Poem+Comparison

//**Sleep **//

The evening hangs beneath the moon A silver thread on darkened dune with closing eyes and resting head i know that sleep is coming soon

Upon my pillow, safe in bed a thousand pictures fill my head I cannot sleep my minds a flight And yet my limbs seem made of lead

If there are noises in the night A frightening shadow, flickering light Then I surrender unto sleep Where clouds of dreams give second sight

What dreams may come both dark and deep Of flying wings and soaring leap As I surrender unto sleep <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As I surrender unto sleep

//**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Summer **//

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I'm in the back garden, <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">dead-heading fuchsias <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">at summer's end. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Around me are poppies <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">and the perfume of stargazer lilies. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I'm thinking of how this summer <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">of death has so quickly passed. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My friend's father, <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">dead suddenly at his desk.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Another friend's mother <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">with cancer of the pancreas, <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">stopped eating, died with grace. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My mother. And her slow dying.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Her mind gone, <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">she sleeps all day. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Imagines, when awake, <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">she's on a cruise ship. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Music and dancing <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Under the stars. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Stargazer lilies everywhere.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps she could waltz. Not this summer. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Not this. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Summer.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The two poems I chose to compare are //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Summer //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and //sleep//. These two poems have a few similarities and a few differences, but I think that they both have the same general theme of death. The poem //Summer// doesn't have a rhyme scheme and just flows like a story, whereas the poem //Sleep// has a general rhyme scheme of AABA. //Summer// is a bit longer than the poem //Sleep//, but there isn't too much of a difference in length. The sentence length of //Summer// varies and changes throughout the poem, but //Sleep// has a fairly consistent structure and doesn't change too much. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The meaning of these two poems is kind of similar, to me. They're both about death, //Sleep// was about preparing for death and accepting it and I think //Summer// kind of touched on that as well. //Summer// also leaned towards being about how everyone is surrounded by death and no one can get away from being affected by it. The themes of both poems were quite similar and were expressed in such different ways. //Sleep// was from the point of view of the main character and how he was accepting his own death, but //Summer// was about someone who was thinking about the deaths of people who they loved and cared about. The poems had a different way of expressing their theme, but were both focussed around the same one, death. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In my opinion, poetic devices were used in the poem //Sleep// to create more of a feeling for how the character was feeling, whereas //Summer// used poetic devices more for imagery and thinking about things. For example, //Sleep// uses a hyperbole like "A thousand pictures fill my head" which is able to show you how the man is feeling/ thinking, but //Summer// uses imagery like " <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Around me are poppies and the perfume of stargazer lilies.", which makes you imagine the scene and creates images in your head. However, that doesn't mean to say that they both don't use the same poetic device, they just use that device in a different way.