Poetry Analysis Mezzo Cammin free essay sample

The poem Mezzo Cammin by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow explains his regretful life and his reasoning at why he didn’t live it to its full potential and how he looks at his past. It then looks to his future as being near and bearing a huge weight down on him. The way Longfellow talks about his life is depressing. He doesn’t speak of the good accomplishments, only the things he hasn’t done until he looks back into the past and then forward at how the future may be. In the first part of the poem Longfellow talks about his life being halfway over and everything that stopped him from really living his life. In the very first couple of lines he says â€Å"I have let the years slip from me and have not fulfilled the aspiration of my youth, to build some tower of song with lofty parapet. † This talks about what he wishes he could’ve done while he was young and the things he wishes he accomplished were extraordinary things, so his regret is unneeded in my perspective. We will write a custom essay sample on Poetry Analysis Mezzo Cammin or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page He goes on to explain he cared to much about the world around him to get the things he wanted done, â€Å"Of restless passions that would not be stilled, but sorrow, and a care that almost killed, kept me from what I may accomplish yet;†. After telling of all the regrets he has, he metaphorically explains his life as a hill and he is at the peak looking back to the past. He sees it as a city â€Å"A city in the twilight dim and vast, with smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights†. The way he explains the city seems very peaceful. The way he describes soft bells and gleaming lights doesn’t seem like a horrible place to be. This makes his look on his past questionable as if he sees the regret as something silly now, and he doesn’t still feel those feelings because his past was a good place. Or in another view he could be seeing his past as boring and nothing really occurred. He describes it as night time with smoking roofs which could be perceived as a quiet place where nothing exciting happens. This could be how he sees his past life and why he regrets not having accomplished many things. At the end of the poem, Longfellow speaks of the future. He describes it strangely, â€Å"And hear above me on the autumnal blast The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights. † These lines are very open ended and in one way he could be speaking of death as far away by the way he describes the thundering waterfall very high up. The reference to height could mean its at a good distance that he can see it, but its still far away. It could also mean he has more of his life to live up to and his regretful past doesn’t mean much to him anymore because he has his future to look forward to as he is on his metaphorical hill of life. In another view, he could be describing death as being right around the corner and him looking right at it when he describes the waterfall. You could look at it as him having a life threatening disease and him knowing his death is coming soon, which could also describe the way he views his past full of regret. If he knew the end is coming soon and he doesn’t believe he fully lived his life to how he wishes, the regret is understandable and the cataract of death makes sense in this point of view. Overall, this poem shows the past, present, and future of the writer. His life is full of regret at points and then seems hopeful in others. This poem could be viewed in many ways but mostly you understand it as a man who wishes he could change his past because he knows his future is near and his life will soon be coming to an end. References Greene, Erica, Tugba Bodrumlu, and Kevin Knight. Automatic analysis of rhythmic poetry with applications to generation and translation. Proceedings of the 2010 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing. Association for Computational Linguistics, 2010. Austin, Norman. Archery at the dark of the moon: poetic problems in Homers Odyssey. Vol. 302. Univ of California Press, 1975. Dorf, Carol. Composing Mathematical Poetry. CAMPBELL, MARY BAINE. cc Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita. Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages (1998): 15. Anderson, Ashley, et al. Historical-Biographical P1. WILCOX, JOHN C., EMILIO PRADOS, and Ignacio Javier Là ³pez. Jardà ­n cerrado (Nostalgias, sueà ±os, presencias), 1940–1946. (1998): 576-578. Hatzfeld, Helmut A. The problem of literary interpretation reconsidered. Orbis Litterarum 19.2†4 (1964): 66-76. MDZ. Yeats at Thirty and Seventy. Poetry (1936): 268-277. Scanlon, Mara, and Chad Engbers, eds. Poetry and Dialogism: Hearing Over. Springer, 2014.