Comparision of Two Poems

Sara Teasdale was an American poet in the early 20th century. Her major themes of poetry were love, nature’s beauty and death. During Teasdale’s life, she did not have a happy marriage and always suffered from poor health. Thus, she expressed her passion in her poetry. This paper will compare and contrast how Teasdale uses image and tone to emphasize the meaning of her poems “The Tree” and “Love and Death”. Whereas both “The Tree” and “Love and Death” utilizes image to depict the speaker’s desire, the tone of speaker in the poem convey its meaning differently.

In both poems, the poet use figurative image. In "The Tree" the poet writes, "To have my heart as hare as a tree in December."(3) By comparing a heart to a bare tree, Teasdale allows the readers to understand that all leaves are gone during the winter time and the tree becomes empty, just as the speaker's heart wants to be free and doesn't want carry anything. In "Love and Death," the poet states, " [Shall my soul] Remember nothing, as the blowing sand [f]orgets the palm where long blue shadows creep [?] Or would it still remember." (3, 4) Teasdale compares soul with sand to consult both sand and soul do not have memory. The speaker is questioning if her soul will forget his love like sand does not remember where it goes or it will still remember without restriction. The poet uses literal image in "The Tree" and "Love and Death," however, the picture is depicted differently. For example, “The Tree” says “If anyone pass and see/On the white page of the sky /Its thin black tracery.” Teasdale uses color “black tracery” and “white page” to assure you can only see the branching lines hanging in the sky, just as you draw some black lines on a white sheet of paper. There is nothing to see if there is no leaf on the tree. By contrasting with the poem “Love and Death,” Teasdale uses different literal image. In line 11 of “Love and Death,” it says, “The desolation of extinguished suns, Nor fear the...