The importance of the illustration to the meaning/interpretation of the poem

The illustration shows two distinct characters – a child and a man. The child is the representation of innocence while the man is for experience. Significantly, the background of trees and herd sheep brings the viewer to a deeper meaning that is within. The existence of the illustration enables us to visualize what William Blake wants us to see, know, and achieve by opening our minds to what has become of the world (his world at his time) from what it is supposed to be.

Amongst our senses, vision could be the primary and perhaps the summary for whatever we touch, hear, read, and feel, we need to visualize them far beyond what our human eyes plainly see. The visualization of the “Songs of Innocence and Experience” through the illustration draws larger and multiple interpretations amidst the variations in the arts’ coloring and legibility which major role could be the enhancement and clarity of the core subject of the piece – human being, both in drawing and words – human being. 2. “Tintern Abbey”

It is evident in the poem how Wordsworth illustrated nature and used it to present and depict movement and development of his work. He used it to transcend dull feelings to ethereal ones. Nature mirrors beauty – a call for transcendence that we are supposed to see amidst human chaos and emptiness, both within ourselves and within society. The poem opens with the line “five years have past… “, and goes on to the description of a beautiful landscape that is always impressive and amazingly beautiful, highly personifying nature (These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs, With a soft inland murmur.

— Once again.. ), and vividly describing natures cycle yet unchanged beauty. The repetition of “Once again” leads to the persona’s frequency of viewing nature and brings us the consistency of nature’s beauty amidst time and space, where he/she highly recognized, recollected, and found solace. Unceasingly, the beauty of nature is hailed, and its role to our lives not just being the primary source of our survival through provision of our needs but also what nature is amidst material provision.

The naked truth behind its existence – learn from nature as it transcends us to a state of joy and fulfillment. The persona recognized nature as: “anchor of purest thoughts, , nurse, guide, guardian of the heart, and soul of moral being”. In so doing, the poem implicitly reminds us not to exploit nature. How are we suppose to relate with nature is also foreshadowed. Nature, in the last stanza is personified as friend and a sister. It is highlighted as well, that “it never betrays as heart that loved it, which brings us to the golden rule.

Lastly, it relates to us the intimate relationship of the persona to nature and how nature is recognized, praised, and loved by him that beyond human wanderings, loneliness, and emptiness, consolation, companionship, and love is laid bare to us by nature. The answer to the universal longing for peace and joy is nature. Nature transcends us to spiritual satisfaction. 3. “Kubla Khan” “Kubla Khan” is Coleridge attack against sexual abuse by man of power.

His use of sound, rhythm, sound, imagery, language, and rhetorical effects to achieve unity and singularity of theme “war: warrior and victim” which is drawn and placed to a metaphorical meaning elevates his work and reveals his style. The poem opens with the description of a supposed kingdom and a man which holds on a deeper meaning beyond superficial or denotative meaning. His distinctive pairing of words in ‘sinuous rills, sunless sea’ draws the reader to a more sophisticated unelaborated meaning. The line “mighty fountain momently was forced” depicts the beginning of sexual intercourse.

All through, beginning from the title, to the combination of the sounds of war (from a mans vantage point and the lonely music of the woman (victim), a more meaningful work is created – a record of a sexual abuse established implicitly that beneath his grandeur and might is an abusive and dangerous man. 4. “In ‘Ode to the West Wind’ and in ‘To a Skylark” Shelley searches in the physical world for reassuring analogies to substantiate his belief that regeneration follows destruction, that alteration does not mean obliteration, and that mankind should heed the prophetic voice of poets.

” The introduction of a season in the “Ode to the Wes Wind” depicts a cycle of generation and regeneration. Shelley’s belief that regeneration follows destruction is evidently seen in the whole poem – in the sequence of the seasons, after winter comes spring. In the third stanza, the persona visualizes old palaces and towers overgrown with azure moss, and flowers. Through time, it has been altered yet remained sweet – a clear evidence that alteration does not mean obliteration.

In the last stanza, the persona calls on the west wind to scatter the poets words, which could be a defense to poetry, to mankind depicting poets work as prophetic in effect timeless and awaken mankind’s mind 5. “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: A search for a reconciliation of the world’s loveliness and its evanescence, its pain with its pleasure. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” – with this line the five-stanza ‘Ode the Grecian Urn” emphatically ends, which draws several interpretation from different literary scholars.

It summarizes the message of the author, an answer to the multiple “what- questions” in the first stanza. The work, while it presents duality and separation, or perhaps defiance of what is expected depicted in the lines: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter… Bad lovers never, never canst thou kiss”, it challenges us to find reconciliations between opposites/dualities that would sum up to the world’s loneliness and its evanescence, where every silence is a sound (second stanza), and along happiness comes sorrow (third stanza).

While the first stanza is deeply concern with “what” to mean what are our lives for whichever walk is followed, the last stanza answers it. The answer to that search for a reconciliation of the world’s loveliness and its evanescence is embodied in the line “Beauty is truth, truth beauty…, which is to solely recognize that life is beautiful, that duality and opposition is real and is embodied in the same beauty however all has an end and we are but temporal beings – the only answer as to how we all should live.

“Ode to the Nightingale” is a heavy depiction of pain evident throughout the poem and crowding in the first three stanzas. Amidst pain, is the search for pleasure and for love beyond “to-morrow” pointing what is beyond time and space. To fly or soar high like that of the nightingale and not to dwell and be consumed and drowned in pain could be the answer. Source: It is indicated in the instructions of this paper that own analysis and interpretation is encouraged. www. blakearchive. org/blake