A Collection of Classic Poems
“SONNET 130” My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;is a sonnet part of a group of poems by William Shakespeare(16th century) in the Renaissance period, which title is “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” It is a parody of the Dark Lady, published in 1609, though prior to this he shared it amongst his friends. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets in total. We don’t know who they are addressed to, or even if they were all written about the same person. In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare compares his mistress’s appearance to other things, and he tells us how she doesn’t measure up to them. He gives us details about the flaws of her body, her smell, even the sound of her voice. Then, at the end, he changes his tune and tells us about his real and complete love for her. It is also one of the few of Shakespeare’s sonnets with a distinctly humorous tone. Its message is simple: the dark lady’s beauty cannot be compared to the beauty of a goddess or to that found in nature, for she is but a mortal human being. The sonnet is generally considered a humorous parody of the typical love sonnet.-Shakespeare is mocking of the Petrarch sonnet as it’s exactly the opposite as the ideal that Petrarch had about love. It is the typical English or Shakespearean sonnet form (14 lines) —three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The final rhyming couplet contains the volta or twist at the end of the poem. The first 12 lines are devoted to the main idea of the poem, describing his mistress in less than impressive terms. They work through the different things that you can praise about somebody. The final two lines show that he still thinks she is beautiful. The I voice is the lover, and the addressee is the beloved. –The subject matter of Sonnet 130 makes fun of typical hyperbolic love poetry. The speaker is describing his “mistress”. Instead of over the top praise, he seems to be describing her as being not very attractive. He points out that he is just being realistic, but he ends by saying that he thinks that she is just as pretty as any woman who is “belied” with false comparisons.-The English sonnet with 14 lines has the following main subject structure: Lines 1-4: The speaker spends one line on each comparison between his mistress and something else (the sun, coral, snow and wires).Lines 5-12: In the second and third quatrains, he expands the descriptions to occupy two lines each, so that roses / cheeks, perfume / breath, music / voice, and goodness / mistress each receive a pair of unrhymed lines.Lines 13-14: They show the speaker’s main point, that unlike other poets, he doesn’t need flowery terms or fancy comparisons. He loves his mistress for who she is.-Regarding the language and imagery, we can find alliterations in lines 1, 4, 9, 11 and 12 (“My mistress”, “her head”, “hear her”, “goddess go”), simile in line 1 (like the sun). The author compares wires with her mistress’ hair. Shakespeare is criticising the use of hyperbole by other poets, and to contrast this, he employs rhetoric. Instead of perfume, her breath “reeks”. Her skin is not “snow” white, but “dun” colored. Although there are a number of metaphors in the poem, they are not used to describe the speaker’s mistress. Instead, each description undermines a metaphor, and she is described literally: “My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground”. The final line suggests that using over the top metaphors (“false compare”) actually “belie[s]” the object of comparison – it doesn’t do them justice. The final rhyming couplet creates a sense of conclusion, which emphasises his affection for his mistress despite all the previous undermining of her beauty.-The main idea in the poem is to challenge the poets who use too much hyperbole in their descriptions of their loves. Shakespeare is making fun of the clichés of love poetry, such as the idea that her eyes are “like the sun”. There is a sense, however, that this is a more sincere love. Although she is no “goddess”, he still loves her, and in fact thinks that she is more beautiful than any of the women who are written about using unbelievable metaphors. Shakespeare uses techniques such as the sonnet structure itself, to enhance his parody of the traditional Petrarchan sonnet But Shakespearean ends the sonnet by proclaiming his love for his mistress despite her lack of adornment, so he does finally embrace the fundamental theme in Petrarch’s sonnets: total and consuming love.-As far as intertextuality is concerned, this sonnet is a parody of the Petrarchan love sonnet, which was made popular in England by Sidney in the sonnet sequence “Astrophel and Stella”. While Sidney sometimes claims the poet’s lover is sometimes more beautiful than the finest pearls, diamonds and rubies, Shakespeare in this sonnet uses these elements to illustrate that his lover is not as beautiful. It is a total rejection of Petrarchan form and context. WHOSO LIST TO HUNT.This poem is a sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt, written in the Renaissance period. “Whoso List to Hunt” has the typical structure of the English sonnet, which consists of three quatrains and one final couplet in iambic pentameter.