A Days Time :: essays research papers

Centuries apart Robert Herrick and Robert Frost wrote poems illustrating the briefness of life. &8220To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Herrick and &8220Nothing Gold Can Stay by Frost are the two poems which address the limited season hu partity, oddly the time of early twenty-four hourss, has to spend in this life. Both authors use nature to epitomize the shortness of life and the time spent in youth.A symbolismization of nature utilized in both poems is a flower. In plentiful bloom, a flower is in its most beautiful and prolific state. In youth, man is in the same state of a flower in bloom, resplendent and bountiful, notwithstanding the time of beauty for a flower and youth is short. Herrrick states in lines 3-4 &8220And this same flower that smiles today,/ Tommorrow provide be dying,(728) which is a symbol of the shortness of youth. Frost in lines 3-4 &8220Her early leaf&8217s a flower/ But only so an hour,(989) also symbolizes the fleeting time of youth. In the b eginning, a flower and youth are filled with vitality, but in a short amount of time the flower will wilt and die, and the youth will be an adult on a passage to death.The second symbol used by Herrick and Frost is the day youth is dawn, adulthood is midday, and death is the setting of the sun. From the day man is born, he is dying. In the second stanza, Herrick illustrates the shortness of a day the higher in the sky the sun gets, the closer to setting it gets. In line 7, &8220So dawn goes down to day, (990) Frost also addresses the limited time man has in life. Frost&8217s choice of the word down to appoint the action of the sun helps to make the symbol of the day more clear, by illustrating the shortness of a day. Usually one thinks of the sun rising in the day not going down until after noon.