Shakespeare, Hughes, and Blake to
Evoke Strong Feelings in Their Readers
Good poetry should tantalize the senses; the reader should be able to feel, see, and taste as the poet does. In their poems, the following poets, Shakespeare, Hughes, and Blake write tributes to someone dear and use figurative language to bring their poems to life and hold their readers in the same realm as they when they penned their poems.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,?” is how Shakespeare begins sonnet eighteen, with a simile. Clearly Shakespeare is addressing someone special, someone he really cares about and admire. Shakespeare uses a question mark at the end of this line; and he is really saying if I were to compare you to summer’s day, and he names all the tributes of a typical summer’s day. As he continues the poem he shows that not even an ideal summer’s day could not stand up to this special friend. His sonnet goes on, you are beautiful and your beauty is more tempered and you are not superficial or fickle. You are not tarnished by life’s little trials, nor do you have any plans to be sporadic like the seasons that bring summer for a short period. Your loveliness does not fluctuate, you do not switch from one personality to another as a summer’s day, you are constant. Everything that is beautiful will lose its luster at some point, but not you. Nature cannot touch you or decide your future.
In line eight, “But thy eternal shall not fade.” You will never grow old; you will be young and beautiful forever. I will make sure that you remain permanent because I am going to describe your qualities in verse where you will bloom eternally. As long as time exit so will you since people will always be reading about you. In line nine Shakespeare begins to immortalize his friend.
His love continues with positive attributes “Nor lose possession of that fair
thou ow'st.”(line10). Her fair beauty will never fade. The words ‘lose possession'
suggest once again that this love has immortal attributes. In the eleventh lineit
becomes clear through his verses that this love is immortal. “Nor shall Death brag
thou wander'st in his shade” (line 11). Even death itself won't diminish her love.
This love is shown as allegory” (Lounsbury 2000).
The poem begins with a simile but Shakespeare does not stop there, he uses employs the use of other figure of speech to evoke the reader’s senses. In line four he personifies summer; summer has too short a date. In line five he uses a metaphor to describe the sun; he calls it the eyes of heaven. Line six could be ambiguous; sunset is golden and it is the closing of day, therefore, “And often is his complexion dimm’d” could mean sunset as well as the sun going behind the clouds. Considering the fact that Shakespeare is making a comparison with beauty, sunset is the better choice. In line eleven he symbolizes death when he represents death with shade; he also personifies death; when he says; “Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade.”
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is one of Langston Hughes’ most popular poems. The poem begins< “I have known rivers; and repeats it in the second stanza emphasizing the fact that rivers holds a place of importance for the speaker. Lines two, three, and four, the poet uses simile to compare the rivers he has known. He says that he knows rivers that are as old as time, “as ancient as the world.” Langston Hughes was an activist and one of the chief poets of the Harlem Renaissance; therefore, when he says; “older than the flow of blood in the human veins,” he may be saying that he knows rivers when the “white man was not so kind and at that time it seems that blood did not flow in their veins, their veins were harden by their coldness towards slaves; or he might be accepting of the creation story, since the rivers were made before man. When he thinks of the atrocities of slavery, and the treatment of his black people, he feels it deep down and needs a deep soul to endure the brutality on his people. In the next three lines Hughes is no longer speaking literally, his reference to the different rivers is symbolic. “I bathe in the Euphrates when dawn was young” (line 5); in translation it really means that his people had travelled the river in the early stage of transporting slaves to America. The Congo and the Nile were also means of trafficking slaves. Singing is one of the methods the slaves used to comfort themselves, “the singing of the Mississippi” one can just imagine the lamentation of the slaves in the belly of the ship; it would sound as if the river is singing.
Through the images of water and pyramid, the verse suggests the endurance of
human spirituality from the time of ancient Egypt to the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. The muddy Mississippi made Hughes think of the roles in human
history played by the Congo, the Niger, and the Nile, down whose water the early
slaves once were sold. And he thought of Abraham Lincoln, who was moved to
end slavery after he took a raft trip down the Mississippi.
(Miller 27-28).
Hughes personifies the Mississippi when he gives it a “bosom;’ and have seen its muddy bosom turned into golden sunset,” the jubilation of the salves when Lincoln brought liberation to them. The next three lines are almost reptilian of the beginning of the poem. It is lyrical another custom of the slaves. One can see the slaves as they belt this refrain, most importantly their groaning in heard in the song as they repeat “I have known rivers./My soul has grown deep as the rivers”
William Blake writes many of his poems in religious genre; “The Lamb” is one of those poems. The title is significant; the capitalization of the word “Lamb” shows that he is not talking of any little lamb and as the poem continues it is made clear about whom he is speaking. In the first five lines Blake describes the lamb and all the attributes given to it. Even though he uses simple adjectives I describing the lamb, one sees the lamb with new clarity; what used to be a glance is now a good look. Blake personifies the lamb, “tender voice,” he is no longer alluding to the lamb or its voice but to the voice of Jesus. “Making all vales rejoice. / are definitely tributes to Jesus. Everywhere Jesus went he changed people and brings joy he walked the hillsides and the meadows. “The poem The Lamb, by William Blake is a meditation poem written in 1789. It is about a physical object, an animal, but it addresses the much grander topics of God and creation” (Gualdoni 2010).
In the second stanza Blake uses the whole stanza to glorify Jesus. He says the lamb is special to share its name with such a person. Again he emphasizes the characteristics of Jesus, “He is meek, and He is mild; / He became a little child” (lines 5, 6). Without using complex language Blake visually creates a picture of Jesus’ demeanour among the ancient people. And the poem ends with Blake stilt praising Jesus and expressing how unique it is to share His name. The themes of this poem are spirituality, creation, and peace. “The theme is clearly stated with the use of the name of God and words and phrases like ‘bless thee’ and ‘give thee life” (Gualdoni).
Shakespeare, Hughes, and Blake, all three writers use their poetry to address someone special; with their command of figurative language they are able to evoke feelings in their readers. The readers feel, hear, and see as these writers walk them through their tributes.
Work Cited
Gualdoni, Annabella. (2010). “Reflections of William Blake’s ‘The Lamb” Suite 101. 12 Nov.
2012
Lounsbury, Larry. “Poetry of Analysis Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare”. Helium.com 12,
Nov., 2012
Miller. R. Boxter . “A Brief Biography of Langston Hughes, 1902-19197” ”Tracy, Steven. A
Historical Guide to Langston Hughes. New York, Oxford University Press. 27-28. Print.
