Reading Quiz Questions from Wednesday

George Herbert’s “Easter Wings” presents alternating visions of generosity and harshness from God to His subjects. What unique formal quality does Herbert use to signal this generosity and harshness in his poem?

In Sherman Alexie’s “Evolution,” what does Buffalo Bill do with the Indians’ pawned goods?

John Milton’s sonnet “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” is organized around a question Milton asks of God and God’s answer. Paraphrase either the question or the answer.

Mark Strand’s “Courtship” begins with the speaker telling a girl something that really freaks her out. What does he tell her?

Poema para los Californios Muertos

Lorna Dee Cervantes’ poem entitled Poema para los Californios Muertos is an interesting and insightful glimpse into the consciousness of a bitter and resentful descendent of Hispanic Latin Americans. As she observes a plaque that tells of her ancestors’ refuge from white Americans in a land that was once their own, our narrator is filled with rage and curses the very heart of the unnatural modern society that was ultimately victorious over her fore-fathers.

There were many aspects of this poem’s approach and delivery that I admire, but two stand out before all the rest after my read-throughs. The first is the use of the Spanish words and phrases spread throughout the length of the poem, which I view as a shrewd choice considering that sometimes the Spanish is able to express sentiments that would not be as effective if written in English. The second of the two aspects is the uniqueness of the images that the author/narrator offers up: “[the shrieking blue jay] above the pungent odor of crushed eucalyptus and the pure scent of rage…” is just one of many examples. A combination of these two factors helps to make Cervantes' "Poema" one of the most memorable works included in chapter 5.

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream"

One of the first things that strikes me about Steven’s “Emperor of Ice-Cream” is the clear distinction between the two stanzas. The first stanza clearly has a more upbeat happy tempo. The first stanza has people bringing in cigars, and flowers as though it is a celebration of something. Stevens constructs the lines using phonemic relations such as in the line, “In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.” The last three words in this line all have the beginning “c.” The same thing happens in the next line with dawdle and dress. I think that by using this phenomic relation it gives the first part of the poem a more upbeat tempo. One line I found strange in the first stanza was, “let be be finale of seem.” The word finale seems so formal in this line. After going through the poem, by best guess for what this line really means is that you never know when you will die so you should enjoy life up until that point.
In the second stanza of the poem we get to the climax and find out what is really going on throughout the poem. We find out that the reason for this get together is actually a woman’s funeral. When describing the dead woman, Stevens uses very descriptive, almost eerie lines such as, “And spread it so to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come to show how cold she is and dumb.” To me this description really makes me imagine the scene of her lying there dead on her bed. I find the next line, “let the lamp affix its beam,” even more strange. I picture a surgery room light looking down on her cold, dead body. The whole imagery in the second stanza completely contradicts the light-hearted atmosphere in the first stanza.

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Bishop's poem "One Art" is an interesting commentary on something everyone goes through: loss. Whether it's losing a small possession such as door keys, or a partner, a house or a memory, everyone goes through loss at many times in their life. Bishop, however, compares loss not to a bad thing, but to an art or skill, even one that you can get better at or master. She is sending a message that loss is okay by talking about it like something she tries to do and get better at. Bishop uses a lot of repetition to illustrate how common it is for people to lose things and just how many things we can lose. The line "The art of losing isn't hard to master" is repeated in almost every stanza of the poem, reassuring the reader that losing things is not uncommon or unusual, even if you feel like you are always losing things. Just the way she refers to it as an art gives the reader the feeling that it's not a terrible thing like we all assume, and the fact that it isn't hard to master further implies that everyone does it. The repeated assurance that it is not a disaster drives home the theme of this poem, which itself is almost like advice on how to get over loss. The way she describes things as having the "intent to be lost" makes it seem unavoidable. So we must accept it, and realize, as she tells us, that it is not a disaster. She uses commands to remind us that it could be worse. If we think we have gotten good at losing things, we can still be better. We can lose things every day. We can lose things farther or lose them faster, yet still, it's not a disaster. We can lose whole cities and vast lands, and it still is not a disaster. She talks about what she has lost in the past, which is comforting since she maintains that is is not a disaster. At the end, her convoluted comparison is concluded by saying, even though the art of losing may look like disaster, its not too hard to master. The way she describes losing contrary to normal thought, yet still accurately is really interesting.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

In the poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, it is depicted as a sonnet.

