In the poem The Silken Tent the poet is comparing the tent with the woman whom the poet loved. The summer breeze stirs the tent and has dried the dew. When the dew has dried, the tent becomes tight. And all its ropes also have become loose and the ropes move easily and gently.
The speaker describes the tigers which her aunt produced by using colored threads on heavy cloth. They are set in motion. They are moving quickly by raising the front legs and jumping forwards on the back legs. In the green jungle they look bright yellow and as valuable as topazes which reveals her dream of a happier life in her needle work.
The poem Zulu Girl is a powerful yet pathetic recreation of the hardship and endurance of the South African people. Roy Campbell makes the masculinist equation i.e. male is equals to culture and female is equals to nature. It poses an immediate problem of how miserably the poor South African people are forced to work on the farm. The poem is powerful both in sound and in effect.
The Pulley by George Herbert is a religious, metaphysical poem which centers on the ‘pulley’ as a prime conceit in the poem. Herbert wants to unveil the truth that why human beings are so restless and unsatisfying despite having all the things he wants.
The speaker of this poem belongs to the lower class. When Richard Cory went to the city, the speaker and his friends would look at him. Richard Cory looked a perfect gentleman. He seemed to be enjoying all the advantages. He was well dressed. He talked very politely. But when he said good morning, he would be over-excited.
Anthem for Doomed Youth, as the title suggests, is a poem about the waste of many young men in the First World War. The word ‘anthem’ in the title, unlike a national anthem that glorifies a country, is ironical, for there is just the opposite of glory in the absurd death of younger people shooting each other for nothing. The youth in the poem is doomed less by other (which the poem doesn’t mention) than by his own decision to join the battle.
The first stanza of the poem describes the world of the living people. The poet addresses her dearest one and asks him not to sing sad songs for her when she is dead. She does not want others to plant roses or shady cypress tree at her tomb. She likes her tomb with green grass associated with showers and dewdrops.
The speaker woke up in the dark night and wanted to tell somebody about his dream. He addressed the darkness as his old friend and started to describe it as he had done before. He said that when he was sleeping a vision left its seeds and it was deeply rooted in his brain. He could still realize the vision, but had no words to express it.
The first stanza of the poem Break, Break, Break, by Alfred Lord Tennyson presents the picture of the poet sitting near his friend's grave on the sea-beach as he says “Break Break, Break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me”.
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is a narrative of a young man who is bereaved by the death of the woman he loved. He compulsorily constructs self-destructive meaning around a raven’s repetition of the word 'Nevermore', until he finally despairs of being reunited with his beloved Lenore in another world. Just because of the nightmarish effect, the poem cannot be called an elegy. In fact, 'The Raven' is a ballad of eighteen six-line stanzas with decidedly emphatic meter and rhymes.