-The I voice of this sonnet is a hunter, who is telling others how impossible it is to “hunt” the woman he is referring to. Thus, the sonnet explores the topic of hunting to allude to love.–The subject of “Whoso list to hunt” is unrequited love, since it focuses on the problem of the writer’s wasted hunt. The first quatrain deals with the idea of how the lover tries to abandon the hunt, since he may be the last of the suitors (“I am of them that farthest cometh behind”). The use of words and expressions, such as “I may no more,” or “the vain travail” confirm the speaker’s disappointment as well as his decision to quit the hunt. The first line of this first stanza introduces the metaphor of the woman as the “hind”, which will be explored throughout the poem. It is worth noticing the fact that the word “hind” also refers to the animals’ rear with clear sexual connotations.–The second quatrain explores how the speaker tries to take his mind from the deer (the woman): (“Yet may I by no means, my worried mind/Draw from the deer”). In the third quatrain, the speaker warns others who wish to hunt (“I put him out of doubt/ As well as I, may spend his time in vain!”). It also presents the loved one as someone powerful and rich, whose fair and beautiful neck is adorned with diamonds.–The final couplet is crucial to grasp the meaning of the whole sonnet. It sheds light upon the fact that the lady is unattainable, for she “belongs” to a man who is influential (“Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am”). The last line of the final couplet introduces a paradox, since the lady is not tame as she seems, but rather wild.–This final couplet provides the solution to the sonnet. The name of Caesar refers to Henry VIII. Some scholars have claimed that the woman the sonnet refers to can be Anne Boleyn, who was Henry VIII’s wife. The speaker (Wyatt in this case) was frustrated and moved away from a relationship due to the presence of a stronger rival (the king).–As far as imagery and linguistic and rhetorical features are concerned, this sonnet is characterized by a metaphor on the first line (“Whoso list to hunt, I know where is a hind”). Alliteration is found on lines 1, 3, 5 and 9: “Whoso list to hunt, I know where is a hind (line 1), “so sore” (line 3), “Yet may I by no means my wearied mind” (line 5), Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt (line 9). The repetition of the “h” sounds certainly conveys the speaker’s sense of loss. They make the reader feel the speaker is sighing. Given the fact that Sir Thomas Wyatt was one of the first to use the sonnet in English poetry, the rhyming pattern of this sonnet (ABBA ABBA CDDC EE) is different from the conventional rhyming scheme associated with the English sonnet (ABAB CDe English sonnet (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG).–I would like to conclude the analysis of this sonnet by pointing out how intertextuality works in “Whoso list to hunt.” Wyatt’s sonnet resembles Petrarch’s sonnet 190 from the Canzoniere. Both sonnets revolve around the courtship of an unattainable mistress using the allusion of hunting for deer. In both poems the hunter/author is made aware that the deer he is chasing is owned by a far more powerful man than the speaker. Yet, what distinguishes Wyatt’s sonnet from Petrarch’s is the unavoidable sense of loss and anxiety. While the speaker in Petrarch’s sonnet never mentions his intention of quitting the chase, the speaker in “Whoso list to hunt” certainly forsakes it. Therefore, the sonnet concentrates on the futility of love and the feeling of frustration caused by it. TO HIS COY MISTRESS. Had we but world enough, and time/This coyness. is a metaphysical poem written by the English author Andrew Marvell between 1650 and 1652, and it was first published in 1681 by his housekeeper several years after his death. This poem is considered one of Marvell’s finest and the best recognized carpe diem poem in English. The poem is spoken by a male lover to his female beloved as an attempt to convince her to sleep with him. The speaker argues that the lady’s shyness and hesitancy would be acceptable if the two had “world enough, and time”. But because they are finite human beings, he thinks they should take advantage of their sensual embodiment while it lasts.–The I voice of this poem is the lover, an anonymous man speaking to his addressee anonymous woman. He speaks very beautifully but his speech is so thick with irony and sarcasm that it is hard to know if he ever says what he means, or means what he says. So, maybe all his hurtful words are just jokes. He praises his mistress through the motif of carpe diem. He claims he could love her from ten years before the Biblical flood. He wants to transmit that distancing himself from his lover is mindless, because they don’t have the limitless time necessary. –The subject is that the lover thinks that there isn’t world enough and time to wait for his beloved decision to consummate their love. The speaker thinks that time is a super-villain out to get him. He wants to flip the script and control time. Time is a mystery and this poem gives us the opportunity to explore that mystery. If time is the super-villain, then having sex is the super-power he needs to gain control over his enemy. But, sex isn’t so easy to come by. Mortality, otherwise known as “death”, gets a whole stanza where the speaker presents his vision of the afterlife. While beautiful in term of the words the speakers uses to describe it, his vision is miles away from hopeful. He thinks that dying is the ultimate lack of control. In this poem can be appreciated the move between images of freedom and images of imprisonment.