As I read the poem, the rhyme scheme caught my eye. In stanza one, the author states “I think I know”, “though”. By using those two monosyllables, he makes it easy for the reader to understand the rhyme scheme. Using monosyllables, the easiest rhyming pattern helps the author to have a sense of ending. In the second stanza, the author uses “queer” and “near” to rhyme and “lake” and “year”. As the rhyme scheme goes on, I think in this stanza the horse seems curious about why the snow is piling up on the wood. Even though the word snow in the previous stanza automatically makes a reader think its winter, “the darkest evening of the year” makes me think of a cold, shadowy night in the middle of nowhere. I assume nowhere because Frost states “without a farmhouse near”. That line formulates a sense of emptiness in the village they are nearby. The rhyme scheme continues with “shake” and “mistake” and “sweep” and “flake”. With “shake” and “mistake”, Frost takes a step out of the monosyllable rhyming pattern. I believe he wants the readers to get a different effect out of those two words since mistake is not a monosyllable and they mean two different things. In the last stanza, the rhyming scheme continues but visualization comes to mind when Frost states “the woods are lovely, dark, and deep”. From that sentence I see an image of the woods being lovely, dark and deep because the trees and leaves in the woods are covered with snow but at the same time one can see the snow in the darkness of the woods. When Frost states, “But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep”, he clearly is not done treading through the thick snow to arrive at his designed destination. This also makes me feel that he is dedicated because traveling through snow in the dark woods for a long period of time may not be effortless.

Since There's No Help by Micheal Drayton

While reading the poem Since There’s No Help, I think of two lovers. Of course who wouldn’t. However it seems that the lovers cannot be together because the one is ill. The first line: “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part;” leads me to believe the illness cannot be cured and is presumably fatal. As the poem continues it becomes clearer that the couple has no choice but to part. However, it seems that the couple may have a chance of reunion. (And when we meet at any time again) . This was my initial reaction after reading the poem once, thoroughly.

After analyzing the poem the image of a young man going off to war and having to bid his lover a due seems to be what forces the separation. He may have been have been ill at first but the fear of contracting fatal diseases or being wounded must be present since he is going off to war. The agreement of the separation seemed to be that they may have other lovers but if they still loved each other at reunion they would spend their last moments with one another.

The poem seems to be a tragedy and can also be seem as an hour glass format. The poem starts off with a break up and is directly followed with feeling of gladness and freedom. After hopes of reuniting and rekindling are expressed which are then followed by another separation which would be death.

"To My Dear Loving Husband" by Anne Bradstreet

Upon one’s first reading of Anne Bradstreet’s “To My Dear Loving Husband,” one may see it as a generic, garden-variety love poem. Indeed, it contains many elements of the traditional love poem, but through structure and language, Bradstreet brings to her description of her feelings for her husband a strong message of constancy and unity that one does not usually find so emphasized in romantic poetry.

Bradstreet’s poem is unremarkable in rhyme and rhythm. Its twelve lines follow an AA BB CC DD EE FF rhyme scheme, and the beats are arranged in rising iambic pentameter. This presents a very natural rhythm and a classically 'poetic' sound. Also, as one might expect, she uses dramatic images to depict her views of both her love and her husband’s love for her, such as “whole mines of gold” to represent how much she values her husband’s love.

