Comparing 'The River' by C.H. Sorely and 'Fresh Water' by Andrew Motion.

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Comparing ‘The River’ by C.H. Sorely and ‘Fresh Water’ by Andrew Motion.

  These two poems were written about ninety years apart, Charles Hamilton Sorely wrote The River in 1913 and in the nineteen nineties Andrew Motion (Poet Laureate) wrote Fresh Water. Both poems are about rivers, which isn’t exactly surprising, but also much more. Poetry as a genre is generally used to say something else, an ulterior message; poetry is used as a metaphor, and these poems are no exception.

 Continually moving forwards, some times speeding up, some times slacking, meandering gently or going through a rough patch. Its course unchangeable and inevitable, eventually coming to an end and becoming something bigger…

 Sorely’s poem The River is set at the same time it was written in nineteen thirteen. In brief it describes the constant fore coming, inevitable darkness of the first world war, the poet would have seen the political situation of Europe at the time and had realised there was going to be a momentous war.

 Fresh Water is set throughout the poet’s life. He uses his experiences to describe the story of another, to set the scene for a bigger picture.

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The River’s protagonist is a young man, looking into the not so distant future and predicting the death of not only his self but also civilisation as a whole. The poem is semi-autobiographical as the poet could see death in the Great War was not only the fate of his character but his own as well.

 Fresh water is also semi-autobiographical, the author appears in every part of the poem but the purpose of this verse is not to tell his story but a story that runs parallel to his own, that of Ruth Haddon who died in ...

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