-“To His Coy Mistress” consists of rhymed couplets in iambic tetrameter, proceeding as AA, BB, CC and so forth. The poem is divided into three stanzas:In the first stanza, the narrator tells the mistress – not a woman on the side but simply a lady- that if they had had more time and space, her “coyness” or teasing/shyness wouldn’t be an issue. He goes on to describe how much he would compliment and admire her if time permitted. He would focus on every inch of her body until he got to the heart.In the second stanza, the narrator basically tells her: “But we don’t have time and we’re about to get old and die. “ He says that life is short but death is eternal and time is running out. In addition, the speaker warns the woman that when she is buried in her coffin, the worms will take her virginity if she doesn’t have sex with him before they die. And, if she refuses to sleep with him, all his sexual desire will burn up into ashes for all time.In the third stanza, the speaker begs the lady to have sex with him while they are still young. He points out a pair of birds mating and suggests that is how their lovemaking should be – raw, passionate and primal.In the final couplet, the narrator says that they can’t make time stop, but they can exchange places with it. According to him, whenever have sex, they pursue time, instead of the other way around. Thus, sex makes the day more pleasurable and it makes the day go by much faster.–Regarding to the imagery, in lines 3-4, the speaker is big on hyperbole, and he uses it to suggest various speeds of motion and even stillness. In lines 8-10, the speaker’s declaration that he would love her “ten years before the flood” and “till the conversion of Jews” combines hyperbole and allusion to create motion. He also uses the grand, Biblical language ironically t poke fun at the mistress. In lines 18-19, he uses “show your heart” as a metaphor for the mistress’s imagined agreement to finally have sex with him. The final line (45-46) of the poem employ a variety of techniques. The simple imagery of the word “sun”, which makes us see yellow or orange or red as we read, combines with personification to deepen the image. The sun is also a metaphor for time. Time is an abstract concept (while the sun is an object we can see).–Intertextuality: Allusion of death and time to understand how rare and precious life is not only in the moment, but in the value eternity has for life. The line “but at my back I’m always hear / time’s winged chariot hurrying near, “ is significant because it foreshadows the sort time that the couple has. This subject is at their back just like time is. Opportunity is determined by time but the tragedy is that they will never follow through with their plans because they don’t fortune their time for the worth of their intentions. Henry compares her to a marble statue. In this poem, Hendy alludes to this part: “thy beauty shall no more be found / nor, in thy marble vault. “ He accepts that she is dead, but her honor and her memory are not. The pun, sun, refers to their child, also dead. Also, the sun will not rise any longer for her. LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI. O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms.This poem belongs to the fragment “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, written by the early 19th century poet John Keats in the Romantic period. This poem was written towards the end of his life. It was written in 1819, it was edited and then, it was published in 1820. It is a ballad which tells the story of a knight who fell in love with a mystical creature, and now suffers the aftermath of a broken heart. –“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is written using “ballad stanzas”: quatrains composed of iambic tetrameter and trimester lines; every stanza ends with a line of four or five syllables. The rhyming patter of each of those quatrains is ABCB. For example, the firs stanza: the second line rhymes with the fourth: “loitering” and “sing”. The basic meter of the poem is iambic tetrameter.-This poem is in the form of a dialogue between two speakers. The first two stanzas of the poem address the knight in second person. The first is the unnamed speaker who comes across a sick, sad knight and bothers him with questions for the first two stanzas. We don’t know a lot about the speaker. He uses typical medieval language (woe-begone) and he uses rich imagery to describe the seasons. Stanzas 4-12 are the knight’s response. The knight is alone, ill-looking and confused. The knight uses the same kind of language that the original speaker used.