Poetry Assignment

Each out lived life

Brings its tragedies along

So each living soul

 Shall attempt to throw them where they belong

One’s convictions demand its soul

To deny the occurrence of this whole

But when life follows its course

Denial will come forth

But as nature follows through

Triggers tend to turn on the truth

As each struggle to break through

The vulnerable ashen walls of ancient truth

Uprising is its nature

The truth will over take

As each will start to break

And be forced to face its aperture

For facing is your only key

To control once more your destiny

For living is a necessity

To live ever so happily 

By: Laila El-Sharkawy

Ice and Fire

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great   

And would suffice.

By: Robert Frost

Message: The described the two possible ways thought to end the world as fire and ice, or better yet, as desire and hatred. He explains how they could both equally destroy the existence.

Tone: Destructive, Pessimistic

Theme: End of the world, and human nature

Poetic Devices:

Simile Metaphor Alliteration Hyperbole Imagery Personification Onomatopoeia Allusion Oxymoron Repetition

The road not taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

 And be one traveler, long I stood

 And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

         Then took the other, as just as fair,

 And having perhaps the better claim,

 Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,     

    And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

By: Robert Frost

Message: The poet explains how our decisions in life are ours and how he chose which road to take. He empathizes about the importance or courage and taking risks, as one should strive for what they want, no matter how slippery the road might be, even if it’s the less taken road by others, that only gives you more reason to fight, to prove your uniqueness, although to you, they look exactly the same from outside, you have no idea what you might unravel, following what you believe is the right choice for you.

Tone: Inspirational

Theme: Planning the Future

Poetic Devices:

Simile Metaphor Alliteration Hyperbole Imagery Personification Onomatopoeia Allusion Oxymoron Repetition

NB: no poetic devices.

Dust of Snow

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

By: Robert Frost

Message: I think this poem has deep complex meaning, in short limited, but rich and meaningful words. As I interpreted it, I believe Frost describes how he looked differently at the world after feeling, just for a split second, that his life was in danger. So he describes this experience positively, as I believe it helped him see the better half of life, as it permitted him a change in mood, as he described it, saving him a part of a day, meaning it gave him more insight on what we could benefit of the days he has yet to experience. In addition, I believe this particular little, has amazing significance, as when he was implying a lot by using it. The dust is what very human becomes after they are buried, so saying that it was just the dust of snow that fell on him, it’s just like saying he thought that he just became dust in his grave.

Tone: Optimistic

Theme: Fresh start, new life

Poetic Devices:

Simile Metaphor Alliteration Hyperbole Imagery Personification Onomatopoeia Allusion Oxymoron Repetition

Peck of Gold

                                                                                       

Dust always blowing about the town,

 Except when sea-fog laid it down,

And I was one of the children told

Some of the blowing dust was gold.

All the dust the wind blew high

Appeared like gold in the sunset sky,

 But I was one of the children told

 Some of the dust was really gold.

Such was life in the Golden Gate:

Gold dusted all we drank and ate,

 And I was one of the children told,

 'We all must eat our peck of gold'.

By: Robert Frost

Message: Children have been brought up to believe that everything in life is about money and money only, leading them to the extent of neglecting every other aspect in life, realizing as they grew up, that all they have been doing, is running after money, wasting their lives trying to get their “peck of gold.”

Tone: Cowardly

Theme: making excuses

Poetic Devices:

Simile Metaphor Alliteration Hyperbole Imagery Personification Onomatopoeia Allusion Oxymoron Repetition

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night

I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.

I have out-walked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

 I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

 Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

 O luminary clock against the sky

 Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

 I have been one acquainted with the night.

By: Robert Frost

 

Message: Frost describes himself in that poem as that lonely depressed guy, who refuses to even look others in the eye. In addition, describing himself as acquainted with the night and it’s his only companion, the feeling just gets more to us. Moreover, using the term watchman, Frost meant to prove that those people were watching him, while he always turned down their attempts to get to know him in any way.

Tone: Depressed.

Theme: loneliness, isolation

Poetic Devices:

Simile Metaphor Alliteration Hyperbole Imagery Personification Onomatopoeia Allusion Oxymoron Repetition

In a Disused Graveyard

 

The living come with grassy tread

 To read the gravestones on the hill;

The graveyard draws the living still,

But never anymore the dead.

 The verses in it say and say:

 "The ones who living come today

To read the stones and go away

Tomorrow dead will come to stay.

"So sure of death the marbles rhyme,

Yet can't help marking all the time

 How no one dead will seem to come.

What is it men are shrinking from?

 It would be easy to be clever

And tell the stones: Men hate to die

And have stopped dying now forever.

 I think they would believe the lie.

By: Robert Frost

Message: Frost is describing men’s wish of immortality. Men lied to themselves, trying to achieve something in life, leaving behind their own mark, unwilling leave life and just die, wishing that the grave would let them live and believe their lies.

Tone: Competitive

Theme: Death

Poetic Devices:

Simile Metaphor Alliteration Hyperbole Imagery Personification Onomatopoeia Allusion Oxymoron Repetition

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

 So Eden sank to grief,

 So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

By: Robert Frost

Message: The author expresses how nothing is eternal and every good thing must come to an end. Moreover, we can easily identify the perfection described by the author that turns out to become as miserable as it could ever turn out to be.

Tone: Pessimistic

 Theme: Life’s deterioration

Poetic Devices:

Simile Metaphor Alliteration Hyperbole Imagery Personification Onomatopoeia Allusion Oxymoron Repetition

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

 His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

 To watch his woods fill up with snow.

 My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of the easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

 But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

By: Robert Frost

Message: The author contrasts the pull of life in the woods, in solitude to the life of town with all its obligations and promises. He is unable to take the rest he desires in the tempting woods due to his life in the town which is calling him home.

Tone: Desire

Theme: Temptation.

Poetic Devices:

Simile Metaphor Alliteration Hyperbole Imagery Personification Onomatopoeia Allusion Oxymoron Repetition