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The Tables Turned: Summary 1st Stanza:“Up! up! My Friend, and quit your books;Or surely you’ll grow double:Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;Why all this toil and trouble?” Here, the poet tells his friend to leave all his books and get up to come along with him. He says that if he doesn’t read… Continue reading The Tables Turned: Summary: 2022

The Bangle Sellers Critical Analysis Naidu’s poetry is best known for her use of imagery and contemporary Indian themes. Among her other poems, this poem stands out as a social message that discusses the lives of Indian women and the lives of bangle sellers. Although the poem focuses extensively on the stages in the life… Continue reading The Bangle Sellers: Critical Analysis, Central Idea, and Theme: 2022

‘The Bangle Sellers’ was published in the 1912 collection of poetry called The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death, and the Spring. The poem depicts a group of bangle sellers who wander from town to town to sell their inventory.  One of them becomes the narrator or the speaker of the poem. About the… Continue reading The Bangle Sellers: Summary: 2022

The Gift: Analysis A transcendent poem on motivation and kindness, ‘The Gift’ achieves that unique outlook of a spiritual holism. The poem takes a holistic approach towards healing, be it physical or spiritual. The poem is tender in its portrayal of a father-son relationship.On the literal level, the poem describes a memory where the poet… Continue reading The Gift: Analysis: 2022

About the Poet: Li-Young Lee was born in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1957 to Chinese parents. His great-grandfather on his mother’s side was the famous Yuan Shikai, the first Republican President of China. His father was a physician who served Mao Zedong.  His father soon relocated to Indonesia where Lee was born. There his father played an instrumental… Continue reading Summary of The Gift by Li-Young Lee: 2022

“That’s Success”, a poem by Berton Braley, is an immensely inspiring poem, that sums up what real success is in a nutshell so profoundly, that one cannot help but re-read it many times to gauge the magnanimity of the message within. The poem is an important note to the self, where elements of success, small… Continue reading Stanza-wise Summary of That’s Success by Berton Braley: 2022

Asleep in the Valley: Analysis The poem begins almost lazily, with attention to details like the slow pace of the stream, the reflection it makes on the grass, and the ample sunlight. Like the slow stream that passes through the valley, the poem advances to the second stanza. The second stanza brings our eyes to… Continue reading Asleep in the Valley: Analysis, Central Idea, and Theme: 2022

The poem is about the death of a young soldier whose body lies among the ferns and flowers in a valley. This poem is most probably written in the October of 1870 but was published in the collection called Anthologie Lemerre in 1888. It is known to have been written in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian… Continue reading Asleep in the Valley: Summary: 2022

This sonnet certainly speaks of the poet’s beloved, but it speaks of his own poetry more than that. Sonnet 18: Analysis In this sonnet, Shakespeare praises the beauty of his beloved but does so in the service of his poetic craft. He knows that the individual human body cannot survive the passage of time and… Continue reading Sonnet 18: Analysis, Central Idea, and Theme: 2023

About the poet: William Shakespeare is best known as the greatest dramatist of all time. However, he is also considered the first national poet of England, who brought his country much prestige at a time when nations such as France and Italy had led the rise of the European Renaissance. He is remembered as the… Continue reading Summary of Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare: 2022