The entire poem is also very organized. The first four lines form two complete sentences and are a statement by Bradstreet of the strength of the love between her husband and she. Verbs like “were” and “was” also appear frequently in this sentence, for example, “If ever man were loved by wife, then thee,” demonstrating the couple’s ongoing love from the past. The next four lines, also containing two sentences, use words like “prize,” “doth,” and “cannot,” present-tense verbs expressing the poet’s current feelings toward her husband and their love. In the last four lines, Bradstreet looks to the future, saying, “The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray,” and “…let’s so persever.” She states her hopes that they may continue to share their love as they have done, and that one day in heaven her husband may be repaid for all the love he has given her.

This organization is very neatly cut, and seems to contribute to the poem’s generic qualities, but even though clearly separate parts do exist, the poem is not divided into stanzas. Past, present, and future are melded into one. This could mean Bradstreet desired to convey a sense of oneness, wholeness, and steadiness regarding her relationship with her husband, which is supported by the way she begins and ends the poem. It begins, “If ever two were one, then surely we,” and ends again in a collective first-person voice, “That when we live no more we may live ever.” The ‘borders’ of the poem, the beginning and the end both speak of “we,” sending a strong message of unity. Bradstreet sees herself and her husband as one unit, irrevocably bonded through and through by love. She sees this love as more precious than “mines of gold” and strong enough to withstand mighty rivers. Also, there is no significant change in tone or emotion from the beginning to the end of the poem, implying constancy and steadfastness.

Elements such as the common rhyme scheme and meter, use of grand images, and clear, simple organization may at first lead the reader to assume he or she is reading a rather formulaic love poem, but on closer inspection, one notices that whereas traditional love poems often include a speaker praising the qualities of a lover or describing love from one side of a relationship, Bradstreet’s “To My Dear Loving Husband” exalts the bond of love that has made her husband and she one inseparable unit, now and forevermore. It is this perspective of unity that makes this piece of poetry and its message stand out in the much-studied genre of romantic poetry.

Vendler Questions from Chapter 5

What are the interesting or unusual words in the sentence?

What speech acts are taking place?

What is implied in the "white space" between sentences or stanzas?

Is the organization linear (start-to-finish), radial (a cluster of phrases around a center), or recursive (doubling back on itself)?

Does the language change from concrete to abstract, or vice versa?

Easter Wings, by George Herbert

The religious meaning of George Herbert’s poem “Easter Wings” is evident in the title, content, and form of this poem.

Easter refers to the Christian holiday which celebrates Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Jesus died on the cross, taking on the sins of the world, and descended into hell for three days, experiencing total separation from God his father. On the third day, Jesus rose again from the dead, thereby conquering sin and death. He ascended into heaven to rejoin his father.

The speaker uses two stanzas to describe two men with the same problem: sin. The first stanza discusses Adam, the second discusses the speaker himself. Adam, when he was created, was placed in the Garden of Eden “Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store”). In Genesis 3, we read that Adam lost the privilege of living in Eden by falling victim to temptation. Thus began his descent into the death and destruction brought about by sin (“decaying more and more/Till he became/Most poor”). The speaker’s life follows the same pattern at the start of the second stanza; however, he begins in a different place. Where Adam was created in perfection, the speaker, suffering the consequences of Adam’s fall, was born into sin (“My tender age in sorrow did begin”). The consequences of his depraved nature are evident in his own decline (“with sicknesses and shame/Thou didst so punish sin,/That I became/Most thin”).

The second halves of each stanza bring the hope of redemption. “With thee,” the signal phrase that marks the transition from death to life, binds the reader to Jesus. Interestingly, in the stanza about Adam, the reader still pleas for mercy on his own behalf, “O let me rise.” The speaker begs the grace of God so that, through Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus’ victory over all sin (therefore “victories”), he might be brought back into relationship with God. In the last line of the first stanza, “Then shall the fall further the flight in me,” “the fall” refers to Jesus’ descent into hell, meaning that through Jesus’ death and subsequent resurrection, the speaker may be brought close to God. In the second stanza, this idea is expressed in the idea of grafting a wing onto Jesus’ wing. The use of the world “affliction” in the last line of this stanza hints at the verse 2 Corinthians 12:9, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” Everything that afflicts, or weakens, the speaker will make him rely all the more on the grace of God for salvation and restoration.

