A Comparison Of Two Poems English Literature Essay

In this paper I am going to analyze, discuss and compare the following poems “I wandered lonely as a cloud” by William Wordsworth and “The old pond” by Basho according to their imagery, vocabulary and tone. In order to fully and critically analyze these poems it is necessary to describe the manner of style and folk arts of William Wordsworth and Basho.

William Wordsworth is an English romantic poet, the representative of “the Lake School.” The representatives of Romanticism sharply condemned urban culture. They always contrast urban life with simple “uncorrupted” life of the province. The “simple” way of life was their ideal, and Wordsworth took his apology in his literature. William Wordsworth is a poet of nature and a man. He believed that his poetic purpose was to show the nature of a man not as a refuge from suffering and commitment, but as a source of “pure passion and fun,” enduring inspiration and support. Wordsworth admitted that nature is the greatest teacher. In the works of Wordsworth is the fraction of mysticism and the deification of nature, there is a little moralizing and piety, but it all gets lost in his deeply lyrical and simple poetry. Although Wordsworth was against philosophy, yet in his thinking remains enlightening idea of natural rights and natural equality of human beings. The poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud” was written in 1804 in Grasmere when Wordsworth and his brother went to the shore of the lake, all overgrown with yellow daffodils.

“I wandered lonely as a cloud” is a lyric poem that deals with Wordsworth’s reply to the beauty of nature. In addition, this poem shows us the deep emotions and feelings of the poet. In this situation, Wordsworth describes himself as lonely and alone. This poem has two essential meanings. Firstly, the poem is considered to a poem of remembrance. It underlines that the value of memories should be presented in our life. Secondly, this poem tries to prove that people are not actually alone if they have the ability to make use of memories efficaciously.

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The yellow daffodils symbolize the beauty of nature. When Wordsworth thinks about the yellow daffodils, he perks up. Besides, Wordsworth uses stylistic devises, such as an ontological metaphor (personalization) and emotionally strong words: “golden”, “bliss” and “dancing”. Personalization is an object’s description as being an animal or a living person. The flowers are personalization in this poem.

Basho is the great Japanese poet, the theoretician of a verse. “The Old Pond” is one of the greatest Basho’s poems.

Some literary critics believe that this poem embodies a kind of ineffable mystery, a metaphysical sense, and defies rational explanation. Others believe that it represents the landscape of spring days, and innuendo is a special stylistic device. The poet does not speak about silence of the spring day, forcing you to guess, and thus reinforces the impression.

Basho’s poems cannot portray mathematically as the sum of various literary devices, because it is an artistic image that has not still lost its value. The poem symbolizes the picture of the spring day.

There is a real landscape in this poem but even if we can see that same pattern, which saw the poet, Basho’s tercet will not be understood by us to the end. The full meaning of it will be revealed only when we look through the eyes of the poet himself, understand his feelings and relationship to the world.

The poem is a classic example of haiku. There are two formal elements in this poem. The words are almost all nouns. There is only one verb (jump) in the end of the second verse: tensions action arises and immediately re-removed, dies. The sound harmony of “The old pond” is perfect. It creates the impression of complete freedom, even improvisation.

Haiku tradition demanded that the landscape sketches necessarily indicate the time of the year. For this system has been developed so-called “seasonal words.” The frog here is the spring word. Incidentally, in Japanese poetry, words such as a frog, does not sound like “low” and do not create a comic effect. This once again shows that so-called poetry is always very tentative.

These poems can be considered to be similar because of their imagery of nature that is present in both poems. The first verse displays many things which are connected with nature, but the most explicit way of nature is daffodils. There is the image of the pond, frog, and water in the second verse. All these things reflect nature. The tone of both verses is melancholic at first glance. But if you attentively read the poems and scrutinize their contents, we can see that these poets are not sad and sorrowful. They are opposite – these are happy poems. This is useful to mention that the first words of the poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud” consist of the sad note but when the poet notices the daffodils the tone becomes joyous. In addition, two poems present vocabulary focusing on loneliness: the old pond, solitude, lonely etc. and on images: the frog, water, sound, pond, waves, air, hills, earth and daffodils.

Taking everything into consideration I can draw a conclusion that I fully analyzed and compared two poems according to their tone, imagery and vocabulary. These poems are considered to be innovative for that period of time. Verses are literary heritage and require careful attention.