-Regarding the imagery, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is full of flowers. Most of the flower imagery in the poem has some kind of symbolic weight to it. In line 9,the speaker is employing a metaphor when he says “I see a lily on thy brow”. In lines 11 and 12, “fading rose” and “wither’d”, sound like a metaphor for the end of a romantic relationship. Lines 17-18: The knight makes a flower “garland” and “bracelets” for the lady. He associates flowers with love and life. The poem is one of the more musical of Keats’ poems. In line 2, he describes the knight as “alone and palely loitering;” the consonance of the “I” sound recalls singing. “Ail thee” (verse 1) internally rhymes with “palely” (line 2), drawing attention to the knight’s state. The poem also repeats a number of words: paleness is mentioned five times; the word “wild” is used in connection with the lady’s eyes three times (lines 16 and 31), and the same phrase opens and closes the poem: the knight is “palely loitering/Though the sedge has withered from the Lake / And no birds sing.”–The subject of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is medieval love, the supernatural, women, femininity and abandonment. The setting of the poem appears to be late autumn or early winter; the first stanza concludes with the statement that “The sedge has withered from the lake/ and no birds sing!” (3-4), and stanza II with the declaration “the harvest’s done”. In stanzas IV and V, the knight explains how he came to be in this state: he met a beautiful lady in a field, and she seemed to love him. He took her up on his steed, and as they rode together she sang “a faery’s song” (verse 24) to him. She gave him roots, honey and manna, and told him she loved him before taking him to her “elfin grot”. The knight then had nightmares of “pale kings and princes too” (verse 37), who were “death pale” (verse 38) and warned the knight that he was “in thrall” (verse 40) to the woman, whom they called “La belle dame sans merci” (verse 39). The knight woke on a hillside in a sickly state: another victim of this fairy woman.-The poem addresses the dangers of love (especially superficial love) and comments on the ephemerality of such “love.” “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” gives something like love on the knight at arms, but ultimately withdraws it. She does not seem to be aware of what she desires; she is, after all, a “faery’s child” (verse 14) and speaks “in language strange” (verse 27), suggesting that she is not quite human.-Regarding the world view, some readers see the poem as Keats’ personal rebellion against the pains of love. In his letters and in some of his poems, he reveals that he experienced the pains as well as the pleasures of love and that he resented the pains, particularly the loss of freedom that came with falling in love. However, the ballad is a very objective form, and it may be better to read “La Belle Dame sans Merci” as pure and simple story. How Keats felt about his love for Fanny Brawne we can discover in the several poems he addressed to her, as well as in his letters. DAFFODILS. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”.William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (Daffodils) is a lyric poem focusing on the poet’s response to the beauty of nature. The poem presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet. The final version of the poem was first published in Collected Poems in 1815. An earlier version was published in Poems in Two Volumes in 1807 as a three-stanza poem. The final version has four stanzas. Wordsworth wrote the earlier version in 1804, two years after seeing the lakeside daffodils that inspired the poem. The poem is based on an experience that he had with his sister and constant companion, Dorothy, on April 15, 1802. With its expressions of joy and unity with nature, the poem is destined to remain a classic. It is typical of Wordsworth’s revolutionary style of writing poetry in ordinary, everyday language.–The speaker is a lonely poet who has learned how to keep himself company by viewing nature as “peopled” by things. The first two lines make him sound almost like the cliché of a Romantic poet: his sensitive and intelligent nature puts him so far above everyone and everything else that he can’t help but feel a noble loneliness. He has a vibrant imagination, and can create the effect of having people around him without actually having people around him. We know that the speaker is a poet because he tells us so in line 15. He speaks in third person, but we know he’s talking about himself. Also, we have the sense that this poet takes nature to be almost a religion, and he brings intense focus and attention with his “gaze” on nature. He also has an “inward,” spiritual eye that seems more powerful than his regular vision.–The subject of “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is just to enjoy nature in its element. Don’t be afraid to “wander” and waste time by filling your senses with the beauty and wonder of nature. Essentially, the poet is telling human nature that if we all took time to revitalize by taking a walk and enjoying simple things like daffodils dancing in the breeze, we would all get along much better and our quality of life would be much better too.