With reference to the four poems you have studied, compare and contrast the different attitudes and feelings these present about love and loss.

Poetry Coursework With reference to the four poems you have studied, compare and contrast the different attitudes and feelings these present about love and loss. Answer: For my poetry coursework I have decided to compare 4 poems. These are 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', 'Remember', 'At Castle Boterel' and 'Stop All The Clocks.' 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' can be looked at on many different levels but on a basic level it is about a knight that is infatuated with a beautiful women. 'Remember' is a poem written by a women who says when I am gone forget me and move on with your life. The poem portrays love and loss. 'At Castle Boterel is a poem about a man who is remembering his wife. This memory is triggered by his surroundings. This poem is mainly about loss. 'Stop All The Clocks' is a poem about 2 lovers who have been separated as one has died, the poem expresses how the person has to cope with the death of their partner. 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' is about how a knight is attracted to a beautiful woman that has no mercy. There are 2 poetic voices in the play these are a person observing the knight and the knight himself. In verse 1 there is a representation of winter. This is show by the quote "The sedge has wither'd from the lake" This is said by the observer. This symbolises that the knight is about to die. This image shows how winter causes death. The fact that there

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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William Shakespeare's 'Sonnet 138' - Comparing love in two poems.

Comparing the ideas of love and relationships in two poems The two poems both explore the idea of love, but in different ways. Each poet has their own idea of how their relationship should work. William Shakespeare's 'Sonnet 138' is about a couple that have a very cynical relationship. The poet is saying he knows that he is old and no longer beautiful, and that she doesn't love him as much because of this, but he doesn't tell her this. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'Sonnet' is a contrast to Sonnet 138 because this relationship is completely honest and open. The poet is writing about how important her lover is to her, even more important than God. 'Sonnet 138' written by William Shakespeare in the late 1590s, but was not published until 1609. The poem is about a man who is in a relationship with a much younger lady. Their relationship is very cynical and they are very untruthful to each other. The man knows his helper is lying to him and he thinks she doesn't realise this. The man is just as bad though, because he is also being deceitful to her. But he is happy leaving it that way. The sonnet is a Shakespearian sonnet, and is divided into 3 quatrains and a rhyming couplet. The first line of the poem gives us a faint idea of what the poem could be about, he says 'When my love swears that she is made of truth' We know from this it is a lover telling us that his partner is

  • Word count: 1665
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Comparison between Porphyria’s Lover and My Last Duchess.

Poetry Essay Comparison between Porphyria's Lover and My Last Duchess. In Porphyria's Lover, Browning sets the scene by describing the turbulent weather. The vexatious wind blowing on the trees and the moody lake is a metaphor of the Lover's mind in the poem. It symbolises the violence and anger he has within himself. The Lover is full of hatred inside. The bad weather images is like an omen or a forewarning of what's to come. Maybe it's also his insecurities and fears as well as anger - how he's waiting for Porphyria, and fears she will not come. There's a sense of changing of scene after the first four lines describing the weather, which is like an outside circumstance. Once Porphyria enters the cottage in which the lover lives, she 'shut the cold out and the storm' (Line 7). From then on, the outside world is forgotten about. We know that the lover lives in a cottage (Line 9), while Porphyria has just come from a 'gay feast'. This tells us their difference in rank, Porphyria is obviously of a high social rank than her lover. The word Porphyria is the name of a precious jewel, this suggests that she is rich. We have the sense of Porphyria, stepping down her rank when she makes the fire as this is the kind of job usually done by the servant : ' And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm ' Fire symbolises warmth and brightness

  • Word count: 3409
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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The Two Hearts She walked endlessly down the shore, the sea mocking her conscience. She hears the waves whispering

