Sonnet Squeeze

.Elizabeth Barrett Browning
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE 43: HOW DO I LOVE THEE?

1 How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
2 I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
3 My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
4 For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
5 I love thee to the level of everyday's
6 Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
7 I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
8 I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
9 I love thee with the passion put to use
10 In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
11 I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
12 With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
13 Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
14 I shall but love thee better after death.

 This poem is meant to convince the subject how much the speaker loves them (and possibly not to break up with them, ha ha).  The speaker loves this person with absoluteness, and the love will only grow stronger and immortal after death, where they can be as one in the heavens.

HYPERBOLE is found throughout the poem, especially in lines 12 and 13

HYPOPHORA in line 1

ASSONANCE lines 2,13

ALLITERATION lines 3,5,8,9,11,12

DIACOPE line 1 and 2 (thee), 10 and 12 (my),11 (love)

ANAPHORA lines 7-9

ISOCOLON lines 4 and 5, 7 and 8

HOMOLOITELEUTON lines 6 and 7 (candlelight and right)

EPIMONE lines 2,7-9,11-12

METAPHOR line 4 (Being and ideal Grace), line 14 (After death) 

The use of hypophora in the first line helps the speaker to set up the poem in order to explain the depth of his love.  The use of anaphora helps to articulate the point of the poem by saying how the speaker loves them.  Epimone is used to drive the point, (I love thee, I love thee, I love thee,).
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Michelle Rhodes

Claude McKay, AMERICA
1 Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
2 And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
3 Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
4 I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
5 Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
6 Giving me strength erect against her hate.
7 Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
8 Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
9 I stand within her walls with not a shred
10 Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
11 Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
12 And see her might and granite wonders there,
13 Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
14 Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

This sonnet’s metaphor focuses on the comparison of America to hostile forces. Its tenor is that America is not an easy place to live. Its vehicle is its serious of description of dangers, challenges and obstacles: ‘bread of bitterness,’ ‘tiger’s tooth,’ ‘cultured hell,’ and ‘her walls.’ At line 8, however, the metaphor changes as the climax is reached. The speaker begins to describe his reaction to all the hardships. Its primary rhetorical devices, aside from metaphor, are metonymy and personification.

Line 1: Alliteration: “bread of bitterness”

Line 2: Alliteration: “tiger’s tooth”

Line 3: Parenthesis: “Stealing my breath of life”

Line 4: Metonymy: “cultured hell” and personification: “cultured hell that tests my youth!”

Line 5: Simile: “Her vigor flows like tides into my blood.”

Line 7: Simile: “Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood”

Line 8: This is the climax—the shift in the direction of the poem—where he begins to explain his reaction to America’s challenges. It also contains a simile: “Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state.”

Line 9: Metonymy: “her wall” for boarders

Line 10: Crot: “Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer” where the irregular flow of the words induce a sense of chaos. The reader stumbles over the phrase and must slow down as they read.

Line 12: Metonymy: “granite wonders” for mountains, and broader, the landscape

Line 13: Personification: “touch of Time’s unerring hand” and Alliteration: “touch of Time’s”

Line 14: Simile: “Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand”
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Kelley Sanders

Remember by: Christina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more, day by day,

You tell me of our future that you plann'd:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

This sonnet exemplifies the relationship between the speaker who is preparing to die and their love one they will be leaving behind. This sonnet uses a lot of metaphors for dying. Rossetti relies on the pathetic appeal to move the reader into feeling sympathetic for the person dying and the person they are leaving behind. The sonnet itself seems to be a epimone, dwelling on “remember me”. Rossetti also rhymes in this sonnet.

 In lines 1-2 of the sonnet we see two different metaphors for death being- “gone away” and “silent land”. 

Line 2 and 3 has an example of asyndeton, “silent land; When you come…”  

Line 3 is an example of alliteration, “hold me by the hand”. 

Line 4 has an anaphora, “day by day”.  

Line 7 has an example of asyndeton, “Only remember me; you understand”. 

In lines 13 and 14 we see antithesis, “forget and smile” “remember and be sad”.
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English 5730 is taught by Dr. Richard Nordquist.
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Savannah, Georgia 31419
912-921-5991