The form of the poem follows the speaker’s line of thought. As the lines become shorter from the beginning to the middle of the stanza, the reader’s eye moves down the page more quickly, representing Adam and the speaker’s descent into sin and death. “With thee” begins the sections of each stanza that bring the speaker out of despair, corresponding with Jesus resurrection. As the speaker lengthens his lines, he soars on the wings of the one who saved him from his sin, Jesus.

Mending Wall

In Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” we see a commentary on social constructs of shutting ourselves off from those around us. The physical action of the poem involves the author and his neighbor working to repair the wall that separates their properties.

In the beginning, the first 11 lines or so, we are given the reasons that the wall needs repair. He begins with “Something” that doesn’t “love a wall.” The “frozen-ground-swell” and the spilling of the boulders are ways that nature tears down this wall, sometimes creating gaping holes. Another reason the wall is falling apart is the hunter searching for his prey, in this case a rabbit. By using both nature and a “natural” process such as predator/prey as reasons for the wall falling apart, the reader gets a sense that the wall is, by its existence, going against what is natural. As we look at the analytical shift of the poem, we see the wall can actually represent his relationship with his neighbor, not just the physical wall they are building together.

This analytical shift takes place at the line “He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’” From this point on, Frost begins questioning the reasons behind this wall: “Why do they make good neighbors?” The transition line actually begins a section of inclusio, which lasts until the end of the poem, when the line is repeated again. But there is another section of inclusio that extends from the first line of the poem to a few lines after the analytical transition with the line “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

The two sections of inclusio overlap, keeping the poem from having a definite breaking line between a first and second part. This overlap is one way that Frost shapes the poem like a wall, with the other coming in the structure of the lines. The entire 45 lines of the poem is one stanza. So, just like the unbroken syntax (with overlapping inclusios), the unbroken lines also present a picture of an unbroken wall that the neighbor wishes to keep up when he ends the poem with “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Courtship

When I read Mark Strand’s poem Courtship, I was very surprised at the combination of reactions and emotions I had that were polar and yet seemingly simultaneous. Strand opens the poem with a shocking statement regarding explicitly sexual information about the speaker of the poem. The section that read “There is a girl you like so you tell her your penis is big,” was both shocking and comical to me. Obviously the bluntness caught me off guard, but the realization that some men actually so this caused me to laugh out loud. At this point into the poem my reaction was, well, although this is a misguided way to go about it, it is cute that he is trying to impress the girl he has a crush on, but the “aww” factor pretty much stopped there.

The fact that immediately this act of a male peacock showing off his plumes (metaphorically speaking of course) turned into a very inappropriate scene that I felt slight discomfort reading, and was obviously embarrassing for the girl . The reader’s immediate switch to the far end of the spectrum when he sees that he was upset the girl, however, led me to believe that he in no way wanted her to feel uncomfortable. I do, however, perceive him to be dangerous. This is because he violently changes his story to fit what he thinks the girl wants to hear. First he is bragging about the size of his male member, and then he immediately switches to claiming to have none at all. Throughout the poem he is a manipulator and I, as the reader, genuinely fear for her especially when he reaches for her panties all the while apologizing. He continually contradicts himself in this poem and that causes him to lose all credibility and respect by the reader. His volatile nature makes me view him as a threat and his regression back to primal instinct (signified by the howling) heightens this.