-In the first stanza, while wandering like a cloud, the speaker wanders next to daffodils fluttering in a breeze on the shore of a lake, beneath trees. Daffodils are plants in the lily family with yellow flowers and a crown shaped like a trumpet.In the second stanza, the daffodils stretch all along the shore. Because there are so many of them, they remind the speaker of the Milky Way, the galaxy that scientists say contains about one trillion stars, including the sun. The speaker humanizes the daffodils when he says they are engaging in a dance.In the third stanza, in their gleeful fluttering and dancing, the daffodils outdo the rippling waves of the lake. But the poet does not at this moment fully appreciate the happy sight before him. In the last line of the stanza, Wordsworth uses anastrophe, writing “the show to me had brought” instead of “the show brought to me” (inversion of the normal word order). Fourth stanza: Not until the poet later muses about what he saw, he fully appreciates the cheerful sight of the dancing daffodils. Wordsworth again uses anastrophe, writing “when on my couch I lie” and “my heart with pleasure fills”.–Regarding the imagery, we can find: In line 1: alliteration (lonely as a cloud), simile: comparison (using “as”) of the speaker’s solitariness to that of a cloud, personification (comparison of the cloud to a lonely human). In line 2: alliteration (high o’er vales and Hills). In line 3: alliteration (when all at once). In lines 3-4: personification/metaphor (comparison of daffodils to a crowd of people). Line 5: alliteration (beside the Lake, beneath the trees). Lines 4, 6: personification / metaphor (comparison of daffodils to dancing humans).–Regarding the setting, we know that Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, were walking near a lake at Grasmere, Cumbria County, England, and came upon a shore lined with daffodils. The poem begins with a single, solitary cloud floating slowly over the English countryside. The main body of the poem is dedicated to the image of the daffodils. They are stretched in a line around the bay of a lake, bordered by the water on one side and trees on the other. The day is windy enough to create waves on the lake.–Structure and rhyme scheme: The poem contains four stanzas of six lines each. In each stanza, the first line rhymes with the third and the second with the fourth. The stanza then ends with a rhyming couplet. The four six-line stanzas of this poem follow a quatrain-couplet rhyme scheme: ABABCC. Wordsworth unifies the content of the poem by focusing the first three stanzas on the experience at the lake and the last stanza on the memory of that experience. Meter: the lines in the poem are in iambic tetrameter, as demonstrated in the third stanza.-To conclude, I would like to mention the poem’s world view: Flowers are perhaps one of the main symbols of happiness in the world. This is because of their bright colours, amazing shapes and often beautiful fragrance. Therefore, they are arguably the most common topic for poetry. Many people will immediately come across flowers when thinking about nature, but little do they think and appreciate the wonder of flowers when walking around everyday. This is because flowers are grown all over this planet and are often thought as being ordinary. However William Wordsworth has been able to capture his experience in one of his most famous poems by the name of “Daffodils”. William Wordsworth was a major English romantic poet who helped launch the Romantic Age of English Literature. The poem clearly describes the appearance of the daffodils that Wordsworth encountered on a stormy day when walking by Ullswater in England and especially focusing on the way that the daffodils look dancing as if they are on a breezy day. WARNING. The poem “Warning” was identified as the UK’s ‘most popular post-war poem’. This poem was written in 1961 by Jenny Joseph and considered the best of all her poems. The poem is popularly known by many titles including the actual title “Warning”, as well as by “When I Am An Old Woman”, “The Purple Poem”, “I Shall Wear Purple”, “Old woman” and other affectionate names. It is written from the point of view of a middle-aged woman who yearns to throw off the cloak of respectability in her old age. For now, she must live the life of expected sobriety but, when she reaches old age she is determined to wear clothes and behave freely without thinking about people’s opinion.-The speaker of the poem is apparently a middle-aged woman who yearns to throw off the cloak of respectability in her old age. Throughout the poem, the speaker tells us what she intends to do in the future, but in the meantime she is painting a memorable picture of her present personality, which is good-humored and playfully egocentric. The lady thinks about her old age days and how she will spend them. For instance, she thinks that when she becomes old she will wear purple with a red hat that doesn’t suit her, or that she will learn to spit.