Mirror This

VII
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
of perlious seas, in faery lands forlon.


In the seventh stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale that it is immortal, that it was not "born for death." He says that the voice he hears singing has always been heard, by ancient emperors and clowns, by homesick Ruth; he even says the song has often charmed open magic windows looking out over "the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."

Keats moves from his awareness of his own mortality in the preceding stanza to the perception of the bird's immortality. On a literal level, his perception is wrong; this bird will die. Some readers, including very perceptive ones, see his chracterization of the bird as immortal as a flaw. Before you make this judgment, consider alternate interpretations. Interpreting the line literally may be a misreading, because the bird has clearly become a symbol for the poet; nature is always dying but always alive, forever changing but always the same.

As My Father's Father Once Did, I Will Do

In Seamus Heaney's," Digging" the first two lines create an image of someone holding a squat pen; "snug as a gun". And though the poem emerges into one of a boy watching his father dig and then remembering his grandfather digging as well, it has its relevance at the end. He states, "But I have no spade to follow men like them.", and so instead of digging out in a garden his squat pen digs inside of the paper to make the reader visualize still a sense of digging but in an entirely different way. The pen he "snugs as a gun" could also be the shovel or spade that his father and grandfather held "snug as a gun".

The relevance of this poem is following family traditions as best as the next generations sees fit. Although the author did not work in a field and dig as literally as his ancestors did, he still dug. Even if  it was with a pen to a piece of paper. It seems that the author admires how much effort his father and grandfather put into the digging they did. So in the last line of the poem when he states, "Ill dig with it." It sounds like he will dig into whatever he is about to write about with pride and with the same ambitious attitude as they did.

Final Words

"This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

 To love that well which thou must leave ere long." (Sonnet 73, Shakespeare)

Even though it seems like our time is running short, it makes our love stronger.

And to love each other so much as we do, time will ultimately run out.

Shakespeare complicates his final words in a way that it brings emotion to readers. The tone he uses as well as the choice of wording is unique and definitely grabs the attention more. In addition to this being the final words of the poem, it is the only couplet of the poem and Shakespeare has a way of creating a dramatic irony of some sort at the end of his poems to engage the reader into analyzing what they think he means. Although the paraphrasing makes it easier for the reader to understand, the sonnet looses elegance and may even be loosing some of the true meanings. 

The entire poem falls into a chronological time period of something dying but blooming as well. In the beginning the audience sees the fall in a sense that, that is what the reader is comparing himself to. Entering into the middle, a darkening stage emerges and gory words become a part of the order. At the end an imagery of the fire decaying gives a metaphorical picture of someone getting old. But it is not entirely bad because there lies love in the last two lines. The poem goes from a decaying and deadly story to something that is natural and "everlasting", love.

Just making sure this works. I don't know much about blogging.