The Two Hearts She walked endlessly down the shore, the sea mocking her conscience. She hears the waves whispering its verdict that she's wrong. She cannot cry any more for the sorrow she feels is too profound, too deep. She looks up and sees the scattered clouds partially dim the littered stars, tormenting the knowledge that she could never have the love that she had and lost. She sees the crescent moon staring down at her with pity, reminding her of the warmth and gentle smile on the face she knows she can't find in anyone's anymore. She turns her face away from that harsh reality, only to be greeted by a cold breeze that seemed like a blow to her already bruised self. Shivering, she pulls her jacket tighter around herself. In the battle between the conscience and the heart, she fears that it was her who gave the victory over to conscience. And now she must bear the guilt brought by her actions. She has come to accept that destiny for she knows that it is what she deserves for hurting the one that matters to her the most. "Hollow", she tells herself. "Yes, that's what I am and what I will be for the rest of my life. For I am a neglecter of the love that was in the palm of my hands and now gone, because I let it slip from my fingers." She continues her pace and with every step, the sand sinking beneath her feet, filling the spaces between her toes. The footprints behind,

  • Word count: 1329
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is a pastoral poem, a poetic kind that concerns itself with the simple life of country folk and describes that life in stylized, idealized terms

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) Christopher Marlowe was born in 1564, the year of William Shakespeare's birth. He is the eldest son of a shoemaker. At 23, he went to London and became one of the most important dramatist before William Shakespeare. Marlowe worked on tragedy and he wrote four important plays developing tragedy as a dramatic form. Being an atheist, he was arrested for an unknown offense. Marlowe was killed in 1593 in a tavern fight. He and his friend argued over the bill and then he was killed by his friend with a knife. Some say that it may be an assassination. Marlowe died at the age of twenty-nine, and it is interesting that at this time Shakespeare was just beginning his dramatic career. Marlowe was the first one to use blank verse that encourage Shakespeare to try it. Marlowe was also the first to write a tragedy in English, again paving the way for Shakespeare. Paraphrase Come live with me and be my love And we will all the pleasure prove That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods, or steepy mountain yields. Come live with me and be my love. We will try all the pleasure offered by valleys, roves, woods and mountains. And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, By shadow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. I want us to sit upon the rocks with shallow rivers falling under our feet, seeing those

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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“Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part” by Michael Drayton, “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” by William Shakespeare and “Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Geraldine Cabañero Word count: 2737 A comparison of "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part" by Michael Drayton, "That time of year thou mayst in me behold" by William Shakespeare and "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink" by Edna St. Vincent Millay Sonnets are fourteen lined poems that follow an iambic pentameter and have a strict rhyming scheme. There are two types of rhyming patterns used in sonnets, Petrarchan and Shakespearean, each is named after the famous sonneteer that made these patterns their trademark. I have chosen one Shakespearean sonnet and another sonnet written by Michael Drayton, both are pre-1900 texts. I chose these two sonnets because they both share the theme of separation."That time of year thou mayst in me behold" by William Shakespeare compares well with Michael Drayton's "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part", as they both use imagery to convey their feelings about the love in their relationships. Shakespeare is thought to be the greatest sonneteer of all time, in this sonnet he is asking his lover to make the most of their relationship now as when he grows too old she won't love him anymore and will leave. He uses nature to portray how he is maturing for example he compares himself to autumn and the falling leaves. Drayton's sonnet is about the end of a relationship and what his feelings are about it. Unlike

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Comparisons of 'Porphyria's lover' and 'My last Dutchess'.

Comparisons of poems (By Robert Browning) Both poems involve a possessed man with a craze for having absolute power over a woman. His madness in both poems drive him to insanity in which the only way he can see out of it is to kill his lover. Browning tried to break down the boundaries of social class in the Victorian times by integrating the breakdown into his poems. Both these poems involve social hostility, especially in "Porphyria's Lover." In "My Last Duchess," the boundaries of class between men and women are tested as the Duke drives for total control over his Duchess and eventually gets it when she's killed. "Porphyria's Lover," is a description of the inconvenience of the Victorian rules and regulations about class mixing. The comparison is that Porphyria wouldn't allow herself to be with the man she loved and the Duke thought that because of his class, he was better than his wife and should control her. The boundaries of social class drove both men in the poems to insanity and hysteria as each man was either, as he thought, more important or less important than the woman he loved. Both the poems are of a very intimate nature and "Porphyria's Lover," especially, would have been frowned upon by the people of the time. "Porphyria's Lover" would have, in the Victorian times seemed quite pornographic. "And her smooth white shoulder bare," "she put my arms

  • Word count: 867
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Poetry Comparison on 'The Flea', and 'To his Coy Mistress'.