-The subject of this poem is the politically correct behavior of middle-age people and the freedom, self-confidence and imprudence to do whatever oneself wants without any shame when these people become old people. The poet’s attitude to freedom is a feeling of privilege to do whatever the poet wants, and the attitude to responsibility is a feeling of obligation and correctness that don’t allow people be completely free. -Regarding the setting, we don’t know much about this, but it is possible that it is summer and the place is a park.-The poem is divided into four stanzas. No rhyme scheme is found. The poet writes this poem in free verse. The tone turns more realistic because she realizes that she is not still an old woman and she has to be politically correct.-In detail, the poem is telling about the life that the middle-aged woman wants to have in her old age. The first stanza is telling about some things that old people do. Wearing purple and red hat is a symbol of the change from the responsibility of middle-aged people to the happier life of the elderly. They live in a simple way. They do whatever they want and in the way they want without thinking about what is politically correct or not. Second stanza tells that old people can allow themselves to eat whatever they want or store anything in boxes. Third stanza tells how middle-aged people must follow social rule and look nice. They must be good models of behavior and respected to younger people. They must stay in social rules whether they like it or not. Fourth stanza shows that the author of the poem thinks that she could start practicing how to be an old woman in order not to shock people when she is suddenly old.-Regarding the imagery, the strong colors mentioned symbolize the daring the speaker plans to display in old age. There is some humor in the speaker’s assumption that wearing clashing colors is a strong form of self-assertion. She may even be mocking herself. Slightly more daring is the speaker’s declaration that in old age she intends to drink brandy, buy unnecessary clothing, and then pretend to be poor (lines 3-4). Her imagined rebelliousness reflects the wit and cleverness of her mind. The poem is basically structured as a list. Every new item added to the list displays the vitality of her mind. The poem uses the technique of anaphora, such as the repetition of “And” at the beginnings of lines 3-4, 6-8, 10-11 for instance, in the first stanza. The poem also heavily emphasizes verbs, suggesting the vitality of the speaker’s mind and the ways in which she plans to remain active as she ages. Interestingly, in lines 16-19, she no longer speaks of herself in singular but now refers to “we.” The words “we” and “our” suddenly drop out of the poem in line 20, and the final three lines not only end the poem as it began but also come by referring, as at the beginning, to the color “purple” (line 22). -As far as world view is concerned, Jenny Joseph presents old age as a positive experience. In the first and the last stanzas the speaker presents her own longings and dreams with the use of ‘I’. In the second stanza the speaker addresses with the word ‘you’ to indicate that this problem is also pertaining to others who have reached middle age. In the third stanza, by using ‘we’, she points out the moral code everyone is expected to follow in life. Although the poem sounds very simple, its fame increased rapidly. Many groups of women have been formed based on the theme of the poem. Some have even written related poetry about getting older joyfully. ALEX POPE. “Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness” is a two-line poem, written in 1738 by Alexander Pope.It was written in a classical period called the Augustan age, before the Romantic period. This epigram illustrates how the meaning of lines can change, depending only on which words are stressed. The poem is witty and mildly insulting all at once. The poem is a sentence written in a dog collar. The title is a sentence addressed to a Royal Highness. The information that the sentence gives us is that it is making an impertinent question to the Royal Highness. The effect of having such title is comparing the Royal Highness with a dog.–The title of the poem is also the beginning of it. The most interesting fact of it is giving us even more information than in the rest of the poem. What it wants to display is a description of a Dog Collar. The effect of having such title is allowing us to know the majority of the information just reading that title. Pope may have written it in order to make an attempt of criticizing the high class society and the marginalization of the woman on his period. It is formed by only two lines.–There is confusion in the poetic voice. “I” in the title and in the poem is different: In the poem, “I” is the supposed dog that wears the collar, and “you” is the person who the epigram is addressed, in this case, to a Royal Highness. “I” in the title, is the person who engraves the epigram in the collar.–The addressee is difficult to find, as the speaker. ‘’You’’ in the poem is the dog of Alexander Pope, but it does not mean that the speaker is not anytime this dog. There are several changes of the speaker and the addressee, so we need to pay attention. Only then we will understand the poem from their different perspectives.