains of the slave trade to be innocuous to an African American with the poem’s perspective, which is…

Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain” tells of the events that lead up to the sinking of the Titanic through its collision with an iceberg, while on a deeper meaning, highlighting the tragic consequences of the hubris of mankind. Through opposition and diction, the speaker criticizes the human race for succumbing to hubris and attempting…

In his poem “The Convergence of the Twain,” Thomas Hardy describes the unfortunate, yet truly inevitable, sinking of the supposedly invincible Titanic. Concurrently, the poem depicts humanity’s vain struggle against the steadfast forces of nature. The poem’s structural organization as well as diction and figurative language convey the speaker’s disapproving attitude towards man’s hubristic creation…