Welsh Poetry Essay - Compare and contrast
Kayleigh Thompson
Welsh Poetry Essay.
-Compare and contrast "White Roses" with "Stop all the Clocks."
"White Roses" is about a young boy who dies. It was written by Gillian Clarke, a modern Welsh poet. The title of the poem is ironic, because "White Roses" suggests youth, beauty and innocence. The poem starts with,
"Outside the green velvet sitting room"
This suggests luxury and wealth. The use of the colour green is also very indicative, because the colour green suggests spring and fertility and overall life. This is in contrast with the theme of the poem, which is suppoused to be one of death, but in actuality, it is as much about life as it is of death. The next two verses fit in with the theme of green, fertility and springtime.
"White roses bloom after rain"
"They hold water and sunlight"
This is a simile. Water and sunlight are essential to life, which interlock with the theme of life. The newly-bloomed white roses are only still alive because of the water and sunlight they hold.
The reader is then taken inside , to a scene of sickness and disease.
"Within the boy who sleeps in my care,
In the big chair"
"Big chair" suggests that this boy is a very small boy. The boy awakens to pain.
"The cold bloom
Opens at a terrible speed
And the splinter of ice moves"
The second and the third stanza are linked together, through enjambment.
"In his blood as he stirs in the chair"
From the next line we can assume that the boy and carer are not family. The narrator is merely a nurse or a carer for this boy. The boy is obviously in a lot of pain. A sympton of some unknown disease. He grits in teeth in effort to subdue of forget the pain, or to either prevent himself from crying out. He is trying to be brave. This boy is no stranger to pain.
"gritting his teeth
in silence on pain's red blaze."
The boy is also very weak and exhausted, another sympton of his terminal disease. He is merely
"a stick man in the ashes"
The pain that the boy suffers from, sometimes leaves him for moments and when this happens, he becomes a normal and happy young boy, an image of what he should have been constantly, even if it is only for a short period.
"He can talk again, gather
his cat to his bones"
The poet uses the word ...
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"gritting his teeth
in silence on pain's red blaze."
The boy is also very weak and exhausted, another sympton of his terminal disease. He is merely
"a stick man in the ashes"
The pain that the boy suffers from, sometimes leaves him for moments and when this happens, he becomes a normal and happy young boy, an image of what he should have been constantly, even if it is only for a short period.
"He can talk again, gather
his cat to his bones"
The poet uses the word "bones" instead of flesh or skin to perhaps emphasize how weak and fragile he is. Like an eldery person.
In the fifth stanza the poet uses s metaphor to describe how much pain was inflicted upon the boy, by the cats paws,
"Kneading,
with diamond paws his
dry as tinder flesh"
The poet uses the word "diamond" which is known for its hardness and sharpness. The cats sharp claws cut through the boy's dry flesh. The poet also uses the word "tinder" which is a type of rotting wood. Is this boy's flesh rotting?
"The sun carelessly shines after rain"
The sun does not care care about the death of a child. The sun is impervious to death. It will still shine no matter who has died. The sun is also personified by the use of the word "carelessly"
"The cat tracks thrushes"
Neither does the cat seem concernced or even appear to have noticed or cared that its owner had just passed away. It contains to do normal cat things.
"and without concern
the rose outlives the child"
The cruelty of nature is simply, everything was made to die. Although a child has died, the rose still lives. The message of the poem is basically the fact that life goes on.
"Stop all the Clocks" was written by W.H.Auden. He was homosexual. Homosexuality in the time of W.H. Auden was illegal. It was considered immoral. The poets homosexuality is important in "Stop all the Clocks" because its about the death of his lover. "Stop all the Clocks" is a poem full of grief and mourning . A poem full of sadness and heartache. In the peom W.H. Auden expresses how he wants to clear the Earth of beauty and nature for he feels that they are useless to him now. His world has ended.
The mood and tone of the poem is one of despair and grief.
"I thought that love would last forever I was wrong"
His mood is of anger and anguish. Anger and anguish that his partner has left him and anger that he's never coming back. His everything has gone.
"He was my North, my South, my East, my West
My working week and my Sunday rest"
These verses reflect on just how much the poet depended on his partner.
The poet uses imperative verbs , "Stop", "Silence", and "Prevent." He is commanding things to stop, be queit or disappear. The poet also writes in a poignant and petulant tone.
"The stars are not wanted now: put out everyone;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun"
The imagery is very indulgent.
"Scribling on the sky the message He is Dead
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves."
This sets a wonderful picture in the mind of a message written in the sky, where doves with bows round their necks fly past.
Connatations of death are also present in the poem. Auden refers to objects associated with death numerously.
"Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come"
The poet also personiafied an aeroplane, with the use of the word "moaning", because that is what the poet wants to do, just get away from it all, and moan with greif.
"Stop all the Clocks" has religous imagery .
"The stars are not wanted now: put out everyone;"
"Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood."
Auden wants the starts to be put out, and the ocean to be poured away, simply because he cannot appreciate their beauty any longer. His world is black, deviod of any light since his partner died. He might also want them to disappear because they were made by God, and God took away his lover. He may resent God. W.H.Auden is commanding that the world is destroyed. He wishes away the things that God has created, such as the stars. The importance of the final line is very great. It is the enormity of nothing. Auden feels that there is no point in living. He is consumed within his grief. Everything is doomed. The world which was once so full of happiness for the poet, is now hopeless and useless.
"For nothing now can ever come to any good."
"White Roses" and "Stop all the Clocks" are both poems about death. They both have a theme of death. They both are very personal poems and they are both about pain, although in different aspects. The two poems share the idea of life and death and that although death is cruel and harsh, life goes on. They both show this through nature, though in different ways. All the two peoms are, is a mere reflection of death. The two people involved in the poems, the boy and the lover are kept completly anonymus. Another thing that the poems both share, is their sad, depressin and desolant endings.
The contrasts between "White Roses" and "Stop all the Clocks" are that their rhyme schemes are different. "White Roses" is written in second person narrative, where-as "Stop all the Clocks" is written in first person narrative. "Stop all the Clocks" is also a more personal poem where as "White Roses" is more vauge and abstract. More objective . "White Roses" is about a child, who was not close to the poet, dying. "Stop all the Clocks" is a poem all about grieving and mourning for a lover, a partner. It is about the complete and utter outpouring of grief. "White Roses" is simply a reflection of death.
The poem I prefer is "Stop all the Clocks", because I feel it is a more significant poem than "White Roses" simply because it is a more personal poem. A poem full of heartache, grief and despair that someone the poet truly loved has gone forever. I feel it is a more realistic poem. Although "White Roses" is a sad poem, "Stop all the Clocks" is a sadder poem. Full of an overwhelming sense of grief and of loss.
