Fabien Calloud

Do not go gentle into that Good Night

Dylan Thomas
In this poem Dylan Thomas is talking about death as the word “dying” appears four times.
The author talks about how people should fight against death as if fighting against it will
make you become a better than you were before you, we’re about to die. The sentence
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” appears four times suggesting that it’s the
authors way of telling better to die fighting death than submitting yourself to death without
a fight. In this poem the author presents emotions such as lost, desperate even, grief. All
these emotions relate back to the main theme, death. The author uses these emotions to
capture the attention of the audience and to rely a message telling all of us, readers, that we
should not give in to death as it would be the easy way to leave this world, but to fight
against it and live to die another day. The title and the first sentence of this poem which
appears another three times, “Do not go gentle into that good night”, is very important to
this poem. The sentence refers to what the author wants to tell his audience that by living a
good life those faced against death will see how their life was important. In this poem the
author uses a clear metaphor, “good night”, which refers to death. Finally, the poem also
talks about his father where he only mentions it in the last paragraph. We can assume that
the poet is talking about his father which he wants him to fight against dying.

Nothing Gold can stay

Robert Frost
In this poem Robert Frost is talking about the process of life and its different stages
throughout its time. The important message to take away from this poem is that during a
life nothing stays forever and that everything disappears at one point. This may seem as a
sad way of thinking but the poet describes the change and the disappearing of some things
as the beauty of nature. The poem’s first line “Nature’s first green is gold” refers to the start
of spring when the leaves starts to grow. The word “gold” is used to describe this
phenomenon as for the poet the start of the leaves becoming greed is worth more than
gold. The poem then describes the transformation of the first leaves evolving through the
spring as we can imagine. The mood of this poem seems to be joyful, happy, calm, all
positive emotions however the last line may suggest that his emotions changes because of
the flowers that grew die at one point. The poem also references Eden in line 6, talking
about the Garden of Eden and it’s beauty.

The lamb and the Tyger

William Blake
In the poem “The lamb” the author is talking about a conversation between the child and a
lamb. The child asks questions to the lamb as if the child is figuring out what is the lamb
doing. The main point of this poem is the child asking its origins to the lamb. The poem is
giving the readers a deeper awareness of life. Although the question the child asks, “Little
lamb, who made thee?” is a simple one to answer the child however, it brings up a deeper
meaning of life and the creation of everything. The idea of the poem here is that the child is
having a philosophical conversation about life.
This poem is similar to the previous poem because it based on a question that started in
“The lamb”, in the last sentence of the fifth paragraph, “Did he who make the lamb make
thee?” references to the previous poem. The idea of this poem is how a creature like a tiger
is created. Some of the words that are used in this poem can be associated with anger or
even evil. This poem also talks about the creation of life.

No man is an island
John Donne
This poem starts with the sentence “No man is an island” meaning that a person can sustain
life himself and therefore the person needs another person to maintain society. The author
here is using the image of an island to reinforce his point being that a person cannot be a
society on his own. In the poem the author is using different examples to point out his
example, such as “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”, reinforcing the
idea of living with other people and by doing so the society grows in a better direction. The
mood in this poem nor good or bad but in the middle, there is no pleasure but there is no
negative emotions that come out from this poem. This poem gives us a deeper awareness to
our society and how co-existing with each other is essential to our survival.

The world is too much with us

William Wordsworth
The author in this poem talks about how the bond with nature has been corrupted, “we lay
waste our powers”. The author is having negative emotions towards the world, he is angry
that the world has been destroyed because nowadays the people are more focuses on the
material, they possess rather than the connection they have with nature. The anger the
author presents can be clearly seen throughout this poem. The awareness that the poet is
trying to say is that we should not be focused on spending so much time on worrying about
the material we possess but to think about everything that is around us, such as nature. He
also talks about he wished to be “A pagan” which he would think would make things better.
The author says in the third line, “Little we see in Nature that is ours” as a reference to all
the spending and getting which makes us ignore the nature that is right in front of us.