Questions tagged [poetry]
Poetry Is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning.
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Parse Pope's "they humbly take upon content"
From Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism II.305–310:
Others for language all their care express,
And value books, as women men, for dress:
Their praise is still—"the style is excellent":
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Why "when we first begun" in Amazing Grace?
In the hymn Amazing Grace, the final verse reads thus:
When we've been there 10,000 years
Bright shining as the sun
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we first begun
Given that we ...
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Using brackets / ellipsis in quotes; also, citing poems?
When using a bracketed form of ellipsis, would I also bracket the period at the end of a quote ended early?
Ex.
"What god drove them to fight with such a fury? / Apollo the son of Zeus and Leto. ...
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Terminology: Does a judge have a career in "litigation"?
I'm working on a song parody, satirizing a notably litigious group of people, and have run up against a little issue of "accuracy of terminology" and "phrasing that reflects my ...
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Is the rhyme scheme about the ending sound or two sounds? [closed]
I'm an English language arts teacher, and I teach poetry. Used to tell my students that the rhyme scheme is about the ending sound of each line; like AABB, ABAB, etc. And when you find multiple lines ...
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Is there a name for this kind of loose pseudo alliteration? for example, gold -> glitter, crown -> king
In Norse poetry, to the fastidious skald, a word like take is not considered to alliterate with train, but a word like track does alliterate with a word like troop, and tear does alliterate with tin.
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What does 'haply' mean in Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale'?
The following line occurs in Keats's poem 'Ode to a Nightingale':
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne
It seems to me that 'haply' means either, as Merriam-Webster says, 'by chance', or, ...
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What does 'pards' mean in Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale'?
John Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale' contains the line "Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,".
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the ...
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Where can I find information on the prosody of a poem?
Where can I find out what the meters, feet, and stresses are in a poem? I found a website where you can guess where they are, but the website doesn't provide answers.
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Eighteenth-century pronounciation of "wax"
In "Against Idleness and Mischief"(1715) ("How doth the little busy bee"), Isaac Watts rhymes "wax" and "makes".
Were these two words pronounced the same at the ...
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Do "radiant" and "brilliant" rhyme for the purposes of poetry? Wiktionary says their transcriptions are /ˈɹeɪ.di.ənt/ and /ˈbɹɪljənt/
Is this a dialectal/idiolectal thing, where some merge /i/ and /j/, and others don't? I'm ESL and always thought they're merged until now.
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What is the sentence structure for this verse in John Keats' "The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!"?
He writes:
When the dusk holiday—or holinight [—][some versions put another em dash here]
Of fragrant-curtain’d love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight,
Should I read a ...
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Who is being fed in "Did hourly feed him by" from Walden, or, Life in the Woods? [duplicate]
There was a shepherd that did live,
And held his thoughts as high
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
Did hourly feed him by
From Walden, or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau
I'm confused ...
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Understanding the line from Gunga Din
So, in Kipling's Gunga Din, there's a piece in the second stanza:
The uniform ’e wore
Was nothin’ much before,
An’ rather less than ’arf o’ that be’ind,
For a piece o’ twisty rag
An’ a goatskin water-...
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What is the reason for the absence of articles in in "... with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door" in "The Raven"?
The seventh stanza of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven reads as follows:
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
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