“Some stir up coals and watch the Vestal fire,” This is a parody of fire, as a normal fire should be contained in a house yet this fire has taken over the whole of London. Later on in that verse it talks of the struggle in order to get out of the way of the fire and no matter which way the fleeing people turn they cannot “shun” the fire. “And, while through the burning Lab’rinths they retire, with loathing eyes repeat what they should shun.” The author compares the blazing streets of London to a Labyrinth. This elevates the language by using classical allusion, this way he implies that this great fire of London is on a par with the classical mythological tragedies.
In the penultimate verse it talks of how the people give up the fight against the fire. The author gets this point across by dehumanising the people comparing them to herded livestock. “The most in fields, like herded beasts lie down”. This emphasises just how helpless these people are in the hands of the fire. In the final verse the writer really achieves pathos when he arouses a great feeling of pity and sorrow in the reader. “An Infant, waking, to paps would press, and meets instead of milk a falling tear.” This just presents a final image of sadness of a mother feeding her child and as she cries because of the sadness around her, her tears role down her face then onto her chest and down her breast and instead of milk the baby gets a mouthful of the mother’s tears.
The second poem deals with a much more trivial personal tragedy but talks about it using the same type of elevated language as Dryden’s poem. This poem uses iambic tetrameter but lines three and six are iambic trimetre. This variation forces a faster reading.
Throughout the poem he praises this cat comparing it to a “Nymph” and talking of it in such a way as to emphasize the looks of this cat. The author personifies the cat as being the “Demurest” and “pensive”. He also goes into great detail about its looks “The velvet of her paws” and it talks of her “emerald eyes”. All this personification is to builds up the character of the cat and sets a pleasant scene at the start of the poem.
The author also uses quite a lot of hyperbole in order to set a quite elevated image in the readers head. He compares the little goldfish bowl to a “lake”. The writer also uses hyperbole to describe the fish. “Two angel forms were seen to glide,” this technique is used because it represents the fish’s temptation and the irony that these two angel forms are not really angels as they present a temptation to the cat that inevitably costs the cat its life. Once more the author vividly describes the colours which catch the fishes eye again this symbolises the temptation. The writer achieves bathos when after he has hyped, and personified the cat, he goes and makes it clear what exactly is going on, “What cat’s averse to fish?”
When the cat swoops for the fish and slips in it personifies fate as being “Malignant”. Meaning that fate did not care that the cat was going to die and even quite enjoyed the overconfident cat fall in. Gray talks of the cat emerging from the water eight times which corresponds with the cat’s nine lives as it died on its ninth submersion under the water so in effect it used its nine lives. Again the mock heroism comes out when Gray talks of the cat mewing to, “ev’ry watery God.”
In the last verse the moral of the story is explained. It is aimed at beautiful women and it says that if you are going to be bold be careful because just because you can see something it does not mean that you can have it and not everything is what it is cracked up to be. “ye Beauties… one false step ne’er retriev’d and be with caution bold…Nor all, that glisters gold.” This draws a parallel with beautiful women in life that think that they can have anything.
Both poems talk about a tragedy whether it is big and serious and use legitimately elevated language or whether it talks about a much smaller much more personal tragedy that uses mock heroic language. The first poem tells the story and vividly describes the sadness and feelings of the people involved in the fire. Whereas the second poem is treated with a bit more levity and light-heartedness causing the reader to read it in a more up-beat, lively manner. Especially in the second poem there seems to be a lot more hyperbole in order to build up the events leading up to the drowning and it is told almost like a fable where you know what is going to happen and what the cat should no do yet it still happens and that is why the reader does not take it as seriously as the first poem. The second poem has a element of dramatic irony as the reader can guess that the cat is going to slip into the bowl but obviously the cat does not. A key point in both the poems is that the first poem you can picture happening and there is no trace of humour in it whilst in the second poem you can imagine a cat trying to catch fish by sweeping its paw in the surface of the water than accidentally falling in and there is an element of humour there. Moreover you can empathize with the people in the burning city yet you cannot empathize with the cat. This causes you take the first poem a lot more seriously.