The idea and study of the passing if time and shortness of life is a common theme in poetry. Compare the different thoughts and emotions expressed by various poets on this subject.

Herrick and Herbert expressed there views very differently. This could be due to many reasons. In Daffadils Herrick leans towards the shortness of life by resembling it to something that symbolizes beauty such as daffodils. He does not say that life is bad he is saying that someday everything will die but life is good during the process, “Faire Daffodils”.  On the other hand Herbert tends to comprehend that life is simple, that there is no point to life as all you do is live then die. Although from reading the poem it is in part optimistic and pessimistic. I can tell that he tends to begin each verse with something pleasant which can be seen as the beginning of life, “Sweet spring”, but then he tends to change and have a darker view as he gets towards the end of the verse, “and all must die”. Herbert might have written like this as, he may have been angered as he was reaching old age and death, he felt that his life had passed by to fast, while writing this poem.

Two poems, ‘Daffadils’ and ‘His Poetrie His Pillar’ were written by Herrcick. In His Poetrie His Pillar, Herrick expresses his views and emotions differently than he does in Daffadils. The meaning of His Poetrie His Pillar is very deep and also has an element of truth. Herrick writes as if we are forgotten about when we die, “without a fame in death”. What the quote is saying is that when we die we don’t have any ‘fame’ therefore no one will remember us. He also uses a rhetorical question to get his point, “How many lye in the vaults beneath”. This infers that Herrick presumes he will die and be forgotten. From reading the whole poem I know that he plans to use his poetry to keep his soul alive. By using the title you could say that poetry is his “Pillar”, it is what he will be remembered for. Herrick was alive around the time of Shakespeare. I think he may have written this poem as he thought he was being overshadowed by Shakespeare’s popularity with the public. This have could lead to him writing a poem about his work, being his last chance to be remembered. In Daffadils he has another pessimistic view on life. When Herrick was writing these poems he might have had a different view on life as a whole. He could have felt the same feelings, but just may have wanted to express his emotions from different aspects.  Daffadils is about life being short and His Poetrie His Pillar is about being forgotten.

The two poems I Remember I Remember and Virtue both have a similar stature. The poem I Remember I Remember is written by Thomas Hood. By reading it you can tell it is a depressive poem. The message that he is getting through to the readers, is that when you are young, you are closer to heaven as you have not sinned in the short time you have been alive. As you get older you sin, and gradually get further from heaven, “To know I’m farther off from heav’n than when I was a boy”. What Hood implies is that his life was not as virtuous as he expected. Where as in Virtue, Herbert describes life as being dull and full of Virtue and having a simple plan of going to heaven. Both poems contradict each other as they have different views. Hood writes about how his life was not as virtuous as many people expected it to be, but Herbert quotes that life is full of virtue hence the title of his poem.

The two writers Keats and Herrick have very similar styles of writing. Keats who wrote ‘When I have fears’ and Herrick who wrote, ‘ His Poetrie His Pillar’, both wrote about dreams and death in the two poems mentioned. ‘When I have Fears’ is a sonnet. The rhyming structure consists of line couplets to help the reader get the feel of Keats emotive language. The meaning that Keats is portraying in his writing is that he is afraid of dying before achieving any of his dreams, “Of the wide world I stand alone, and think/ Till love and fame to nothingness do I sink”. The structure of the poem also helps with understanding the meaning of the poem. The first four lines let us know what his dreams actually are. The writer uses language techniques such as personifications, “upon the starr’d face”. Keats uses such techniques to bring forth his point to a further degree. We know that Keats was famous for his poems and it is obvious that poetry was his dream and that he wanted to achieve the dream before he died. Keats hopes may have been to be remembered for his poetry. This is very similar to Herrick’s worries about being forgotten in which he uses poetry to support his soul.

The five poems that were studied all had the same concept, each and every one of them had the same theme running throughout the poem which was death and decay. The writers wrote in a very emotional way. This gave me the feeling that I could relate to all of them, through the use of such strong emotive language. Overall the poems all have the same outlook on life, from reading them it shows us how the writers explore a different context of life as they tend to write about the pessimistic side such as dying and life being short.