Essay

Greg Raupp Hour 1 Two Poets “Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.” So said Virginia Woolf, a writer of the early 20th century. Two poets of the 1800’s, John Keats and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, each wrote a sonnet during their lives about the challenge of accomplishing their dreams. While the poets had similar outlooks on the status of their aspirations and even shared the same dream, they differed in how they conveyed their desires to the reader. John Keats decorates his work with imagery while Henry Longfellow uses metaphors as his crucial literary device. In //Mezzo Cammin// metaphors are used by Longfellow to examine the speaker of the poem’s dreams and the challenge of making them a reality. He begins by looking back at what the speaker dreamt of as a child, signaled by the phrase “The aspiration of my youth.” This, as Longfellow writes, is “to build some tower of song with lofty parapet.” This is a metaphor for becoming a writer esteemed above all the rest, unscathed by the insults of critics. “Tower” implies that he wants to be revered over the masses, while “song” signals to the reader his choice of profession: he wanted to be a writer. Now, a parapet offers protection to people on the structure, so when Longfellow states “with lofty parapet,” he means that he would be protected. Protected from the scathing remarks of critics, so his reputation would remain untarnished. No matter what the reviews said, the masses would always hold him in high regard as a popular writer. He continues into the second quatrain explaining why he has yet to live this dream. The speaker has been held back by his sorrows, in particular the loss of someone he dearly loved. While many people’s dreams are left empty by laziness and fleeting pleasures, his remain incomplete because of his mourning, or in his words, “sorrow.” Specifically, “A care that almost killed,” implying that his love and connection to this person were so strong it nearly killed him to have that person pass away. Obviously a difficult thing to deal with, this could perhaps be the explanation for Longfellow’s next metaphor. The use of metaphors continues in //Mezzo Cammin// when the speaker finally describes life as an uphill journey. The speaker realizes that he has a long way to go on this venture, signaled by the description of Death as a cataract at the “far” “heights” of the hill. The building of his tower will be no easy feat, as the speaker mentions facing a powerful gust of wind, the “autumnal blast,” on his way up to the top. But he is on his way. One large difference between the two poems involves the literary devices used by the authors. Longfellow relies on two metaphors, one for his dreams and one for death, using these direct comparisons to let the reader know exactly how he felt. Keats, on the other hand, seems to be more of an imagery man. His constant use of adjectives gives the reader a vivid view into what he really feels. Keats doesn’t speak of just any books, but rather “high-piled books, in charactery.” The rest of his nouns are described by words such as “magic,” “rich,” “huge,” and “fair.” These are the pastels Keats arms himself with as he sets out to color his picture for the reader. Directly connecting to Longfellow’s poem, Keats begins his poem with the speaker’s desires as well. The speaker fears that he will perish before he can accomplish that of which he is capable. This is suggested by the use of the word “Before” which follows “When I have fears that I may cease to be.” This point is also strongly buttressed by Keats’ repetitious use of the word “never,” which turns up in lines six, nine, and ten. The speaker is explaining that he is afraid he will leave this Earth before he can realize his dreams. Strikingly alike to Longfellow’s speaker, Keats also writes of someone who desires to be a famous writer. This comes from line three: “Before high-piled books…” where one may infer that the speaker desires to be in books. He also speaks of gleaning his brain, which could mean that he wishes to extract his ideas from his head by way of pen and paper. Since both Keats and Longfellow obviously are poets, and both describe desires to become popular writers, it is not radical to say that the speakers of the poems are the authors themselves. Thus, the similarities of the sonnets could be rooted in the poets’ similar situations: both were males who lived during the 19th century and both were pretty much considered lightweights in the literature world, otherwise they wouldn’t have written poems about not having accomplished their dreams. This yields a paradox. Seeing as how this essay has been written over 150 years since the poems were published, they both must have accomplished their goals, whether it was during their life or not. Through writing about not yet being an accomplished writer, the authors became what they wished. Clearly, there are many similarities between the two sonnets. Both poems deal with philosophies of life, and the authors acknowledge their dreams, which are incredibly similar. Both desire some sort of fame and good-fortune in writing careers. They do contain their differences, such as the point of view taken by each poet and the literary devices they employ. By and large, however, these poems contain the same ideas. This could be because all humans have dreams. Everybody has had an idea or imagined what he/she wants to be like or what he/she wants to do. For John Keats and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, death has confronted them and forced them to look back on their lives and ponder whether or not they’ve lived the way they once imagined. Ironically enough, it was this confrontation with reality that led to them on the path to their fantasies. Not all people get to live their dreams. Not all people fulfill their dreams even after death. Yet sometimes it is the truth that brings our submerged dreams to the top.