Reflection On Dulce Et Decorum Est

    Dulce et decorum est, a fine work done by Wilfred Owen is a poem certainly would touch the hearts of many with its melodic and meaningful rhythm of words. With the literal devices such as personifications and metaphors, he had given life to this poem with it’s own uniqueness. The emotions being expressed in this poem could be felt through every stanza. The horrid smells, the suffering pain and the horrific sights of war would be the very image in the reader’s mind and this shows how good the poem really is, as it manage to touch the heart’s of an individual, even in the coldest and darkest corners of ones heart. It is clear that war do not bring in any other than just rains of misery to all. Yes, it is an honourable deed to do by shedding blood for your country, but what about the tears of your loved ones? if you were to fall that is. By all means, we have been blessed with choices. So why not we take the good and leave the bad? Think about this army of soldiers, gambling for their lives in a hell that is on earth. If they were to survive and live till tomorrow, think about the scars that is embedded on their souls, don’t you think that their lives will never be the same again?. Wilfred Owen, had written this as he himself do not believe in wars and I believe he hoped that with his poem, he is able to open the eyes of the ‘blinds’. Blinded by the wealth life, that they hurt the only thing that made them human, their soul.

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Reflection on I Wondered Lonely As a Cloud

    I wondered lonely as a cloud is a poem written by William Wordsworth which invites us to enjoy the beauty of nature. William Wordsworth was one of the greatest poets of the romantic era. It’s a positive poem that inspires us to see the beauty of things that we may usually take advantage of; just like ‘composed upon Westminster Bridge’, in which the poet compares the beauty of London to the beauty of nature. He was born on 17 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland. The poem ‘I wondered lonely as a cloud ‘ uses an ABABCC rhyme scheme and is written in iambic tetrameter. A masterful work, this piece captures the essence of nature’s beauty.

Upon closer examination, I realized that most of this imagery is created by the many metaphors and similes Wordsworth uses. In the first line, Wordsworth says “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” This is a simile comparing the wondering of a man to a cloud drifting through the sky. I suppose the wandering cloud is lonely because there is nothing up there that high in the sky besides it. It can pass by unnoticed, touching nothing. Also, the image of a cloud brings to mind a light, carefree sort of wandering. The cloud is not bound by any obstacle, but can go wherever the whim of the wind takes it. The next line of poem says “I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils.” Here Wordsworth is using a metaphor to compare the daffodils to a crowd of people and a host of angels. The word crowd brings to mind an image of the daffodils chattering amongst one another, leaning their heads near each other in the wind. The word host makes them seem like their golden petals are shimmering like golden halos on angels. It is interesting to note that daffodils do have a circular rim of petals in the middle that could look like a halo. Later in the poem Wordsworth uses another simile, saying the dancing of daffodils in the wind is “continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way.” This line creates the image of the wind blowing the tops of random daffodils up and down in a haphazard matter, so they appear to glint momentarily as their faces catch the sun. This goes along with the next metaphor of the daffodils “tossing their heads in sprightly dance.” Comparing their movement to a dance also makes me think of swirling, swishing yellow skirts moving in harmony.

As a reader, I strongly feel that this poem is a superb piece of writing. William Wordsworth had done a fabulous job in writing this poem. He does arise reader’s interest in exploring the beauty of the nature. In the end, this piece really envelops the close bond that nature holds with man.

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Reflection's on The Eagle

Here is Alfred Tennyson’s famous poem the eagle. The Eagle is a brief but vivid glimpse into the world of this powerful bird. At first glance, the poem shows a very simple yet innovative kind of an understanding. This poem is very short but is full of meanings. In the initial three-line stanza, the eagle is pictured in a lofty position, on a crag ‘close to the sun’. Tennyson uses alliteration in the first line: ‘He clasps the crag with crooked hands’, a hard ‘c’ sound recurring and then continuing in the word ‘Close’ at the beginning of the second line. Tennyson likens the eagle to a person with the term ‘hands’. The alliteration of the phrase ‘lonely lands’ in the second line emphasizes the bird’s solitude. In the final line of the third stanza, the eagle is seen is being ‘Ring’d with the azure world”, in other words the sky, so once again his elevated position is focused on.

The opening line of the second stanza switches to the view below the mountain top in the personifying phrase ‘The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls’. The waves are reduced to the size of wrinkles, again emphasizing how far above the sea the eagle is. In the second line, the eagle is watching ‘from his mountain walls’, making his position sound secure, protected. In the final line, Tennyson uses a simile to create an image of the bird’s swift and powerful descent on his prey: ‘And like a thunderbolt he falls.’

In short, the poem tells us about a series of things an eagle does. We can see the eagle clinging through the mountains, flying to the air and surrounded by the blue sky. But, after reading through the poem, we can see that the eagle is refers to as he. Here, the poet’s, in my point of view is trying to implicate how the eagle is connected to the blue sky, the open air, and the ocean. Tennyson’s poem the Eagle has regular rhyme and uses other poetic devices like alliteration, personification and simile. The first three stanzas focus on the eagle but the final three focuses on the eagle’s world and nature. The literary devices of the poem and the powerful imaginary combination make the poem a simple poem to understand. It does not have any complication and it revolves into a world of an eagle which is unique.