What surprised me after reading this poem for a second time, however, is that I get the impression that it is a sort of “time lapse photography” that takes an adolescent from the beginning to the end of Courtship by using common themes and exaggerated instances pieced together from their entire relationship. At the beginning of a relationship the male is always trying to impress the girl and lure her in, but he plays with how forward is too forward. The female’s reaction depicts the actions of the male because he wants to see her happy. He then will compromise a part of himself to make her happy and to evoke her sympathy. The male gets closer to the female by any means possible and as they become closer his ability to control his natural sexual urges become more and more difficult so he pushes the boundaries. When he is assured a conquest there is a sense of eruption, of fire and urgency. However, my question is why he decides that this is the woman he wants to marry. Is it because Is it because of his lustful desires coupled with impatience to wait to have sex until the two are married or is it that he wants what he seemingly cannot have?

Jonathan Poplin's Post - "Easter Wings" By George Herbert

I chose to write about the poem “Easter Wings” by George Herbert. This poem is about the fact that despite the author foolishly losing his worldly wealth, developing mortal diseases, and letting painful emotions take over his human body, God can, and hopefully will, make him rise in victory and fly high with Him in the days to come.

One very distinct feature that the reader notices about this excerpt is not so much the rhyming scheme, or the syntax used, but rather the dynamic shape the poem takes on. It transitions from normal length sentences into increasingly smaller ones, eventually down to just two word lines, and then gradually expands back into sentences of normal length again. This pattern is in place to show, in a sense, ebb and flow, or a rise and fall in the tone of speech. As one reads through the passage, they notice that the poem uses words like “decaying,” “sorrow,” “sickness,” “shame,” and “punishment”, which are words that evoke negative connotation. This occurs as the poem begins to shrink. Then, words such as “harmoniously” and “victories”, words that evoke a positive connotation, are used as the poem grows.

The two phrases that stand out the most in this poem are the two lined ones which say, “most poor” and most thin”. These lines further reinforce and somewhat mimic the shape of the poem, because this poem could be visually described as “poor” and “thin” at these parts of the passage. An underlying theme that ties the shape of the poem together with the overall plot is that of time. As all these negative things happen to the speaker, in due time, he will be freed of these burdens that he holds. Having said this, it can be stated that the poem also appears to take on the shape of an hourglass, a well known symbol for measuring time.

Vendler's Map for Navigating a Poem (from Chapter 4, pages 126-133)

1. Meaning

What does the poem depict? What is it about? Can you summarize the poem in ordinary language.

2. Antecedent Scenario

What was happening just before the poem begins? What has disturbed the status quo and set the poem in motion?

3. A Division into Structural Parts

How can the poem be divided into parts? By its rhyme scheme? Its formal structure? Its grammar? Its movement through a series of themes, ideas or images?

4. The Climax

Which of the poem's parts contains its climax, or its greatest intensity of tone? Does this intensity come from an especially significant metaphor, a change in rhythm? in person? in tense?

5. The Other Parts

How does each part differ from the others? How does the poet signal the change between each part? What purpose or function does each part serve relative to the whole?

6. Find the Skeleton

What is the dynamic curve of emotion on which the whole poem is arranged? What is the difference between the beginning and the end of the poem, and how does the poet make that trajectory from the beginning to the end?

7. Games the Poet Plays with the Skeleton

What parts of the poem don't fit with the broad "dynamic curve" you described above? How does the poet subvert or revise your expectations about how that curve should be completed?

8. Language

What parts of speech predominate in the poem? What other words, regardless of their parts of speech, make a chain of significant relation? What contexts are expressed in the diction?

9. Tone

What is the poem's general tone? Does this tone change as the poem progresses? How does the poet signal this change?

10. Agency and Speech Acts

Who has agency in the poem? Who acts and who is acted upon? Does this change as the poem progresses?

11. Roads Not Taken

What other choices could the poet have made? How could s/he have ended the poem differently? Organized it differently? Used a different style of diction or tone?

12. Genre, Form, and Rhythm

What is the content genre of the poem? What is the speech act genre of the poem? What is the formal genre of the poem?

