Skip to main content

What do the poems "Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats and "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge" by William Wordsworth have in common?

Both “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (William Butler Yeats) and “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” (William Wordsworth) describe beautiful and peaceful scenes involving water. Yeats longs to go to the island of Innisfree in Ireland, and he thinks about what it would be like to live there. In contrast, Wordsworth describes the skyline of London as he sees it himself from a bridge that crosses the River Thames. Yeats uses his imagination to put himself into a remote place. He would be alone. Wordsworth looks at a large city in the early morning, before most people are awake. It won’t be long before the bridge will be bustling with bodies and traffic. Yeats uses more senses here than Wordsworth does. He notes the differences in light; but he also mentions the sounds of the bees and the water lapping gently. Wordsworth concentrates on the way the morning light shines on the buildings. Both poets find beauty in these places, even though they are opposites as landscapes. And both find a connection to the universe here – “the deep heart’s core” and “that mighty heart” – that they can feel pulsing beneath them. Both men are tuned in to what goes on around them, no matter where they are.


Structurally, the two poems are quite different. “Innisfree” has three stanzas that each follow an ABAB rhyme scheme. “Westminster Bridge” is a sonnet of 14 lines with a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBACDCDCD.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more