The Tyger by William Blake is taken from The Songs of Experience. The tiger itself is a symbol for the fierce forces in the soul that are necessary to break the bonds of experience. The tiger also stands for a divine spirit that will not be subdued by restrictions, but will arise against established rules and conventions.
The Soldier is a sonnet in which Brooke glorifies England during the First World War. He speaks in the guise of an English soldier as he is leaving home to go to war. The poem represents the patriotic ideals that characterized pre-war England. It portrays death for one’s country as a noble end and England as the noblest country for which to die.
The poem Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey is generally known as Tintern Abbey written in 1798 by the father of Romanticism William Wordsworth. Tintern Abbey is one of the triumphs of Wordsworth's genius. It may he called a condensed spiritual autobiography of the poet. It deals with the subjective experiences of the poet, and traces the growth of his mind through different periods of his life. Nature and its influence on the poet in various stage forms the main theme of the poem. The poem deal with the influence of Nature on the boy, the growing youth, and the man. The poet has expressed his tender feeling towards nature.
In this poem Keats describes the season of Autumn. The ode is an address to the season. It is the season of the mist and in this season fruits is ripened on the collaboration with the Sun. Autumn loads the vines with grapes. There are apple trees near the moss growth cottage. The season fills the apples with juice. The hazel-shells also grow plumb. These are mellowed. The Sun and the autumn help the flowers of the summer to continue. The bees are humming on these flowers.
A Far Cry from Africa by Derek Walcott deals with the theme of split identity and anxiety caused by it in the face of the struggle in which the poet could side with neither party. It is, in short, about the poet’s ambivalent feelings towards the Kenyan terrorists and the counter-terrorist white colonial government, both of which were 'inhuman', during the independence struggle of the country in the 1950s. The persona, probably the poet himself, can take favor of none of them since both bloods circulate along his veins.
When the narrator was young, he would dance around with his father. He would put his feet on top of his father's. He would smell the whiskey on his father’s breath. It had an unpleasant feeling of loss of balance. But he would continue with great determination in spite of difficulties. Such dancing to a waltz was not easy.
Ted Hughes' poem 'Hawk Roosting' on its literal level of meaning is an expression of a bird of prey, the hawk, which is sitting on a tree and meditating about its power of destruction, its ability to suppress change, and its conceited arrogance and superiority.
The poem Harlem by Langston Hughes reflects the post-World War II mood of many African Americans. The Great Depression was over, the war was over, but for African Americans the dream, whatever particular form it took, was still being deferred. Whether one’s dream is as mundane as hitting the numbers or as noble as hoping to see one’s children reared properly, Langston Hughes takes them all seriously; he takes the deferral of each dream to heart.
The poem Punishment by Seamus Heaney was inspired by the discovery of a dead body of a young girl who was believed to be killed on the charge of adultery. Heaney takes this discovery as an ancient example of brutality and links it with the modern form of brutality which is evident of Irish rebel's killing of Irish girls who marry British soldiers.
A Prayer for My Daughter by William Butler Yeats opens with an image of the newborn child sleeping in a cradle. A storm is raging with great fury outside his residence. A great gloom is on Yeats’ mind and is consumed with anxiety as to how to protect his child from the tide of hard times ahead. The poet keeps walking and praying for the young child and as he does so he is in a state of reverie. He feels a kind of gloom and worry about the future of his daughter.