Winter By William Shakespeare summary and analysis and themes

Winter

This poem by Shakespeare is divided in to stanzas with nine lines each.

The meaning of the words:


Icicle: thin point stick of ice that hangs down from something such as a roof.


Dick: name of person.


Shepherd: someone whose job is to take care of sheep.


Blow: wind moving.


Log: peace of cut trees.


Hall: a room or passage that is just inside the front entrance of a house or public building.


Pail: bucket.


Nipped: frozen.


Foul: disgusting, very ugly.

Nightly: every night.

Stare: to look at someone or something for a long time without moving your eyes.


Owl: kind of bird hunts at night and has large eyes.


Merry: happy.


Greasy: full of oil.


Keel: cooling.


Blow: to remove.


Cough: pushing air out of your throat with tough sound because you are sick.


Parson: the man of the church.


Saw: a tool with sharp points, used for cutting wood.


Brood: to think sadly.


Marian: name of a girl.


Raw: uncooked.


Roasted: to cook or be cooked in an oven or over a fire.


Crabs: a wild fruit (green apple).


Hiss: sound (hiss).


Bowl: a wide round container that is open at the top, used for holding liquids, food etc.

Paraphrasing + imagery + figure of speech:


When icicles hang by the wall


The poet describes the ice that hangs down from the roof in a way to describe how cold the weather is. Here we have visual image.


And Dick the shepherd blows his nail


He is talking about a shepherd called Dick who is sitting out side suffering from the cold weather and he is trying to warm his hand. Here we have image of feeling the skin (very cold).


And Tom bears logs into the hall


Another man called Tom is carrying the peaces of wood that he cut to store. He is working extremely hard in cutting the wood. Here we have visual image (hard work, very cold).


And milk comes frozen home in pail


Even the milk becomes frozen from the very cold weather. The image here is visual.


When blood is nipped and ways be foul


The blood in the veins of the people is also becomes frozen and all the roads are very dirty. The image is feeling because you feel it in your skin and visual image (dirty roads).


Then nightly sings the staring owl


Every night the owl is singing it is song "Tu-with_tu-who". The image is hearing.

"Tu-with.tu-who"

This is the song that the owl is singing every night. It is a scary sound and not nice. Here we have hearing image.


A merry note


He found the song is very happy. There is an irony (figure of speech) in this line because the sound of the owl is very ugly and scary but he found it happy because it is the only sound he could hear at night in the winter. The image is hearing.


While greasy Joan doth keel the pot


In the time that dirty Joan is keeling the pot, this is a pleasant image for John who is preparing the warm food in a cold winter. In other hand, Joan looks dirty because cleaning clothes is a very hard work in winter. We have here visual image. ……………………………………………………………………………………….

When all aloud the wind doth blow

It is a description for the loud sound of the wind, it is a sound imagery because in this line you can imagine that you are hearing the wind blows. The image is hearing.

And coughing drowns the parsons saw

The voice of the sick people in the church while they are coughing is very loud and annoying so he describes it as the sound of the saw and no one can hear the parsons talking. Here we have hearing image and metaphor.

And birds sit brooding in the snow

The birds are sitting sadly and not singing because of the snowy weather. The image is visual.

And Marian's nose looks red and row

The little girl Marian has a red and row nose because of the very cold weather and sickness. Here we have visual image and metaphor.

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl

Heated green apples are making a hissing sound in the dish because of the cold weather. The image is hearing.

………………………………………………………………………………………

Theme:

Poetry should not just deals exclusively with beauty like sunset, flowers, or love. The function of poetry is sometimes to be ugly rather than beautiful, and poetry may deal with common goals and grassy cooks as good as with sunset and flowers.

The poem contains no moral, no lessons, no messages like some readers wants.

The main theme in this poem is about the tough and extremely cold winter. It is descriptive poem for conditions that people went through in the cold winter in that time

The speaker:-
There is only one speaker in the poem who seems to be the poet himself.

Paraphrasing :-

First Stanza:-

The poet gives to us homely details of the cold weather in winter.
He said that water is freezing while it is dropping from the wall, so it is extremely cold.
And people can't stop working because the coldness of winter and they have to go out and work.
Dick the shepherd has nothing to warm him just his breath because he is poor man so he is blowing his fingertips to warm him.
And Tom is working hard to survive in this cold winter. He cuts logs and brings them home to fuel the fire to get their home little warmer.
Also in this cold weather while they were getting the milk from the farm to the house . it froze in the bucket before it arrives to the home , So they can't drink it until its defrosted .

