An Analysis of Stanza and Imagery in The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Poem

 The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

by Christoper Marlowe (1599)

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields. 

And we will sit upon the Rocks,

Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow Rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses

And thousand Fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool

Which from our property Lambs we pull;

Fair-lined slippers for cold,

With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,

With Coral claps and Amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me, and be my love.

The Shepherds' Swains hall dance and sing

For they delight each May morning"

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me, and be my love.

     Analysis:

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christoper Marlowe (1599) is categorized as a type of Quatrain stanza. It has a total of six stanzas with four lines in each of them. this poem has an A-A-B-B rhyme in each stanza. 

• Imagery

1. Olfactory Imagery   

    Olfactory imagery refers to sensory information about the smell. It conveys the imagination of the smell as if we can smell something. In this type of imagery, the poet tries to evoke the reader's mind through smell stimulation in his/her poem. The snipped of the poetry below is an example of olfactory imagery.

                                                        And thousand Fragrant posies, 

Here, the poet wants the reader to imagine the smell thousand bouquets of flowers that the person wants to make for his/her lover in the poem. 

 2. Auditory Imagery

        Auditory imagery refers to sensory information about the sound. The goal is to create imagery that appeals to our sense of hearing. This sinpped of the poetry below is an example of auditory imagery.

                                                         Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

        In the example above, the person in the poem is imagining a beautiful view while sitting on a rock and also accompanied by the melodious chirping of birds that sounds like madrigal music So, in this poem, the poet wants the reader to imagine the same sound as imagined by the person in the poem. 

3. Kinesthetic Imagery 

        Kinesthetic Imagery is used to describe the sensory experience of the movement of people or human body. The two example below is categorized as kinesthetic imagery in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Poem". The word "sit" and "feed" are movements of the body. The poet wants the reader to imagine those activities, sit and feed. 

And we will sit upon the Rocks,

Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks, 

 

An Analysis of Figurative Language in Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

Annabel Lee (1849)

by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

by the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love

I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsman came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulcher

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me

Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we

And neither far wiser than we

And neither the angels in heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,

In the sepulcher there by the sea,

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Analysis

1. Alliteration

    Alliteration is a repeated consonant sound that occur at the beginning of word or within a word. Alliteration doesn't need to be entire sentence to be effective. A two-word phrase can work too. The following pieces of the poetry below are the example of Alliteration.

 "The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

went envying her and me--"

The example of line above, shows that the poet uses alliteration in his poem. There is a repeated word of the consonant "h" that is contained in words "half", "happy", "heaven", and "her". 

   "Of those who were older than we-

And neither far wiser than we"

The second example of alliteration can be found in the above line. There is a repeated word of consonant that is contained in the words "we", "were" and "wiser", all consonant begin with the same first letter "w".

      2.  Assonance

    Assonance is a repetition of similar vowel sounds at the beginning, middle, or end of words in poetry. These two snipped of poem below is the example of the using of Assonance in Annabel Lee.

"And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes" 

and

"And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side"

    In the snipped of the two lines of poem above, there is a diphthong repetition  (a combination of two adjacent vowel sound) /ai/. The words "rise", "I", "bright", "eyes", "night-tide", and "lie" has all the same diphthong vowel which is /ai/.

      3. Personification

    Personification is a figure of speech in which an idea or thing is given human attributes and/or feeling or is spoken of as if it were human. 

 "That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee."

In the snipped of the poem above, the speaker suggests that Annabel Lee was killed by the cloud because the love that the speaker and Annabel Lee have, made the angels of heaven jealous and desirous. So, they sent a wind to kill Annabel Lee. In this line, the poet gives human qualities to the wind by saying that the wind is killing Annabel Lee. In reality, the object "wind" doesn't have that kind of quality. Because the wind just did what the wind does. But giving it (human quality = killing) like it did it on purpose, that is called personification.

       4. Hyperbole

    Hyperbole is the use of over-exaggeration ti create emphasis or humor. it's not intended to be taken literally but, it supposed to drive a point home and make the reader understand just how much the writer felt in that moment.

 "And this maiden she lived with no other thought

than to love and be loved by me."

The example line above can be categorized as hyperbole. The speaker said that Annabel Lee living her life just to think about to love and be loved by the speaker as if every day, she only think about the speaker. That's a very poetic thing to say but the truth is, everybody, no matter how much in love they are would have other thoughts from time to time.