How would you describe and immortalize the person you love? Would you describe your love for them in a joyful way or in a melancholy way? Would you stay by their side, till death do you part or would you make sure that people could read about your love, for all of eternity? Even though, in both poems, “Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer’s Day? (Sonnet 18)” by William Shakespeare and “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, describe and immortalize a loved one, they have similarities in their use of nature imagery to show how they expressed their love and how they memorialize their loved ones, Shakespeare tends to uses more delightful images while, Poe’s imagery is a bit more melancholic.
The narrator of Shakespeare’s sonnet uses nature imagery to describe his lover. The sonnet starts out by asking, “Shall I …show more content…
Poe’s usage of nature imagery is not as much as Shakespeare’s and has a little bit more gloom to it. The first stanza of the poem we know that the narrator is a young man and is telling of his lost love. We know that his lover, Annabel Lee, is dead because the narrator of the poem uses past tense when speaking about her; “That a maiden there lived whom you may know” (3). The first image, the narrator gives is in the line; “In a kingdom by the sea,” (2). We get the image that the sea, in this poem, is huge, lonely, and cold. It’s a reflection of the emptiness and desolation the narrator feels because he has lost his love, Annabel Lee. The narrator continues this unhappy imagery by saying that wind killed her in the dark of night; “That the wind came out of the cloud by night, / Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee” (25-26). The narrator uses haunting imagery to say that his love has never died for her; “For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams / Of beautiful Annabel Lee; / And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;”
The narrator of Shakespeare’s sonnet uses nature imagery to describe his lover. The sonnet starts out by asking, “Shall I …show more content…
Poe’s usage of nature imagery is not as much as Shakespeare’s and has a little bit more gloom to it. The first stanza of the poem we know that the narrator is a young man and is telling of his lost love. We know that his lover, Annabel Lee, is dead because the narrator of the poem uses past tense when speaking about her; “That a maiden there lived whom you may know” (3). The first image, the narrator gives is in the line; “In a kingdom by the sea,” (2). We get the image that the sea, in this poem, is huge, lonely, and cold. It’s a reflection of the emptiness and desolation the narrator feels because he has lost his love, Annabel Lee. The narrator continues this unhappy imagery by saying that wind killed her in the dark of night; “That the wind came out of the cloud by night, / Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee” (25-26). The narrator uses haunting imagery to say that his love has never died for her; “For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams / Of beautiful Annabel Lee; / And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;”