Second Stanza :-
Harsh winter and extreme cold make the blood frozen too. And the people couldn't move around easily because of this cold and because of the street are full of mud.
At the night while Joan a greasy, dirty looking women was keeling a pot to prepare some hot food in this coldness.
The staring owl was singing in scary tune. And when the poet said "merry note" it is ironic because people always believe that the owl tone is scary and gives pessimistic feeling of death.

Third Stanza:-
When the wind blew with noise, it made the weather colder. And in the church while the priest was giving an important religious speech people usually listen and the room is quiet but actually no one was hearing him from people's coughing because they were sick and that drowned his voice. Also the birds were sad and not moving in the snow as if they were nesting, And Marian has got a cold from this horrible winter .Therefore her nose is red and soft.

Forth Stanza:-
In winter people usually prepare warmed food .So they prepared some roasted and hot apples At night the owl was singing again while Joan was keeling hot food which makes life bearable .The repetition of the sound that the owl makes adds a humorous and scary tone .Although the owl is a symbol of bad luck but Shakespeare trying to use it to add cheerful note and atmosphere to the poem.

The main idea:-
The unpleasant and cold season winter and the cold feeling the speaker feels.

Imagery:-
[When icicles hang by the wall]
[And milk comes frozen home in pail]
[And birds sit brooding in the snow]
[And Marian's nose looks red and raw]
[While greasy Joan doth keel the pot]
Visual image
[When blood is nipped, and ways be foul]
[And Dick the shepherd blows his nail]
There is imagery sense of feeling
[When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl]
Auditory imagery

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Literary Analysis of Robert Burns's A Red, Red Rose

