Epitaph

An epitaph is a short text honoring a deceased person, most of the time written on a tombstone. From this, we can tell that it would have been after the death of someone that this is written from the lines “It now says, ‘Cease; at length thou hast learnt to grind / Sufficient toll for an unwilling mind’” (1079). Life seems to have told this person that he has done everything he was meant to do on earth and now must leave. That person seemed to have a fulfilling life in that there was nothing else “sought in [Life] much more than thou couldst find” (1079).

The Convergence of the Twain

This poem is to tell the loss of the Titanic and how it had sunk. The Titanic was a large ocean-liner that was supposedly unsinkable from its sheer size. However passing through the ocean, it had struck an iceberg and sank, killing two thirds of its passengers. The Titanic was a magnificent ship “Deep from human vanity” (1076). The elegance of the ship was incomparable to any ship in its day; everything about this ship gave the creators a pride close to those who created computers. However the ship was under the spell of the “Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything” (1076). Soon the “unsinkable” ship sinks from an iceberg. Before there were no radar like today, only people on post looking out into the sea. They knew icebergs were out there but had no way of maneuvering around them in time if they had ever come close to one, especially in the dark ocean.

Spring and Fall

After reading this poem, I get the idea that the moral of this poem is to tell a child no matter what, there will be changes that they are unable to change. Margaret is grieving over the fact that the leaves are changing and the time is coming for fall. Hopkins tells the child that when he/she gets older, there will be other “sights colder /By and by, nor spare a sigh” (776). However one thing I did not understand is why is it that the child will mourn for Margaret? Is that Margaret the same from the beginning of the poem?

God’s Grandeur

From looking at the title, this seems to have some religious aspect in it and it got my attention on how the idea of religion has changed from the past to the time of this poem. However it seems that it has the same implications that previous authors explain: don’t ignore God and love him. The question “why do men then now not reck his rod?” comes from people not believing in God and doing whatever they please (774). They don’t seem to fear God as He wishes to be feared. However God’s love seems to be ever lasting and “though the last lights off the black West went / Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs” (775).

Symphony in Yellow

This poem seems to just write down what a person sees from a painting. Describing in detail all the aspects of a picture and the color yellow and how the picture seems to show the movement of yellow in the picture. Descriptions like “Big barges full of yellow hay/ Are moored against the shadowy wharf, / And, like a yellow silken scarf, / The thick fog hangs along the quay” (831). The color yellow is described nearly all of the picture till it fades into the river and turns into the color green.

The Subjection of Women – John Stuart Mill

I believe that this passage is one of many that has a big influence or should have an influence on the rights of women. “The legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality” (521). I could not have said it better myself. One problem of the past was that men were always right and women were only second. Never was a women praised for what she did; it was always given to a man affiliated with that woman. The legal subordination of one sex to the other only hinders the growth of the human race and it did for so long.

Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen

The duty of women seems to be the support behind their man. They are in the need “to be of essential service in aiding the judgments of their husbands, brothers, or sons, in those intricate affairs in which it is sometimes difficult to dissever worldly wisdom from religious duty” (556). The role of women seemed to expand from housewife to “house-caretaker” in that they must organize everything under the house, including the people. They help men discern right from wrong, help them to be “a wiser and a better man” (557). “The sphere of their direct personal influence is central, and consequently small; but its extreme operations are as widely extended as the range of human feeling” (558). This sentence states it perfectly what a woman does and her influence. No matter how small that sphere of influence may be, it is one that is important.