Literary Characteristics Of Poems: When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be, When I Was One And Twenty And To His Coy Mistress

1. When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be by John Keats

1. The form

• Language figure of speech

Imagery:

The use of imagery makes the readers understand the writer’s feelings, emotions or ideas. Keats has used images of sight such as, “fair creature” “wide world” “night’s starred face” and “high-pilèd books, in character.”

Simile:

A simile is a device used to compare two different objects to understand meanings by comparing these object’s qualities. Keats has used similes in the third and fourth lines to compare wheat grains to language or literature, “Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain”.

Personification:

Personification is to give human characteristics to non-human things. The first example is seen in the eighth line of the poem, “Their shadows with the magic hand of chance” as if the chance is human with magical hands. Another example is in the fourth line, “When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,” as if the night is a human that has a starry.

2. The contents

• Ideas

Representative of Life and Death/ fear of death

• Topics issues

Poetry, love and time.

• Messages

The poem centers on a speaker’s anxiety about dying before being able to achieve his or her aspirations as a poet. What makes the poem especially tragic and moving is that Keats died of tuberculosis only three years after writing it, at the young age of 25. In such moments, the speaker feels as if love and fame do not matter, or perhaps are impossible in the face of death.

3. The Poets

• Life

John Keats ( 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25.

Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers.

• Philosophical Ideas

This poem is not merely concerned with being dead, but with the possibility of not being alive—and therefore losing the opportunity to experience the creative possibilities of the world.

• Literary Movement

Romanticism

• Problems Being Faced

He lost her mother at the age of 12, that’s make him more afraid of dying and left his lovers.

4. The Real Setting

• Political

Keats lived during the peak of the Industrial Revolution in England

• Social

Keats lived during when factors like poverty and urbanization were contributing to mass health crises.

2. When I Was One And Twenty By A.E. Houseman

1. The Forms

• Literary Device & Languages Structures Figure Of Speeches

• Repetition: “when I was one and twenty”. It is the repetition of line.
• Alliteration: “…Tis true…” there is the repetition of sound “T” in the same line .
• Symbolic: Crowns, pounds, guineas = money
• Pearls, rubies = Jewelry
• Imagery: Auditory Imagery “ I heard wise man …”

2. The Contents

• Ideas

Youth, Naivety, and Experience

• Topics

Love and Pain

• Messages

When we were on those age, what is important for ourselves is Love. Not money, jewelry or any other expensive stuff. Cause Love can not buy by anything but affection. Advice given to a youth is a notice in the form of a warning, which makes the poem’s imagery and emotions more immediate. A wise person can be thought to be one who has already experienced the pain of a lost or unrequited love. The inherent message in the warning is that though you need money to buy food and shelter.

3. The Poets

• Life

Alfred Edward Housman, better known as A. E. Housman, was born on 26 march 1859 in Bromsgove, United kingdom and died on april 30, 1936 in Cambridge, United Kingdom.He was an English classical scholar and poet regarded as one of the greatest scholars of all time and one of the foremost classicists of his age.

• Literary Movement

Romantic Pessimism

• Problems Being Faced

His pessimism is often attributed to the untimely death of his mother and his feeling is fulfill with sadness and loneliness in his life was the fact that he was homosexual and deeply in love with a man who could not reciprocate his feelings

4. The Real Setting

• Political

He lived in early 20th-century English composers both before and after the First World War.

• Social

In those era, homosexual is not allowed. People who had those divergence be excommunicated.

3. To His Coy Mistress By Andrew Marvell

1. The Forms

• Literary Devices & Languages Structures Fig Of Speeches

1. Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line such as the sound of /ou/ in “And you should, if you please, refuse”.
2. Imagery: Imagery is used to make the readers perceive things with their five senses. For example, “Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side”; “Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near”; “Deserts of vast eternity” and “then worms shall try that long-preserved virginity”.
3. Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound of /l/ in “And while thy willing soul transpires”.
4. Hyperbole: Hyperbole is a device used to exaggerate a statement for the sake of emphasis. The poet has used hyperbole in the fifteenth line, “Two hundred to adore each breast.”
5. Simile: There is only one simile used in this poem. In the line thirty-four “Sits on thy skin like morning dew” the poet compares woman’s youthful skin to morning dew.

2. The Contents

• Ideas

The speaker is not interested in beauty; all that he wants is love and sex.

• Topics

Time, sex, mortality, freedom, and confinement.

• Messages

Mortality to emphasize how people should utilize every opportunity they have now. Ultimately, every one will die and if he or she will not have done what is required of themselves.

3. The Poets

• Life

August 18, 1678, London), English poet whose political reputation overshadowed that of his poetry until the 20th century. He is now considered to be one of the best Metaphysical poets. Marvell was educated at Hull grammar school and Trinity College, Cambridge, taking a B.A. in 1639. His father’s death in 1641 may have ended Marvell’s promising academic career. He was abroad for at least five years (1642–46), presumably as a tutor. In 1651–52 he was tutor to Mary, daughter of Lord Fairfax, the Parliamentary general, at Nun Appleton, Yorkshire, during which time he probably wrote his notable poems “Upon Appleton House” and “The Garden” as well as his series of Mower poems.

• Literary Movement

Metaphysical poets.

4. The Real Setting

• Political

After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, Marvell turned to political verse satires—the most notable was The Last Instructions to a Painter, against Lord Clarendon, Charles’s lord chancellor—and prose political satire, notably The Rehearsal Transpros’d (1672–73). Marvell is also said to have interceded on behalf of Milton to have him freed from prison in 1660. He wrote a commendatory poem for the second edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost. His political writings favoured the toleration of religious dissent and attacked the abuse of monarchical power.