James Schuyler's 'Hymn To Life'

Time is one of the very few things every human on planet Earth has in common. Everyone has to deal with it whether they experience good times or bad. In James Schuyler 's "Hymn to Life," time is represented through many different things and in many different means. This poem describes and fully entangles both the good and the bad that time gives us here throughout our lives. Schuyler manages to offer up conflicting views on time throughout the duration of the poem, and because of this he creates a piece that includes all of the daily struggles and experiences both against and with time. Time is something that can be looked at in many unusual ways, depending on something as silly as the mood we’re in. “Hymn to Life” is a poem about time that just about sums up all moods and shows how time passes right before our eyes. The beginning of "Hymn to Life" starts off by comparing time to the wind. Since Schuyler made this comparison it almost seems as if time in this aspect is sweet and relaxing. Schuyler does a fantastic job of making the world seem so harmless and full of …show more content…
He contradicts his own emotional feel towards it, in such an interesting way that almost makes complete sense. It makes complete sense because this is how us humans get through the day. We are impatient yet tolerant, lazy yet productive, useful yet useless. We want things to happen when we want them to happen, and if they don’t then we get upset. According to Schuyler in “Hymn to Life,” when expecting something to occur, time seems to tick so slowly, “Like a long / Awaited letter that one day comes.” In reality, the entire mail service could have worked extra hours to deliver that letter earlier than its expected delivery date, and we still would analyze it as a long time. This is because it’s something that been thought about time and time again, and as we all know and preach, a watched phone never