Literary Analysis of Robert Burns's A Red, Red Rose

Period of English Literature			18th Century England; The Age of Enlightenment; 1796
Historical Background			•      Robert Burns is often considered a writer ahead of his time, who often embraced the idea of using common language to reach the common person just slightly before this idea became popularized as the Age of Romanticism swept across the globe. •      When Burns published “A Red, Red Rose” in 1794, the Age of Enlightenment was dwindling to an end. •      Like the Romantics, he stressed emotion, not reason; were concerned with experiencing nature, not understanding it; and allowed for the possibility of an explicable, supernatural world •      His poetry demonstrates the Romantics’ faith in simple, common, accessible language is one of the ideas that was around before the movement in general took root. •      This treatment of time and beauty predicts the work of the later Romantic poets, who took Burns’s work as an important influence.
Type of Work (Form)			Ballad stanza Ballad: The ballad is an old form of verse adapted for singing or recitation, originating in the days when most poetry existed in spoken rather than written form. The typical subject matter of most ballads reflects folk themes important to common people: love, courage, the mysterious, and the supernatural. Though the ballad is generally rich in musical qualities such as rhythm and repetition, it often portrays both ideas and feelings in overwrought but simplistic terms.
Structure		Composition	·         Four four-line stanzas (or quatrains) ·         The first and third lines of each stanza have four stressed syllables, while the second and fourth lines have three stressed syllables.
Voice			First Person (My, I)
Subject			The speaker’s confession of love and passion to his lover.
Tone			Romantic and melancholy (a deep feeling of sadness)
Themes			·         The transient nature of beauty and love. ·         The delicate and fragile nature of beauty and love. ·         A meditation on the speaker’s consciousness of time and on limits that time can place upon human emotions.
Summary of Poem			The speaker compares his love first with a blooming rose in spring and then with a melody “sweetly play’d in tune.” If these similes seem the typical fodder for love-song lyricists, the second and third stanzas introduce the subtler and more complex implications of time. In trying to quantify his feelings—and in searching for the perfect metaphor to describe the “eternal” nature of his love—the speaker inevitably comes up against love’s greatest limitation, “the sands o’ life.” This image of the hour-glass forces the reader to reassess of the poem’s first and loveliest image: A “red, red rose” is itself an object of an hour, “newly sprung” only “in June” and afterward subject to the decay of time. This treatment of time and beauty predicts the work of the later Romantic poets, who took Burns’s work as an important influence.
Summary of  Lines 1-2			The reader may be already familiar with the poem’s much-quoted first line. Its appeal over time probably stems from the boldness of its assertion— the speaker’s love conveyed through the conventional image of the rose and through the line’s four strong beats. The poet’s choice of a rose may at first seem trite, and the color “red” may seem too obvious a symbol of love and passion. Yet if the comparison between the beloved and the rose verges on cliché, a careful reading reveals the subtler ways in which the speaker expresses his conviction. Why, for instance, is the word “red” repeated? The answer might be found in the second line. While red is the expected hue of the flower, the repetition of the adjective represents the fullest and most lovely manifestation of the rose: its ideal state. Such also is the nature of the speaker’s love. “Newly sprung,” it exists in its purest and most perfect state—none of its vitality has faded; time has not scarred it with age or decay. Yet this embodiment of love is a temporary one. Like the rose, which can exist in this lush form only “in June,” the speaker’s feelings and his beloved’s beauty cannot remain frozen in time: they, like all other forms of beauty, are passing.
Summary of  Lines 3-4			Perhaps it is the speaker’s recognition of the rose’s brief beauty that compels him to pursue another metaphor for his love. This time he chooses to compare her to a lovely melody from a song, but this is also a temporary form of beauty. While a song may be “sweetly play’d in tune,” it too is a product of time, of beats and measures. When the song has ended, its beauty lives on only in abstraction –as the idea of the beautiful song.
Summary of  Lines 5-8			The second stanza plays on the word “luve,” revealing the elusive nature of the concept. When the speaker says “I will luve thee still,” he plays on the concept of time. The line seems to indicate that the speaker will love continuously or forever, but the following line does put a limit on the amount of time he will love. His passion will continue “Till” a certain time – when “the seas   gang dry.” Though the prospect of the seas drying up seems remote, it exists nonetheless. Thus, while the sentiment seems wholly romantic, there remains in it a hint of melancholy: the speaker is saying his love will last a long time – but that it is not eternal in the purest sense.
Summary of  Lines 9-11			The repetition here of “Till a’ the seas gang dry” is in keeping with the song’s musicality. But in it there is also a hint of reconsideration, as if the speaker has just understood the implications of what he has said. From this, he moves to another attempt to express eternity, yet this too depends on the word “Till”: he will love until the rocks “melt wi’ the sun.” But the rocks may indeed melt one day, or erode, in any case, under the effects of the sun, wind, and weather. At that point that love will cease, so again, his sentiments are not wholly timeless.
Summary of  Line 12			Line 12 also casts some doubt on the speaker’s intentions, since it can be interpreted in two ways. In one sense, he could mean that their love is separate - above or beyond - the sands of time. This indicates that it will last forever and won’t change or end because of time. On the other hand, he almost seems to emphasize the fact that the sands are running, which is to say time is running out, as sand runs out of the hourglass. This direct reference to time also reminds us of the first two lines in the poem: the momentary, time-bound state of a “red, red rose that’s newly sprung in June.” Read in this way, the poem becomes more than the simple love ballad that it seemed initially; instead, it can also be seen as a meditation on the speaker’s consciousness of time and on limits that time can place upon human emotions.
Summary of  Lines 13-16			The last stanza seems to shift away from the predominant concerns of the first three: the speaker turns from the concept of time to that of parting. He is journeying away from his love, assuring her that he will be true and will return. Yet the concept of time enters here as well: the speaker will transcend not only a vast distance (“ten thousand miles”) to be with his love, but also time itself, with words like “awhile” and “again” drawing the poem back to the main concerns of the first three stanzas.
Imagery			A Red, Red Rose: Used to express passionate love. A melodie: Used to express the sweetness of his love. Seas and Rocks:  The speaker is saying his love will last a long time – but that is not eternal in the purest sense. Sands o’life:” The image of the hour-glass shows love’s greatest limitation: Time.
Language	Metaphor		·         “seas gang dry” and “ rocks melt wi' the sun” are both metaphors to describe the eternal nature of his love. ·         “the sands o’ life” demonstrates that time is running out, as sand runs out of the hourglass.
	Simile		·         The speaker compares his love first with a blooming rose in spring and then with a melody “sweetly play’d in tune.”

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