Poetry & Analysis
Selected Poems
Inspirational PoemsAs Imperceptibly as Grief
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away –
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy –
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon –
The Dusk drew earlier in –
The Morning foreign shone –
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone –
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.
Overview Short Summary
Dickinson describes summer’s passing as something almost too gradual to notice. Time slips away quietly, like grief becoming part of the air.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Time slipping away: The season lapses so slowly that the loss is nearly invisible.
- Change: Dusk, morning, and quietness show the altered feel of the world.
- Beauty and loss: The season escapes into beauty rather than simply disappearing.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is quiet, subtle, and wistful.
Craft Literary Devices
- Simile: Summer’s passing is compared to grief.
- Personification: Summer is a guest that departs courteously.
- Imagery: Twilight, dusk, morning, and afternoon create a seasonal movement.
Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Overview Short Summary
Rossetti speaks from the edge of absence, asking to be remembered after death but finally placing the beloved’s peace above memory itself.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Time and memory: The poem imagines a future when daily conversation is gone.
- Love and letting go: The speaker would rather be forgotten than cause lasting sadness.
- Mortality: The silent land stands for death.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is tender, restrained, and selfless.
Craft Literary Devices
- Volta: The sestet turns from asking remembrance to permitting forgetfulness.
- Symbolism: The silent land represents death and separation.
- Repetition: Remember emphasizes the human wish to survive in memory.
Song: When I Am Dead, My Dearest
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
Overview Short Summary
Rossetti imagines death as a place beyond ordinary time, where remembering and forgetting lose their urgency.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Letting go: The poem allows both memory and forgetfulness.
- Time after death: Twilight that does not rise or set suggests a timeless state.
- Peace: The speaker asks for no elaborate mourning.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is gentle, calm, and accepting.
Craft Literary Devices
- Repetition: Remember and forget balance each other.
- Imagery: Grass, rain, nightingale, and twilight soften the meditation on death.
- Contrast: Living grief is contrasted with the speaker’s imagined stillness.
Loveliest of Trees
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
Overview Short Summary
Housman turns a blooming cherry tree into a reminder that even fifty remaining springs are not many. The poem is simple, direct, and deeply tied to time running out.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Limited time: The speaker calculates how many springs remain.
- Seize the moment: Awareness of time makes him go see the blossoms now.
- Beauty and mortality: Cherry bloom becomes precious because it is seasonal.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is clear, wistful, and quietly urgent.
Craft Literary Devices
- Symbolism: Cherry blossom symbolizes beauty that must be noticed before it passes.
- Arithmetic: The calculation of years makes mortality concrete.
- Imagery: White blossom and woodland paths create a delicate spring scene.
When I Was One-and-Twenty
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.”
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
“The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
‘Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.”
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
Overview Short Summary
This short poem shows how quickly one year can turn youthful confidence into regret.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Time and regret: The difference between twenty-one and twenty-two is enough to change understanding.
- Youth: The young speaker ignores advice until experience proves it true.
- Lost innocence: Love becomes a lesson learned too late.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is rueful, plainspoken, and gently ironic.
Craft Literary Devices
- Repetition: The repeated age marks how little time passes before regret arrives.
- Irony: The speaker learns the lesson only after ignoring it.
- Dialogue: The wise man’s advice gives the poem its moral frame.
Continue Reading
Related Poems & Articles
More selected reading from Inspirational Poems.