13. The Imagination

What has the poet's imagination invented that is striking, memorable, or beautiful? Why is it poignant or compelling?

Group work: work with the members of your group to analyze the poem based on Vendler's rubric.

On Wednesday, each group will give a 5-7-minute presentation on their poem. The goal of your presentation will be to convince the rest of the class that the poem you discussed is worthwhile and unique, and to help the rest of the class to understand and appreciate what the poem has to offer. You will not be able to detail ALL of your answers to the questions in Vendler’s rubric, so before the end of class try to determine which of those questions are most significant to your particular poem. Where has the poet concentrated his or her work or imagination? What is this poem saying to its audience, and why should that audience listen? Concentrate on what makes this poem unique, not only from other forms of speech, thought and writing, but from every other poem that has been written on these well-worn subjects.

Enjambment vs End-Stopping

As Vendler argues in Chapter 4, a poem can have many overlapping or superimposed structures. For instance, the division of the poem into lines and stanzas might organize the poet's thoughts, images and rhythms in one way, but the poem's grammar (i.e. how its words are divided into clauses, phrases, sentences, etc.) may suggest a different way to organize those same thoughts, images and rhythms.

Critics use the term "end-stopped" to describe a line whose syntatic units (e.g. sentence, phrase, clause) match up with the the length of the line. An end-stopped line will usually end with some form of punctuation that accentuates the break. Note these lines from Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man, which are written in heavily end-stopped couplets:

Say first, of God above or Man below

What can we reason but from what we know?

Of man what see we but his station here,

From which to reason, or to which refer?

Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known,

'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

He who thro' vast immensity can pierce,

See worlds on worlds compose one universe,

Observe how system into system runs,

What other planets circle other suns,

What varied being peoples every star,

May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are:

But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,

The strong connexions, nice dependencies,

Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

Look'd thro'; or can a part contain the whole?

By contrast, in enjambed lines the syntactic units spill across multiple lines. These lines from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale are heavily enjambed:

I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown.

What, broadly speaking, are the passages from Pope and Shakespeare about? How does the poet's use of enjambment or end-stopping echo the poem's theme or subject matter?

Talking in Bed- Philip Larkin

In Talking in Bed, Philip Larkin describes a situation between two people that has grown unfair. The poem is about lovers that have grown apart, but have not yet been able to openly express their emotions. Vendler describes this poem as meditative, where it seems as if “nothing happens” and the subjects of the poem are in the same place at the end as they were in the beginning.

The most interesting part of this poem came in the last two lines, which read:

“Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.”

These two lines seem to really capture what Larkin was trying to describe throughout the entire poem. In these lines, it is apparent that the two lovers were once in an open and honest relationship where there was no problems expressing how they felt. However, they are now trapped in a place that was once the most welcoming area for communication. As it appears now, the two “lovers” are caught in a balance between being able to discuss the distance they are feeling and seeming to still have some feelings for each other. It is as if the two are still concerned with not hurting the other person’s feelings, so instead of saying things that are not true or being completely honest, they are using words that are “not untrue” and words that are “not unkind”. In these closing lines, the reader can finally get a sense of the degree of estrangement felt between the couple.

Emanuela Kucik on Anne Bradstreet's "To My Dear and Loving Husband"

