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Comparing Tide Rises 'And Longfellow's The Tide Falls'

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The Cambridge English Dictionary defines imagery as, “the use of pictures or words to create images, especially to create an impression or mood.” Both Longfellow and Whittier use pensive imagery in their poetic works. Longfellow uses imagery in his poem, The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls, and Whittier uses it in his poem, Snowbound. Each author uses different techniques of imagery to invoke strong feelings in the reader. In Longfellow’s poem, The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls, he creates haunting and dark imagery. In lines 31-34, he wrote, “Unwarmed by any sunset light, The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm, And whirl-dance of the blinding storm.” Longfellow exercises the senses of sight and feeling in his readers while describing a …show more content…

In Because I could not stop for Death, the speaker says, “Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet, Feels shorter than the Day, I first surmised the Horses' Heads, Were toward Eternity” (lines 21-24) This describes the speaker’s confusion and nonchalant attitude towards the ties between death and eternity. And in I heard a Fly buzz – when I died, the speaker says, “With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz - Between the light - and me - And then the Windows failed - and then, I could not see to see -” (lines 13-16) That quote similarly expresses the speakers journey from death to eternity and also describes her aversion of the fly that was with her though the transition.Because I could not stop for Death is about the speaker and her date with death to visit the tombstone she had been laid to rest in years before. It explores themes of death and mortality as the speaker looks on to her life before death understanding

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