Comparison Essay on Four Studied Poems Example For Students

Comparison Essay on Four Studied Poems The four poems I am going to use are; Porphyrias Lover, by Robert Browning, 1812-1889; The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes, 1880-1958; The Eve of St. Agnes, by John Keats, 1795-1821; and The Lady of Shalott, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892. I chose these four poems as they all deal with love which ultimately leads to death, except in The Eve of St. Agnes. The Eve of St. Agnes was first published in Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other poems in 1820. The theme had been suggested to Keats by his friend Isabella Jones in January 1819. She reminded him that the 20th was St. Angels Eve, when maidens were supposed to dream of their husbands; and Keats, who was already in a romantic medieval mood, took up the idea. But although the inspiration was Isabellas, the physical background for the poem and the fat that the lover was no vision but a flesh-and-blood young man came (as Robert Gittings point out) from a book Keats had recently been reading, the ninth volume of the Bibliotheque Universelle des Dames, and especially the third of the three stories, Pierre de Provence et La Belle Maguelone. The Lady of Shalott, published in 1832, was the first of Tennysons excursions into the realm of King Arthur, although he admitted he had the story from an Italian novella, Donna di Scalotta. Shalott and Astolat are the same words. The Lady of Shalott is evidently the Elaine of the Morte dArthe, but I do not think that I had ever heard of the latter when I wrote the former. Shalott was a softer than Scalott. Stalott would have been nearer Astolat. It is to be noted that in this Italian story Camelot is by the sea. Tennyson, who was only twenty-three when The Lady of Shalott was published, returned to the theme in Lancelot and Elaine (Idylls of the King, 1859). The Highwayman, which is wholly imaginary, was written on the edge of a desolate stretch of land in West Surrey known as Bagshot Heath, where Noyes, then aged twenty-four, had taken rooms in a cottage. The Highwayman suggested itself to me one blustery night when the sound of the wind in the pines gave me the first line. The poem was published in Blackwoods Magazine, August 1906, and soon found a place in anthologies and reciters, both in England and America, possibly due to its reputation as the best narrative poem in existence for oral delivery. Noyes included The Highwayman in his Forty Singing Seamen, and Other Poems, 1907. The four poems are similar as they contain stories of love between a male and female. For different reasons during their relationship death is featured in all four cases. In Porphyrias Lover, the male seems to be in love with the chase whilst Porphyria is in love with the male, but when she finally tells him he kills her. In The Highwayman, both the male and female are in love with each other, but because he is a highwayman their relationship is difficult and she ends up killing herself because of the difficulties. In The Lady of Shalott she falls in love with the handsome knight, leaves her tower to see him, but because she believes there is a curse on her she dies. Its not until she has died that he sees her and says that she is pretty. And finally in The Eve of St. Agnes she sees him when she is dreaming, wakes up and he is there she leaves her home to go and live with him, risking everything; if anyone finds out they would both be killed. Although love is one of the main themes in the four poems, they have all been conveyed in very different ways. Porphyrias Lover is a story of questionable love. It is questionable because, if he killed her, how could it be love? If you actually truly do love someone, you would not kill them. He did not know what to do; now that he has won her, and it seems like he does not actually love her, as much as he has made out. This is proven by this quote: Birlings and Gerald EssayIn relation to The Highwayman where the deaths are both suicides, Beth kills herself to help save the highwaymans life, her true love; this is shown in this stanza of the poem: The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest. Up, she stood to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast. She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again; For the road lay bare in the moonlight; Blank and bare in the moonlight; And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to the loves refrain. Then when the highwayman finds out what has happened he killed himself, he rides straight into the red-coat troops shoots and dies. Back, he spurred like a madman, shouting a curse to the sky, With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high. Blood-red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat; When they shot him down on the highway, Down like a dog on the highway, Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there. These two quotes prove that they were truly in love with each other, and the highwayman knowing that Bess had sacrificed herself to save him; was full of guilt and could not imagine living without her. Knowing what she had done for him, helped him decide how he was going to end his life. The Lady of Shalott is a really different death, she is in a curse and she was not allowed to leave her tower or look out of the window directly at Camelot. But when she left her tower to go down to Camelot to find Sir Lancelot, she died. She basically committed suicide as she knew what she can or can not do, and she did the opposite and looked out at Camelot and died. The quote supporting this is: She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces thro the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She looked down on Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror cracked form side to side; The curse is come upon me cried The Lady of Shalott. Unlike in The Eve of St. Agnes no-one actually dies in the poem, but there is the sense of death at the end of the poem. This is shown in these two lines: They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall; Like phantoms, to the iron porch they glide,. The four poems all have the same two ideas in common, love and death or could cause death if found out. In three of the poems death is caused because of love and the difficult situations caused by love. But in one of them, it does not cause death but could if found out. The language in all four of the poems is used to full extent, and easily understandable. The settings are described really well. It was really easy to understand what is going on and what the author is trying to get across. It is straightforward to see where each of them are coming from, as they use the appropriate language and to explain things to the exact perfection that is needed without giving everything away, so the readers can still guess what is going on. This gives the poems more depth and makes the readers feel more involved in the poem. I believe the poets are all trying to say that love is not an easy thing, you have to find the right person and want to actually be there for them and know what you are willing to sacrifice, even if it is your own life. Then if love goes wrong, death is closely linked to it, as three out of the four poems end up with the people dying because of love.