English Literature Poetry Analysis Journal Entries
I was deeply impressed by the poem of Robert Burns - "To a mouse". Even though it is written in Old English, the underlying idea is very simple and obvious. It is amazing, how the same idea that the poet tried to put forward is still of current interest, although the poem was written some 200 years ago. Robert Burns describes the day when he was working in his field and accidentally turned up a mouse's nest. Through the rest of the text he metaphorically tells the reader how people destroy the habitats of animals, how the kill them, and how scared are animals of us. An idea that humane, enclosed in a brilliant and beautiful frame of poetry, is what makes "To a mouse" so moving and makes us reflect about how humanity treats nature.
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth is one of the type of poems that give you the creeps of admiration. Never have I been so deeply affected by a poem, never have I ever felt such overwhelming euphoria, and never has any poem conjured up so vivid dreams in my head. Never, until I read this poem. William Wordsworth has a very vigorous writing style; his words touch the most delicate strings of your soul. I could not resist but loop the audio version of the poem, and I listened to it until I learned it by heart.
They say that brevity is the soul of wit. This may not be true in all cases, yet I am convinced, that a poem has to be laconic to leave a reader with the maximum impression. Act I Scene I of Manfred by Lord Byron was, unfortunately, too challenging to read and comprehend. And, in fact, it was not so much of a revelation to me. I did not like the writing style, for it is too verbose, and unlike the previous poem, it is too down-to-earth and tuneless. It can be best characterized as deeply philosophical, and therefore, hard to read. It kept me focused and attentive while I read it, but the aesthetic pleasure it gave me proved not worth my time.
“Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats kept me mesmerized even when I finished reading it. Explaining the symbolism of the poem is beyond the scope of this response, and, in fact, it is nearly
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impossible to express in words all the emotions that it gave me. The writing style is not vigorous, the poem is quite long, and still, these minutiae do not overshadow its virtues. It projected me to medieval England; intoxicated by the poet's dreams, I imagined I was a nightingale, free of human concerns of poverty, life, and death. The poem is especially rich in allusions; once you unravel the hidden meanings of the words, you feel connected with the author, at a distance of two centuries. Poetry does defy death and time. I believe, the name of the poem does not …
