“Maggie and milly and molly and may” is written in the tone and style of a nursery rhyme and is marked by both its skillful use of alliteration and its complex end-line and internal rhymes. Nursery rhymes do not all share a single poetic form or meter, but they are generally marked by their use…
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maggie and milly and molly and may – Themes
The poem “maggie and milly and molly and may” represents one of e. e. cummings’s experiments with rhymed couplets. True to his disregard for formal rules of writing, cummings does not rhyme every couplet in this poem. It is also a perfect and, on the surface, simplistic expression of his belief that the outer self…
maggie and milly and molly and may – Summary
Line 1 Here the speaker of the poem introduces the four characters. Notice how the repetition of the “m” sound in each of the girls’ names gives this line a musical quality, like a melody, and makes it sound like a nursery rhyme. Such repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words is called…
The Lamb by William Blake – Analysis
It is easy to dismiss “The Lamb” as a sentimental or naive poem. Simple in its structure and vocabulary, it leaves no difficulties of interpretation. Unlike some of the Songs of Innocence, it does not force the reader to consider ironies or ambiguities involved in the state of innocence. The only question the child speaker…
The Lamb by William Blake – Poetic Devices – Setting
“The Lamb” consists of two ten-line stanzas which pose a question and give an answer. Each stanza has five pairs of rhyming couplets, where the end word of one line rhymes with the next. Note that Blake often repeats a word to create this rhyme, creating a type of refrain, and twice employs the slant…
The Lamb by William Blake – Themes
Innocence When Blake published Songs of Innocence and of Experience in 1794, he subtitled the book, “Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.” The qualities displayed by the child speaker in “The Lamb” are an example of what Blake meant by the state of innocence, which may be found in children but is…
The Lamb by William Blake – Summary
Lines 1–2 One of the most famous poems in Blake’s collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience, “The Lamb” establishes its theme quickly in the first two lines. When the narrator asks the lamb if it knows who created it, it is not calling attention to the biological parents. The narrator specifically asks about the…
Having A Coke With You – Analysis
Frank O’Hara’s love poem “Having a Coke with You,” written to his lover Vincent Warren, takes as its theme the function of aesthetics. Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that concerns beauty and taste. Questions it attempts to answer include: what makes art, art?; why do we like some kinds of art and not others?;…
Having A Coke With You – Themes
Art and Experience “Having a Coke with You” privileges the flux of experience over the static nature of art. Rather than representing a thing, such as a face or a horse and its rider, O’Hara’s poem attempts to represent the rush of emotion itself. O’Hara captures the breathless quality of experience by launching into the…
Having A Coke With You – Poem Summary
Lines 1–10 The first line of “Having a Coke with You” is a predicate to the title. The speaker lists the reasons why he would rather have a Coke with the person he loves. The list of names in the first line refers to the cities in Spain on O’Hara’s itinerary. The second line refers…