Poetry Comparisons I would firstly like to begin on 'The Flea'. This poem is about a man that is trying to persuade a woman to have sex with him, by symbolically using a flea. The content of the poem is very much the same throughout the whole of the poem. In the first stanza, the poet is basically talking about how the flea represents their coming together and in the last two stanza's the poet tries to then persuade the woman to have sex by using different tactic's like guilt etc. To the end of the second stanza the woman whom is being seduced, kills the flea and is clearly stating that she will not go to bed with the poet. Following this he tries to tell her that it is cruel and unjust and a sin against God, and what she has done is wrong and there is also nothing wrong with sex before marriage. The poem is set in the 17th century and I think the poet feels very strongly about what he is saying, and takes it very seriously. I also think that the poem works very well with its comparison to the flea, and I think that the author has been very clever in what he has said. Secondly, I would like to talk about 'To his Coy Mistress'. This poem is very much the same as 'The Flea' and has many similarities. Again the poem is based upon a man trying to get a woman to go to bed with him, and is too set in the 17th century. The poem is split into three stanzas and each of them

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Compare the language and form used to express lost love in 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' by Keats and 'When We Two Parted' by Byron. Explore a wider selection of poems on this theme and connect and compare them with those of Keats and Byron.

Compare the language and form used to express lost love in 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' by Keats and 'When We Two Parted' by Byron. Explore a wider selection of poems on this theme and connect and compare them with those of Keats and Byron. I intend to compare, 'When We Two Parted', a romantic poem by Lord Byron and 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', also a romantic theme but a ballad by John Keats. In 'When We Two Parted' the poem tells of a loving relationship which has ended, when one of the partner's feelings for the other waned. It expresses the emotions of resentment, betrayal, sorrow and anguish which are those sentiments which are often felt by the one in the relationship who has been left. It is personal to the poet and written to his lost love. The poem by John Keats 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' has a similar message because it tells of a breakdown in a relationship; it is written as a ballad. It is a romantic story set in times past. It tells of the heartless reactions of a lady to her love-lorn knight. It is an allegory, perhaps written by the poet after he had been let down by his true love. In both poems a story is told in stages, represented in each stanza. Love is expressed in each poem by a feeling of pain and despair at its loss. The authors use expressive language to portray their pain and anguish, in 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' Keats work didn't really focus on

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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How does Matthew Arnold create a sense of foreboding in Dover Beach?

How does Matthew Arnold create a sense of foreboding in Dover Beach? The poem Dover Beach, written in 1951, by Matthew Arnold, creates a sense of foreboding in some points along the verses. One of the main themes in this poem is the fact that the poet is starting to lose his faith in God and religion, he is unsure whether to believe in him or not. This conveys a sense of chaos and turmoil. In the opening lines of the poem's first stanza, the sea is calm and peaceful, the moon is shining and the air is sweet. Matthew Arnold is looking out onto the beach at night with his new wife and describing what he sees, as we can see from this quote: "Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!". However, in the final line, Matthew Arnold disturbingly represents this scenery as the way that brings "the eternal note of sadness in" ; the emotional music, that carries with it spiritual living, brings up the bitter-sweet understanding that none of it is actually real. In the second stanza we immediately experience a tonal shift, especially in the way Arnold presents the sea. The Greek author Sophocles' idea of "the turbid ebb and flow of human misery" is introduced. We can establish that a contrast is formed to the scenery of the previous stanza. Although there is a distance in time and space: "Aegean", "northern sea", the general feeling of suspicion remains. In the third stanza,

  • Word count: 598
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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