Old age and the passage of time

Springtime and new life

These images symbolize nothing

I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence

I doubted if I should ever come back.

Then took the other [road], as just as fair, / And having perhaps the better claim, / Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain.

They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

“But thy eternal summer shall not fade”

“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see”

Shakespeare wasn’t sure if a summer’s day was an appropriate comparison, and wanted validation that it would be a good metaphor.

This first line of the sonnet proposes a possible metaphor for the author’s beloved, and the rest of the sonnet carries out the implications of this possibility.

The lover described in the poem is so clearly the opposite of a summer day that the comparison is laughable.

Slums and ghettos

Mississippi…Alabama…South Carolina…Georgia…Louisiana

Go back to

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

I can resist everything except temptation.

To imply that Othello is somehow evil while Desdemona is completely innocent.

To incite the anger of Desdemona’s father and other Venetian statesmen.

To create suspicion about Othello’s moral character.

All of these.

to indicate an abrupt stop or change in tone or thought

to insert a second thought, update or correction

to emphasize a dramatic pause

To stay in a comfortable, safe grammatical place.

To create tension, haste or urgency giving the words power

To provide easily understandable text.