In Rossetti 's poetry the themes Love, death and religious belief are inseparable. This can be seen through three key poems. The poem 'A Smile and a Sigh ' expresses different aspects of love and it could be suggested that it demonstrates different viewpoints of love. This wouldn 't be unexpected as Rossetti experienced different relationships from heartbreak/loneliness and unwanted love. In addition, Rossetti demonstrates the theme of religious belief through the poem 'Up-Hill ' where Rossetti proclaimed that she (or others) relied on religion. Rossetti talking about this in her poems wouldn 't be uncommon as she grew up in an era where religion was a huge part of peoples ' lives and many devoted themselves to god. Finally, the poem 'Sweet Death ' represents the theme of death by describing the way people lose their beauty and it being a sign that they are aging and close to death.
In the poem 'A Smile and a Sigh ', Rossetti uses two stanzas that could demonstrate the different viewpoints of love or that love has two different side to it. Rossetti uses sibilance on the first line which can be seen through the quotation 'smile because the nights are short '. Using sibilance demonstrates the sounds that are heard within a relationship and the 's ' sound could convey the whispers of 'sweet nothings '. The adjective 'short ' within the phrase maybe referring to the dark and lonely times that are felt during the night and the shorter the nights are, the less amount of
Both William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” and Walt Whitman’s “A child said, What is the grass?” are very similar in both their perspective on death, writing style, and elements of Romanticism. In “Thanatopsis”, Bryant attempts to soothe readers’ concerns related to death while conveying his perspective on the topic by stating, “All that breathe / Will share thy destiny” (Bryant 60-61). The “destiny” Bryant is referring to is death, and he tells readers that death is just part of the static cycle of life. One should embrace and accept death, which has no bias and is inevitable regardless of social status or age.
Love and Death Alway Go Together “ Love is the only force capable of turning an enemy into a friend”-Martin Luther King Jr.. This quote goes with the story Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, because in the end love is what brings peace along with death to the households of the Capulet's and Montague's. William Shakespeare is regarded as one of the best writers of all time because of how he was able to put tragedy, comedy, and love all together in one story.
Edgar Allan Poe, an eerie author, was always writing dark stories and poems, which was unusual for the time period he wrote in. During his writing career he wrote many stories that were closely related to his life, especially tragic love stories. When many of his girlfriends and family died, he went mad, drank a lot and eventually died. After reading Poe’s stories that include topics like people in love who pass, dying from tuberculosis and being caught between rationality and irrationality, it is evident that he drew from his own life as inspiration. Poe was constantly devastated by his significant other dying and this happens in lots of his stories and poems too. For example, in The Bridal Ballad, it says “ And My Lord he loves me well.”
Love as a theme of the poems actually took a very important place in the collection. These love poems often contain different emotions. There are poems expressing the author fall in love with someone or poems expressing painful feelings about missing someone else. One interesting thing I noticed is that the
The paintings consisted of a skeletal or deathly figure, wooing a young maiden. The paintings were supposed to resemble humans fatal attractions. The art became very popular and even had plays and songs based on it. One song, titled “Death and the Maiden” by Franz Schubert, speaks of Death calling himself “Friend” and the maiden begging him not to touch her. Comparing these subjects of the painting to the characters of the story shows a resemblance between the ghastly figure of Friend and death, and between Connie and the Maiden with Connie constantly checking herself in mirrors.
Love is an impossible quest filled with turmoil and unwarranted aggression. An intangible entity that most rational beings would agree with. However, reaching a near state of nirvana with another through love is such a beautiful and fulfilling emotion that it is almost worth it. The poems written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, and Christina Rossetti all capitalize on showing how beautiful and powerful love is; this is made possible through the strong use of visual imagery, metaphors, and irony.
Death's tendency to both overestimate and undervalue humanity was represented. He could not understand how anything could be beautiful and revolting. He wanted to understand why humankind is so contradictory. Humans have shown the capacity to discover happiness in unexpected places, even during some of history's worst periods. Death, however, shows his perplexity about humanity's nature in the quote because people both overestimate and underestimate their capabilities.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (TGG) released in 1925, during the Jazz Age, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets From The Portuguese (STFP) published in 1850 during the Victorian Age are reflective of the authors context and era. They explore the changing nature of relationships through the exploration of superficial love and how mutual love and respect unite people. Both authors discuss the importance of honesty and respect in relationships for them to thrive. The exploration of superficial love is a key idea in TGG and Barrett Browning’s suite of sonnets, SFTP, written to her lover Robert Browning.
People in Italy began to be interested in death after so many people had died. People were negative and believed the world would end, but they also they began to experience happiness as they tried to enjoy the rest of their lives. Writers and artists during this time expressed themselves pessimistically but also described things in life that made them happy. According to plaza.ufl.edu “The most obvious cultural influences were seen in the art and literature of this period. In 14th century Europe, artistic and literary expression took on a dark humor and tone in order to cope with the tragedy...
Death, Death, and More Death The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor is a story about death. A family is killed by a fugitive they call the “misfit”. In another short story by Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour,” death is also apparent.
Vision a motionless body lying on their deathbed. Their souls is departing from the decaying bones left on the earth. Death is nothing to be afraid of because it is a way of life. Death remains a great mystery and no one can figure it out or predict when the time will come to die. When death is mention, one might think about physical death.
Whitman and Dickinson share the theme of death in their work, while Whitman decides to speak of death in a more realistic point of view, Dickinson speaks of the theme in a more conceptual one. In Whitman’s poems, he likes to have a more empathic view of individuals and their ways of living. For example, in Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, the poet talks about not just of himself, but all human beings, and of how mankind works into the world and the life of it. Even though the poem mostly talks about life and the happiness of it, Whitman describes also that life itself has its ending, and that is the theme of death. For Dickinson, she is the complete opposite of happiness.
“Baby Lies So Fast Asleep” is a short poem in which a mother explains to her surviving child the death of her baby. In keeping with Rossetti’s themes, the mother in the poem uses sleep as a gentler euphemism in place of death. The poem starts off on a melancholy tone, with the death of being an inescapable truth. However, the views of death and the afterlife come soon after with the question in lines
Emily Dickinson had multiple views on death. At first she was in love with the peaceful, gentle side of death, but that all changed when she lost her everything, her parents to death. The significance is that Romanticism is a diverse thing and it can be shaped a formed to the writers likings, but it will only have an effect if the reader interprets the poem in the same
However, for Poe, death is poetical. And not just any death, but rather the death of a beautiful woman— by beautiful we will assume he refers to the women he admires, the women he found beautiful on the inside, because death is also the end of all external appearances. In any case, if one is familiar with Poe’s style, we will know that the death motif was nothing new in his stories, neither was the death of his female characters. Nevertheless, to understand why he had the audacity of presenting the death of a woman as something poetical, it is necessary to know more about his personal life.