John Keats' Personal Fears and Artistic Aspirations in the Sonnet "When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be" John Keats’s sonnet "When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be" reflects his personal fears, particularly his anxiety about dying before fully realizing his artistic potential. Written in 1818, the sonnet explores both the poet's fears of untimely death and his profound...

In " The Wild Swans At Coole" by W.B.Yeats 'they' refers to the wild swans which are now floating silently on this quiet, shallow part of the lake where there is no current. The Coole lake gradually gets engulfed with darkness as the evening sets in. This presents a very beautiful sight which suggests to the poet something strange and unspeakable. In the darkness the swans appear...

In John Donne's "The Good Morrow" 'seven sleeper's den' refers to a Christian ancient legend. Seven Christian youths had taken shelter and enclosed up in a cave to escape the persecution of the Roman Emperor, Decius. The Roman Emperor ordered that the den walled up so that the youths would starve to death. But these youths fell into miraculous sleep and woke up after 187 years.  ...

Henry Vaughan's 'The Retreat' is a metaphysical devotional poem where the poet expresses the glory of childhood and his earnest desire to step backward to his childhood. The poet wants to look forward to the heavenly bliss and peace which he knows very well that only childhood can confer upon him. So he wants to go backstep to his pollution free childhood where there was no material...

"I Find No Peace", a typical Petrarchan sonnet, written by Thomas Wyatt is about the effect of love on an earnest lover. The poem exposes the mental agony of a lover who has lost himself in the intense passion of love. He is pendulating between the contradictory passions like love and hatred, hope and fear, earnestness and passivity, freedom and captivity, delight and depression,...

*Here the poet, Wordsworth refers to the beauty of London as is viewed in the morning from the Westminster Bridge.          *The beauty of the London refers to the beauty of the things which one can see in London such as ships, domes, theatres, temples etc.          *This beauty is ‘silent’ because...

"The Owl and the Nightingale" is a popular medieval English poem written probably in the 13th century and the authorship of which is still doubtful. It consists of a long argument between the nightingale, representing the lighter joys of life, and the owl, standing for wisdom and soberiety. It is composed of approximately 2000 lines of verse in rhymed, octosyllabic couplets, this...

The Rape of the Lock is a poem of an altogether taste.It is a mock heroic poem, that is a poem cast in the form of an epic with all its conventional props, but satirical in content and spirit. These lines are also the symbols of satire.              The author here makes fun of judges, jurymen, merchants and aristocratic ladies. As the closing time...

These lines are taken from Shakespeare's sonnet 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds', celebrates the poet's high regard of love.        In the opening of sonnet 116, Shakespeare alludes to the Marriage service in the Book of Common Prayers and he refers to the marriage ritual. In the Christian Marriage ritual, before the union of the bride and the bridegroom,...

These phrases are used by Shelley in his famous lyric poem, "To A Skylark", published in 1820.          "Chorus hymeneal" is a type of song which is sung in marriage ceremony in chorus by the young girls and boys. 'Hymeneal'is an adjective formed from Hymen, the God of Marriage in classical mythology. Marriage song is usually known as Epithalamiums.  ...

This line occurs in Shakespeare's sonnet No. 18. The poet here emphasizes the transitoriness of all living object of Nature.       The poet means the beauty of every beautiful person or object decreases with time. No beautiful thing has a permanent lease of life. It is the law of Nature. The enduring charms of everything are sure to decline someday or other. Nothing...

This line is taken from 'Shall I Compare Thee' written by William Shakespeare. The poet here boldly affirms the perpetual continuity of his friend's summer despite the ravages wrecked by time.    The 'eternal summer' of the poet's friend who is 'the world's fresh ornament' is referred to here.      Here 'eternal summer' means the youthful beauty which is...