–Regarding the setting, we know that the Royal Highness palace was placed in Kew, a suburb of London.–This poem is written in iambic tetrameter (8 syllables, 4 feet) and the rhyme scheme is AA (a couplet). The tone is ironic and rude. The title is like the beginning of the poem, so we could consider that the poem is formed by four lines in meaning, not in structure.-The tone of the speaker is satiric. Satiric tone may vary widely, being sometimes objective, comic, and distant; sometimes deeply concerned and scornful; and sometimes dramatic, ingenuous, and revelatory. Anyways, the satiric mode always aims toward confrontation and expose.There is absence of linguistic features.-I would like to conclude the analysis of this poem by pointing out how intertextuality and world view works in “Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog”. It appears the lines should be read in an alternation of unstressed with stressed syllables, called iambic meter, but saying the second line aloud as if in conversation, stressing “whose” instead of “dog” brings up a whole new meaning. “Stressing ‘whose’ rather than the metrically anticipated ‘dog’ expands the impertinence of Pope’s jest immensely,” Wilson Tucker writes about the poem. “Since we are both here in service at court, Sir, says the cute doggie, and since each of us, Sir, wags his well-fed tail in the king’s livery one way or another, then it goes without saying, Sir, that we’re both dogs; and the question then becomes, Sir, just who is it you do your tricks for, anyhow?” Robert Frost grasped memorably a paradox underlying our entire project here: ‘The possibilities for tune from the dramatic tones of meaning struck across the rigidity of a limited meter are endless.’ Limited meter, endless possibilities; the two are entwined.” SONNET 18. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”This Romantic poem (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) is the eighteenth poem in William Shakespeare’s huge series of sonnets and it was published in 1609. It is certainly the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Initially, the poet poses a question — “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” — and then reflects on it, remarking that the youth’s beauty far surpasses summer’s delights. The poem is simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the beloved, and different changes in people over time.-Sonnet 18 is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet. It consists of three quatrainsfollowed by a couplet, and has the characteristic rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The poem carries the meaning of Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet. Petrarchan sonnets typically discussed the love and beauty of a beloved, often an unattainable love. It also contains a volta in the poem’s subject matter, beginning with the third quatrain.–The I voice is a man who thinks if he should compare his beloved to a summer’s day. Summer tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and heat, but the beloved is always mild and temperate. The gender of the addressee is not explicit. The speaker is angry due to over time and he wants to be young forever.-The subject of the sonnet is love and beauty, comparing his beloved to a summer day and talking about appearance’s changes over time. The speaker begins by asking whether he should or will compare “thee” to a summer day. He says that his beloved is “more lovely and more temperate”. He then continues with a list of reasons why summer isn’t all that great: winds shake the buds of May, summer is too short, and the sun can get too hot or be obscured by clouds. -Regarding the plot, the speaker says that everything beautiful eventually fades by chance or by nature’s inevitable changes. Regarding the beloved, though, he argues that neither his or her summer (or happy, beautiful years)nor his or her beauty won’t go away. Moreover, death will never be able to take the beloved, since the beloved exists in eternally. The speaker concludes that as long as humans exist and can see, the poem he’s writing will live on, allowing the beloved to keep living as well.–The speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the beloved: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” The next eleven lines are devoted to such a comparison. In line 2, the speaker stipulates what mainly differentiates the beloved from the summer’s day: he is “more lovely and more temperate.” Summer’s days tend toward extremes: they are shaken by “rough winds”; in them, the sun (“the eye of heaven”) often shines “too hot,” or too dim. And summer is brief: its date is too short, and it leads to the withering of autumn, as “every fair from fair sometime declines.” The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from the summer in that respect: his beauty will last forever (“Thy eternal summer shall not fade…”). In the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloved’s beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish because it is preserved in the poem, which will last forever; it will live “as long as men can breathe or eyes can see.”