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Longfellow wrote the poem shortly after completing lectures on German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and was heavily inspired by him. He was also inspired to write it by a heartfelt conversation he had with friend and fellow professor at Harvard University Cornelius Conway Felton; the two had spent an evening "talking of matters, which lie near one's soul:–and how to bear one's self ...
The rhyme scheme of the poem is ABBA ABBA CDCD CD. This Italian or Petrarchan sonnet uses the last six lines to answer the first eight lines (octave). The octave is the problems and the sestet is the solutions.
The poem was created as part of a friendly competition in which Shelley and fellow poet Horace Smith each created a poem on the subject of Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II under the title of Ozymandias, the Greek name for the pharaoh. Shelley's poem explores the ravages of time and the oblivion to which the legacies of even the greatest are subject.
The poem displays formal elements, but is not subject to one formal trope. The feet in the poem are mostly iambic, but the meter varies. There is not a defined rhyme scheme, but there are rhyming couplets appearing throughout. This homage, but not direct deference to, formality, plays off the poem's relation to (and subversion of) normal poetic ...
During the mid 20th-century, Virginia Radley states, "the 'Eolian Harp' itself can be read with pleasure without a redaction of the poem for meaning. It is a poem which comes full circle from Eden to Eden" and that "Perhaps a poem should indeed not mean but be, and, to this point, the 'Eolian Harp' is a true poem. The images and the ...
The poem is not a conventional part of the Classical genre of Theocritan elegy, because it does not mourn an individual. The use of "elegy" is related to the poem relying on the concept of lacrimae rerum, or disquiet regarding the human condition. The poem lacks many standard features of the elegy: an invocation, mourners, flowers, and shepherds.
According to scholars, there does not seem to be a very strict form in "Contemplations" upon first glance. However, patterns can be found in the poem, including patterns of imagery. One example of this pattern in the poem is the metaphor of seasons passing. The poem moves from autumn all the way through to summer.
Perhaps the most famous modern use of the phrase is as the title of a poem, "Dulce et Decorum est", by British poet Wilfred Owen during World War I. Owen's poem describes a gas attack during World War I and is one of his many anti-war poems that were not published until after the war ended.