Poems have these magical messages that can be interpreted differently by every person who reads the specific series of lines that were meant to convey mixed emotions. This is also considered a form of art as these are the basic characteristics that these literary works have, hence giving such meaning to a person’s life just by reading it.

This article will give an example of how to compare literary works and learn to analyze them deeply. Having such critical thinking skills, like those judges in spingenie.com, will always be important in everything you do. Now here are the poems that will be compared to each other, I Am by John Clare and The First Tree by Lenore Hetrick.

The First Poem – I Am by John Clare

I Am

John Clare

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live — like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither a sense of life nor joy,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where women never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

Synopsis of the Poem

I Am by John Clare, was about a person tired of life, alone and thinking about how life goes by and reminiscing about what life was like when there were no problems and other circumstances that can take place in a child’s life. As the flow of the short poem goes by, it can be seen that the whole poem focuses on an affective stylistic, At the beginning of it it radiates a gloomy feel, lifelessness, and almost giving up on everything. The words were picked properly to make the readers relate to what the writer wanted to convey.

The first stanza focuses on the feeling of something pulling a person to the darkness which can be interpreted as severe depression wherein everything in life has lost its purpose or meaning. The flow made it more convincing because of the consumption of sadness into being consumed by it by the symbolism of shadows. Next is reminiscing about the success, this is the important part of the poem because it can explain the emptiness that was described in the first stanza. The shattered dreams and motivations that began to disappear were explained thoroughly by symbolisms like the ship that underwent shipwreck.

A ship that was once visible and began to vanish on site, this was interpreted by the author as the lost dreams of the character. It can be easily felt by the readers because the symbol is deep but understandable by the keen eye. The last stanza was the calm of the storm but not totally, it can be seen as another dream but also a sign of giving up. It can be taken as a positive note because at some point the person in the poem was thinking happy thoughts about being a child but in the end, it will make them realize that it is a sign that wishing that all things should stop there, all the pain should stop, hence just giving up and not do anything about the situation.

The Second Poem – The First Tree by Lenore Hetrick

The First Tree

Lenore Hetrick

Nature looked across the seas
She had newly made.
“Now,” said Nature, “Life must have
A place of cooling shade.

All my creatures shall have rest
From the sun’s high tide.
Underneath a leafy bough
Shall my creatures hide?”

So out from the deep black earth
Rose is a mighty tree.
The hill wind sang a song of welcome.
“Greetings!” roared the sea.

When the sun had reached its zenith
In the tree’s cool shade
All the creatures lay them down,
And they were not afraid.

Ever since the tree has flourished,
Mighty – and yet kind!
Nowhere else can beast or man
Sweeter solace find.

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Synopsis of the Poem

The second poem, The First Tree by Lenore Hetrick, is a literary stylistic type of poem that focuses on mother nature by describing the first tree and what was its importance to the organisms on earth. It started by saying that nature made something, it is as if a mother birthing a child. It can be described like that, but it focused more on a more symbolic way of delivering every line as a typical literary style of writing. As it progressed, it told a story of how the tree helped the organisms on Earth and the author focused on it until the end. The range of vocabulary used was not that complicated, just the right amount to make the readers understand the story without revealing the main objective of giving the importance of trees to our environment.

In compassion, both told a story but the intensity of the words that were delivered and the emotion conveyed by Clare’s are much more advanced than what Hetrick did. That does not mean that there is a much better poem because they both served their purpose, as Clare’s focused on delivering a message that appeals more to the emotion, the flow can also tell a glimpse of the life that the character in the poem and make the reader feel what should be felt. The second one also wanted to tell a story, but it was used to inform the person that trees are important to nature because they can benefit the organisms around it.

Concluding Lines

Overall the literary and linguistic styles portrayed by both authors were significantly alike but how the story went and the things that they wanted to instill in their readers were different. Clare’s poem was short but effectively made the reader feel what the poem should convey to the audience. Feeling the emotion can also be an advocacy of letting other people feel what those persons who were in that situation felt for them to empathize with them, and make them realize that there are persons who are going through these kinds of stuff.

The poem became an eye-opener for me because as a person inside a pandemic, it can be felt that I am somewhat alone, maybe not in the degree of the person inside the poem, but in a way, can relate to the sadness that they felt. That is how effective the poem was for me. Lastly, Hetrick’s can be more related to those victims of the typhoons where they got no roof above their heads and those floods can be correlated to the lack of trees. As what the author wants the people to realize, may it be a simple message but sometimes these kinds of poems can be an opening for an educational conversation about the topic that needs to be addressed.