-Regarding the imagery and language, we can see images and symbols of time, decay, and eternity. The major question of this poem is how to become immortal and it’s attended by dramatic, powerful language. The speaker wants we to think that the beloved is actually made immortal. In line 4, the speaker starts pointing how short summer is using personification and metaphor. In lines 9-12, there is figurative language: the beloved’s life and beauty are described in a metaphor. Death is then personified. In line 12, the phrase “lines to time” creates a metaphor for poetry. In the last two lines, he asserts that as long as humans live, his poetry will survive and, in turn, so too will the beloved. From the beginning of the poem, the speaker tries to contrast the beloved and a summer’s day. Line 1: this is a rhetorical question and it also introduces the main metaphor of the poem. Line 2: “temperate” is a pun, since it carries the meaning of “showing moderation“ and “having mild temperatures”. Lines 3-4: this is all personification here. Lines 5-6: personification with “eye” and “complexion”. The language is not heavy with alliteration or assonance, and nearly every line ends with some punctuation, which effects a pause.–As far as world view is concerned, Shakespeare’s sonnets are by far the most valuable of his works. They contain such a quality of profound thought as must astonish every reader; they are adorned by splendid and delicate imagery; they are sublime, pathetic, tender, or sweetly playful. They delight the ear by their fluency, and their varied harmonies of rhythm. Time is a continued theme in the poems. ‘Mutability’, the concern that everything is subject to death and decay, can only be mitigated by the poems themselves. Shakespeare seems in these moments to understand that the poems will live on after his death. BREAK OF DAY. STAY, O sweet, and do not rise;“Break of Day” is a love poem written by the John Donne (one of the most important metaphysical poets) in the late 16th and early 17th centuries in the Metaphysical Period. The title implies the dawning or the first appearance of the sun. The title of the poem is significant in that, typically, the break of day puts an end to the lovers’ night of passion. As the rising sun begins a new day, its beams awake the lovers and so they must depart.-The poem, broken into three 6-line stanzas, follows the rhyme scheme AABBCC (rhymed couplets) and is written in iambic tetrameter. The argumentation structure is divided into three parts. As this poem is a sestet, each part can be said to appear in a couplet. -The I voice is probably a lover, who addresses the poem to his beloved. The speaker is not very happy with the idea that the break of day puts an end to the lovers’ night of passion. It seems they both are in bed when the sun breaks, and the beloved, aware that the sun is shining, is about to rise and leave the bed. Upset that she wants to leave him, the I voice tries to persuade her to stay with him more time. The lady voices not a single word throughout the poem. -The subject of this poem is love and the passing of time. More specifically, the key idea of this poem is that time should not impose a schedule to love, and should not rule the lovers’ pleasure.-From line 1 to line 2, the I voice introduces his argument. After the shocking “Stay”, directed to the beloved, the I voice softens his tone and addresses her as “O sweet”. The flattering tone continues in the following line, and the I voice argues that the lights shining comes from the Lady’s eyes, not from the sun. The I voice is probably trying to convince the Lady to stay with him.-From line 3 to line 4, the I voice presents his second idea. The speaker argues the beloved has mistaken the breaking day with his breaking heart, used as a metaphor for himself, who is afraid of her departure.-In the final couplet, the I voice’s argument proves to be definitely selfish. At the beginning of the poem, the I voice praised the lady, focusing on the light that came from her eyes and, by contrast, he moves the focus of attention on himself at the end, stating his heart will break and his joys will die unless she stays.-Regarding the imagery, linguistic features and tone, we can say that the tone and content of the poem is rather selfish and even childish (a resonance of which we find in the last line of the poem: “And perish in their infancy”). There aren’t so many linguistic features. There is an anaphora in lines 1 and 5, which shows the I voice urgency. –Regarding the main topic of the poem, I would lie to conclude by saying that John Donne was known to challenge the sun’s power of lovers in some of his poems, for instance, in “The Sun Rising”, and in this sestet, the poet develops, although briefly, the same idea: the sun, with its light and beams, should not put end to lovers’ pleasure, or mark the rhythm of their passion. This is an interesting idea which resonates the classic topic “amor omnia vincit”, which is subtly undermined by the selfish and carnal nature of the lover’s desires: at the end, it’s not pure love that has power enough to stop time (sun), but man’s whimsical and unquenchable lust.