"The Chimney Sweeper", "My Papa's Waltz", "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun", "Lonely Hearts", "Death Be Not Proud"

  William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” was a little unusual to me. It rhymed really well but the point was a little hard for me to understand. William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” was a little unusual to me. It rhymed really well but it was a little hard for me to understand. From what I gathered the speaker (Tom) was a boy who seemed to have a rough life, his audience was whoever was listening to his story. The main setting of this poem is Tom’s dream. After Tom wakes from his dream he is in much better spirits, I know for me whatever I dreamed about influences how I feel in the morning.

“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke was a poem I enjoyed. The speaker is the child in the poem remembering a special time he had with his father. I believe the father may have even been trying to teach the child how to waltz from the line “you beat time on my head”. This makes me think the father was trying to help the child keep time with the dance, which is very important to be waltzing correctly. This poem had rhyming words at the end of every 2^nd and 4^th line of each stanza.

 At first I thought the speaker in “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” did not love his wife, and was thinking bad of her. Then I realized he was just speaking the truth. Most poems about a person’s lover just gushes about how they are absolutely prefect, which is far from reality, in this one Shakespeare says exactly how he feels. I found the most humorous line was, “Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks”. Most people do not think about how their significant others breath smells, but are aware that it does. This poem follows the traditional form of a sonnet.

I enjoyed the poem “Lonely Hearts” by Wendy Cope. Each stanza was three lines except the last. The lines “Do you live in North London? Is it you?” and “Can someone make my simple wish come true” alternates in each stanza, and at the end both are combined. This poem is, as the title implies, about people with lonely hearts who are looking for love, or at least companionship. Each stanza is a completely different person looking to meet someone. In this poem the speaker could be someone reading the personals or each person seeking their lover. The audience would be variable also depending on who the speaker was.

“Death Be Not Proud” is also a sonnet like Shakespeare’s poem. The speaker is addressing why death should not be proud. I doubt the speaker fears death, it seems she almost feels sorry for it because it is a slave to several and connected with poison, war and other negative things. In this poem Death is personified. The speaker is addressing death as a physical being. This was not a poem that I truly liked, I had more questions than answers.