Letter From Heaven

So, digging all the way back to my senior year of high school, I found this poem and thought I'd share it.

Letter From Heaven

Live in the moment,

Laugh through the pain.

Life is to short to cry because of rain.

When you are hurting and

Thoughts on Thomas Hardy's Poetry

This is an essay that I wrote for my English Literature class last semester in response to some of Thomas Hardy's poetry.  

            The reading assignments this week, consisting of selections from the poetry of Thomas Hardy, were very interesting and enlightening.  I am familiar with Thomas Hardy as a novelist, having read two of his novels and seen the film adaptations of two more, but I was unaware of the fact that he was a poet as well.  All of Hardy’s poetry is beautiful and enjoyable to read, but the poem that stood out to me the most was “He Never Expected Much”. 

“Never, I own, expected I / That life would be all fair.

‘Twas then you said, and since have said, / Times since have said,

 In that mysterious voice you shed / From the clouds and hills around:

 ‘Many have loved me desperately, / Many with smooth serenity,

 While some have shown contempt of me / Till they dropped underground.”

(NEAL 2325-6)

            This excerpt stood out to me because the first two lines are fairly accurate of my attitude towards life.  I don’t

Thoughts on a Poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Continuing with some essays I wrote last semester, this one was also written for my English Literature class, this time about the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  

As we transitioned from learning about the Romantic Era and its poetry into learning about the Victorian Era and the poetry produced in that time, one of the poems that really struck me was “The Lotos-Eaters” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  The entire poem, with its theme of wanting to give up, stand still and rest, I found really fascinating, but I particularly connected with this stanza:

They sat them down upon the yellow sand,

Between the sun and moon upon the shore;

And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland

 Of child, and wide, and slave; but evermore

 Most weary the wandering fields of barren foam,

 Then someone said, “We will return no more”;  

And all at once they sang, “Our island home

 Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.” (NAEL 1959)

 The sentiment expressed in this excerpt is one that I feel

Thoughts on Robert Browning's Poetry

This is a short essay that I wrote last semester for my English Literature class.  Throughout the semester we were to write responses to what we were reading.  These are some thoughts I had upon reading Robert Browning's poetry. 

Robert Browning was a poet who was not understood or appreciated in his lifetime.  His contemporaries thought that he was too difficult to read and understand.  While it is true that his poems are not as easy reading as other poets, such as his wife, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Robert Browning’s poems are rich and deep with meaning, full of beautiful imagery and symbolism.  His poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” is a perfect example of this.  The eighteenth stanza of this poem in particular stood out to me:

Better this present than a past like that;

Back therefore to my darkening path again!

No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. (NAEL 2067)

            The feeling expressed in this stanza is one that deeply