Poem+Comparison

Poetry Comparison - 7 and 10 7. The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I marked the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

10. Shadow

The sun decides to enter from the garden

moving on the carpet he touches all your furniture crawls under your closet door investigates your wardrobe

moves his arm across your memories substituting light heat and silence

he erases last year's conversations with the stars changes the contents of your mirrors invents an alternative palette for your crystal

scrapes his nails across brocade revealing tangled threads like contours on a map

he polished your tables his brilliance clings to cutlery till spoons become large bright incisions all across the grain

a weight of gold and heat he stops burning at the flesh of your neck

you are the only shadow in the room.

Both poems are many stanzas, however, the first one follows a clear a-b-a-a-b rhyme scheme (wood, both, stood, could, undergrowth) while the second one does not follow a rhyme scheme. Even though one strictly follows a rhyme scheme and one does not, they both seem to flow very nicely, like well-written poems. Also, the first one has the same number of lines per stanza, while the second poem has various lengths for each of its stanzas.  The meaning of the first poem it about trying new things, to make the difference. The second one is about the change when the sun rises; the new atmosphere. These poems both use nature to get the message across. Both poems can be thought of as inspirational and vivacious(Be yourself) ,although they do illustrate different concepts.

In the first poem, there are a lot of metaphors involved (Two roads, one traveller, and come back are metaphors for two futures, one person, and the ability(actually more like the inability) to relive an event). The second poem has extensive use of personification; the sun is a living person in that poem; it could crawl and investigate. They both base the poem on one poetic device and mostly use that for the entire poem.