As college students, we are often surrounded by misguided and corrupted ideas of love, ideas based largely in physicality and materiality. Therefore, reading poems about true love is both refreshing and enlightening. However, Anne Bradstreet’s To My Dear and Loving Husband takes the concept of true love to new levels in its last two lines by taking marital love beyond Earth and into an eternal realm. The poem’s preceding lines lead up to this concluding idea of having a mortal love so complete that its strength outlasts death and becomes immortal.
In the poem’s opening line the speaker immediately conveys the intensity of the love between her husband and herself by stating that they were as one being. The speaker continues to describe the strength of the love they shared in the next three lines by stating that she loved her husband as much as possible and that she was as happy with him as any wife could be with a husband. In the fifth and sixth lines, the speaker begins using objects to illustrate the depth of her love for her husband by saying that she loves him more than gold and values his love more than material wealth. In the seventh and eighth lines the speaker elaborates on her love by saying that not only is it unquenchable, but the only thing that could possibly compensate for it is love from her husband; once again invoking the idea that their love is unmatched by anything of solely material value. In the ninth and tenth lines the speaker ceases discussing the magnitude of her love for her husband and asserts that since she could never repay him for his love, she hopes that God rewards him for loving her so completely. All of these ideas work towards the climax of the poem, the concluding lines in which the speaker tells her husband that they should spend their lives loving each other so that when they die their love will live on, thus allowing them to metaphorically live forever because their love in life was so strong.
While this poem clearly pertains specifically to one woman and her husband, I also see the poem as a sort of inspiration, or hope, for others. In this poem, true love is manifest and therefore the poem births a seed of hope in the reader that such a love is possible not only for the poem’s speaker and her husband, but perhaps for the reader as well. Just as it is easy to feel despair after reading poems such as William Blake’s The Sick Rose, it is easy to feel cheerful and hopeful about the possibility of romance after reading Bradstreet’s To My Dear and Loving Husband.

Sonnet 130 Blog Post- Sarabeth Hogshire

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 is a very unique poem. In this poem a man is describing the woman he loves, which in itself is not very original, however it is the manner in which he describes her that is so unusual. As readers, what we expect to hear when a man describes his love, is how beautiful she is. He might even exaggerate her beauty by comparing her to something like a rose, or a summer’s day.
In this poem, the speaker is honest about his love, and depicts her how she truly is. He makes very unexpected comparisons such as “I have seen roses damasked, red and white, but no such roses I see in her cheeks.” When you first read the poem, his portrayal of her seems very harsh, until you get to the last two lines which read:
“And yet by heaven I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.”
Shakespeare’s speaker is not mocking his love in this poem, instead Shakespeare is mocking overly exaggerated love poems which we often see. The speaker is also saying that the woman he loves is not some beautiful goddess typically described in love poems. Instead, he is saying that his love for her is more genuine and rare because he sees her for how she truly is, and that person is who he loves. That makes his love even more special because it is based on reality, not some idealized false idealized vision of her that he created.

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” by Robert Herrick

I found the poem “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” by Robert Herrick to be intriguing. Although written to unmarried people, specifically virgins, today it can be seen as a message and a warning that time goes by quickly so you should make the most of opportunities. Each stanza has separate themes of flowers, sun, age, and marriage respectively; together the stanzas relate the theme of time passing.
The first stanza states that “…this same flower that smiles today / Tomorrow will be dying” which means that one can be young and beautiful but before you know it will be old and tired. I find that the metaphor of flowers as compared to the young and virgins is quite appropriate as we consider those who have lost their virginity to be “deflowered.” It is a warning to those “flowers” that they must make the most of their youth.
The second stanza speaks of the rising and setting of the “glorious lamp of heaven, the sun.” If one looks at the time frame that Herrick was alive (1591-1674), a time where faith and religion ruled, it is easy to see why he incorporates the word “heaven.” A religious affiliation is more than likely related to why he chose to speak to unmarried virgins in his poem. It is at this point in the poem that I believe one should realize his probable affiliation and translate it into a message for all to hear instead of only unmarried virgins. As stated I believe the message is to make the most of opportunities instead of sitting back and waiting for them to come to you.
The third stanza again goes with the theme of going after your goals. The younger you are the more energy and drive you have; if you wait you will lose that drive as you age. The line “But being spent, the worse, and worst” emphasizes that it will keep getting worse and harder as time passes.
The fourth stanza ends the poem with the advice that it was hinting at through each stanza. The specific advice he mentions is to not waste time but rather get married, but as I have mentioned it could be taken as advice to take advantage of opportunities.