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I Wandered Lonely as A Cloud - Musical

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The Eagle

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Musical Dulce et Decorum Est

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Dulce et Decorum Est

Dulce et Decorum Est
(Wilfred Owen)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
Dulce et Decorum Est
(Wilfred Owen)

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

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The Eagle

THE EAGLE

ALFRED JENNYSON: THE EAGLE

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

INTRODUCTION

“The Eagle: A Fragment” was first published in 1851, when it was added to the seventh edition of Tennyson’s Poems, which had itself been published first in 1842. As with the best of the poet’s works, this short poem displays a strong musical sense; the words chosen, such as “crag,” “azure,” and “thunderbolt” not only fit the meaning of the poem but also fit the slow musical sensibility which gives the poem its thoughtful, almost worshipful, tone.

Since the title of the poem identifies it as “a fragment,” the reader may be led to wonder if it represents a completed work and a completed idea. This uncertainty is enhanced by the question of what actually happens to the eagle at the end of the poem: does he become ill, somehow lose his ability to fly, and tumble helplessly into the sea, or is the poet using the term “he falls” figuratively, to portray the quick action of a powerful bird diving to scoop up its prey? The poem is too short, and offers too little background for us to tell if the sudden reversal in the last line is meant to be ironic (the frailty of the mighty eagle) or if it continues to indicate the eagle’s harmony with his surroundings, so that his dive is phrased in terms of gravity. Because neither explanation seems more likely than the other, and we can assume that a powerful poet like Tennyson could have leaned his audience toward one interpretation if he had wanted to, it is fair to say that “The Eagle: A Fragment” is purposely constructed so that both interpretations apply. Tennyson wants us to see the eagle as both a swift predator and a powerful bird who is nonetheless susceptible to defeat by other forces (quite possibly human).
The Eagle Summary

Line 1:The words “clasps,” “crag,” and “crooked” associate the eagle with age: “craggy,” for instance, is still used to describe a lined, age-weathered face. The hard “c” sound that begins each of these words also establishes a hard, sharp tenor to this poem’s tone that fits in with the idea of the eagle’s similarly hard, sharp life. The repetition of first sounds is called alliteration, and Tennyson uses it in this short “fragment” to convey a sense of the eagle’s situation.

If there is any question in the reader’s mind about why we should care to read about the habits of an eagle in the wild, Tennyson settles it at the end of the line, where he uses the poetic technique of personification in talking about the eagle’s “hands.” When Tennyson makes the association of the eagle’s claws with human hands, he lets us know that the story of the eagle is not just a study of an animal in its natural environment, but that, symbolically, he is telling us about human beings. Because of the implications of the descriptions mentioned above, we can assume that the eagle represents an elderly person.

Line 2: The idea that is presented to the reader in the phrase “close to the sun” could be expressed more directly, but in using these words Tennyson accomplishes two goals. First, by bringing the sun in to describe how high up in the air the eagle is, he uses hyperbole, or exaggeration, to associate the eagle with a sense of grand majesty. Tennyson lived during the Enlightenment, a time when scientific curiosity and learning were greatly valued, and as an educated man he would not have believed that an eagle’s altitude could reach anywhere near the sun’s, but this association makes the eagle seem, like the sun, more powerful than anything of this earth. Placing the eagle near the sun also alludes to the myth of Icarus. An allusion is a reference to something else, specifically another literary work, so that readers can use knowledge of that other work to sharpen their understanding. In Greek mythology, Icarus and his father Daedalus escaped from imprisonment on the Isle of Crete by making wings out of wax and feathers and flying away, but Icarus became too ambitious and flew close to the sun; the wax melted, and Icarus fell into the sea and drowned. By placing the winged eagle near the sun, Tennyson seems to be implying that it may be too confident of its own ability

COURTESY OF:http://www.enotes.com/eagle

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I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

SUMMARY

1
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze........6

Summary, Stanza 1

While wandering like a cloud, the speaker happens upon daffodils fluttering in a breeze on the shore of a lake, beneath trees. Daffodils are plants in the lily family with yellow flowers and a crown shaped like a trumpet. Click here to see images of daffodils.

2
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance........12

Summary, Stanza 2

The daffodils stretch all along the shore. Because there are so many of them, they remind the speaker of the Milky Way, the galaxy that scientists say contains about one trillion stars, including the sun. The speaker humanizes the daffodils when he says they are engaging in a dance.

3
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:.....18

Summary, Stanza 3

In their gleeful fluttering and dancing, the daffodils outdo the rippling waves of the lake. But the poet does not at this moment fully appreciate the happy sight before him. In the last line of the stanza, Wordsworth uses anastrophe, writing the show to me had brought instead of the show brought to me. Anastrophe is an inversion of the normal word order.

4
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.............24

Summary, Stanza 4

Not until the poet later muses about what he saw does he fully appreciate the cheerful sight of the dancing daffodils. Worsworth again uses anastrophe, writing when on my couch I lie and my heart with pleasure fills.


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WILFRED OWEN

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English and Welsh poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Some of his best-known works—most of which were published posthumously—include "Dulce et Decorum Est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". His preface intended for a book of poems to be published in 1919 contains numerous well-known phrases, especially "War, and the pity of War", and "the Poetry is in the pity".

He was killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre just a week before the war ended. In a moment of ghastly irony, the telegram from the War Office announcing his death was delivered to his mother's home as her town's church bells were ringing in celebration of the Armistice.

retrieve from Wikipedia.com

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