My first poem of comparison is ‘My Last Duchess’. Firstly, the Duke in question during this poem lived in the 16th century at the time of the Renaissance. In ‘My Last Duchess’, one man has the power of speech to emphasise arrogance. The rhythm of the poem is simply broken by exclamations marks and questions used by the author to covey the Dukes mind, and illustrates to me that he must ponder over his duchess’s death. Also, his variety in punctuation adds excitement and at times throughout the poem quickens the pace, also making run on lines effective because of the added strength and urgency they give to a poem. The rhyme scheme of ‘My Last Duchess’ is AB, AB, CC, AD. The language of the poem is very old and words such as “durst” meaning dare, support my view of the old language used in the poem. In addition, similes and metaphors are used throughout the poem. Examples of both are “looking as if she were alive” and “my gift of a nine hundred years old name”. The poet takes on a persona (role taken on by poet) for characterisation of the speaker and to help to familiarize with the character, yet as we only hear him, we are inclined to partly agree with him. The tone of the poem is conversational, relaxed, calm and in my view arrogant as I mentioned above. Nonetheless, words such as selfish and egotistic in my view are appropriate. I think that the poet’s attitude to ‘My Last Duchess’ is very relaxed and laid-back, as the language shows he is not afraid to widen his use of old language and broaden his views of 16th century love and death, which he broadens professionally. The layout of ‘My Last Duchess’ is not a regular poem it has no stanzas, it is longer than traditional poems.
My second poem of comparison is ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’. Westminster Abbey is perhaps the most famous church in London. It is close to the River Thames and is extremely old. In addition to this poem of comparison, the author of ‘My Last Duchess’
Robert Browning was buried at Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey.
The author of ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’ Francis Beaumont was born in 1584 to 1616. The structure of ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’ is a no stanza poem with a typical 5-7 words in each line, and the poem is quite long, yet not as long as ‘My Last Duchess’. The rhyme scheme for ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’ is AA, BB, CC and is said to be reprieved and uses half rhyme. The language of the poem is old fashioned and such words as paint (meaning make-up) back up this point. Also, personification and half- rhyme are used, examples of personification are; “that the earth did e’er suck in” and “the bones of birth have cried”. Also, alliteration is used, example; “richest royalist seed” The subject of ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’ is death and social comment, and ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’ talks about such things like royalty and the word scythe is used, meaning cutting tool, associated to the Grim Reeper giving off an eerie feel to the poem. The tone of ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’, I would say is, sombre and pessimistic, while describing the tone of ‘My Last Duchess’ it’s more calm and relaxed.
To summarise the main points of comparison and contrast between ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’ and ‘My Last Duchess’, I would say the poems are rather similar, yet differ in length, tone, structure and rhyme scheme, and yet are similar in content, for the reason that they both are about death. Yet, ‘My Last Duchess’ is about the death of someone, while ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’ is about the death of people. In ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’, it seems to me that there is a secret message, and in my own view I think the message is, no matter how poor, rich or beautiful you are, we will all be judged the same way. The poem that appealed to me more was ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’ because it displayed more to me than just death, but it described death and judgement in a clearer way than ‘My Last Duchess’ did. My personal response to ‘My Last Duchess’ is that it is too drastic. The Duke in question kills his wife over her smiling to much which does not in anyway seem appropriate to kill anyone over, he also sees his wife as an object he feels he owns and could keep and let no one touch. This was explained well, and in my opinion, it is a good poem, but ‘Tombs of Westminster Abbey’ appealed to me more.