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poetry; Blake was romantic poet while Hopkins was a Victorian. However, it is
well known that both poets used elements of nature to express religious varying
comment on Gods relationship with humanity. This paper will attempt to show the
precedence of nature in the two famous poems; spring and fall by Hopkins and
Blakes poem The sick Rose. To achieve this, I will analyze the poems
In spring and fall, Hopkins is addressing Margaret, a young girl who is grieving
because the trees in the Goldengrove forest have lost all their leaves and are dying
off (What, don't you cry every year when the leaves fall off the trees?).Hopkins
then tells Margaret that she will grow wiser as she grow older and realize that
grieving for the forest is mourning her own mortality because humans will also
In this poem Hopkins uses a sprung rhythm, although it is lyrical where each line
has four beats and the lines form couplets. Hopkins uses a regular rhyme scheme in
the first six lines, but in lines 7-9 he shifts to three lines rhyming in a row. Here the
speaker shifts so that emphasis is placed on the message that Margaret will
An important element in spring and Fall is the symbolism and imagery used by
Hopkins. Firstly, right from the title there is a sense that the speaker intends to use
juxtaposition in the poem. In fact, assuming that the seasons are a representation of
winter as middle age then Fall would obviously represent the old age or nearing
death. In essence, Margaret is experiencing spring but soon she will get wiser as
Fall dawns upon her. In the second line, Hopkins uses the word unleaving of the
tree leaves to imply that the poem is set in autumn. The word WanWood in line 8
is also symbolic; in fact Hopkins makes up WanWood from the two distict words
Wan and wood. And since Wan is another way of saying sickly or pale, then
In this poem William Blake is addressing a Sick rose. The speaker tells us
that the roses life has been destroyed by an the dark secret Love of an
invisible worm which has stolen into its bed in a howling storm
The first element that Blake uses in this poem is the apostrophe
whereby in the first line he addresses the sick rose as "O rose. Symbolism is
evident right from the second line where Blake speaks of the "invisible worm.
speaks of "howling storm," in line four, giving the poem a rather ominous
tone. Again, in Line 5 Bed," refers to the land in which the rose is growing
.Blake also personifies the worm in lines 7 and 8 when he remarks that it
destroys with love. Figuratively, the rose could be a metaphor for a prostitute and
century London, a time when both prostitution and syphilis were running rampant in
the city, such an inference makes sense. Syphilis often went undetected, much like
the unseen worm that has infected the rose. Furthermore, roses have thorns while
they are visibly beautiful, they are by no means docile. Prostitutes, however
In the second stanza, the bed of crimson joy has dual meaning. Literally,
a color often associated with lust, infidelity, and passion, so while it literally refers to
adulterous, and passionate nature of a prostitutes line of work. The words his dark
secret love incorporate yet again the Romantic fascination with mystery and the
unknown. Furthermore, the use of the particle his implies that the source of the
infection is male. This makes it all the more likely that the poem is a reference to
prostitution since a prostitute would contract syphilis from a male client. Men
dark love, and a man would never openly advertise the fact that he sought the
company of a prostitute, thus the love is both dark and secret. Once infected with
the disease, a prostitute would likely perish from syphilis, making the last two lines
his dark secret love/ does thy life destroy all the more pertinent.
Comparison
In the poem we see that the autor asks a question to a child called
reflect is that the little girl is saddened because winter has come
and the forest is dying, and as she is still a child she doesnt
worried about the leaves and about the things of man: (the
to experience it. Then, her father tells to her daughter that as soon
as she gets older she will continue to experience such griefs but not
daughter the lesson of life. What is reflected is that people are born
to die and that when she would have more knowledge, then she
would still experience more horrible things like death. But now she
The poem is called "The Sick Rose" so it's no surprise that nature
figures prominently into it. But this poem isn't just about a dying
flower. It's about a weird, almost magical wormit can fly after all
that destroys the flower. Sure we all know about the circle of life
and how bugs eat plants etc., but there's something more sinister
His use of imagery and his sympathetic tone allows the readers to