Poetry & Analysis
Selected Poems
Inspirational PoemsAmoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote Her Name
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so, quoth I; let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name;
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.
Overview Short Summary
Spenser sets a lover’s desire for permanence against waves, tide, decay, and death. The poem argues that verse can preserve love against time.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Time and memory: The tide erases the written name, showing how easily memory disappears.
- Love and permanence: The speaker believes poetry can resist decay.
- Mortality: Death is imagined as eventually subduing the whole world.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is tender, confident, and idealistic.
Craft Literary Devices
- Symbolism: The tide symbolizes time’s erasing power.
- Dialogue: The beloved challenges the speaker’s hope for immortality.
- Metaphor: Poetry becomes a place where love can live beyond death.
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
Overview Short Summary
Keats imagines dying before his imagination, books, love, and fame can fully unfold. It is one of the strongest classic poems about time running out for an artist.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Fear of limited time: The speaker fears death before creative work is complete.
- Lost opportunity: Unwritten books and unlived love become central anxieties.
- Fame and nothingness: The ending places ambition against the vastness of mortality.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is anxious, lyrical, and finally resigned.
Craft Literary Devices
- Metaphor: Ideas are compared to grain gathered into books.
- Imagery: The starred night, clouds, shore, and wide world expand the speaker’s fear.
- Repetition: Before and never intensify the sense of time slipping away.
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Overview Short Summary
Shelley’s ruined statue shows how time outlasts pride, empire, and power. What once seemed permanent becomes a broken monument in an empty desert.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Time and decay: The statue’s ruin proves that even rulers cannot defeat time.
- Pride and impermanence: The inscription’s boast is undercut by emptiness.
- Memory: Only fragments remain to tell the story.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is ironic, stark, and awe-filled.
Craft Literary Devices
- Irony: The command to ‘despair’ is contradicted by the ruin around it.
- Imagery: Stone legs, a shattered face, and bare sands make decay vivid.
- Frame narrative: The traveler creates distance between present readers and an ancient past.
The World Is Too Much with Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Overview Short Summary
Wordsworth criticizes a life spent in getting and spending. The poem connects wasted time with spiritual disconnection from nature.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Wasted time: Human energy is consumed by buying, selling, and worldly busyness.
- Loss of wonder: The speaker feels modern life has dulled the heart.
- Nature and renewal: The sea, moon, and wind represent a richer way of being.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is frustrated, mournful, and spiritually hungry.
Craft Literary Devices
- Allusion: Proteus and Triton evoke mythic contact with nature.
- Personification: The sea bares her bosom and the winds rest like flowers.
- Contrast: Material activity is contrasted with natural vision.
A Psalm of Life
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Overview Short Summary
Longfellow’s poem is a direct answer to wasted time: life is brief, but each day can be used for action, growth, service, and courage.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Use time wisely: The poem urges action in the living present.
- Time is fleeting: The line ‘Time is fleeting’ gives the poem its urgency.
- Legacy: Footprints on the sands of time symbolize a life that helps others.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is motivational, earnest, and hopeful.
Craft Literary Devices
- Metaphor: Life is a battle, a camp, a voyage, and a path across sand.
- Imperative language: Commands such as ‘Act’ and ‘Be up and doing’ create urgency.
- Symbolism: Footprints symbolize lasting influence.
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