#2 Petals

Petals

by Amy Lowell

Life is a stream

On which we strew

Petal by petal the flower of our heart;

The end lost in dream,

They float past our view,

We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,

Crimsoned with joy,

We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;

Their widening scope,

Their distant employ,

We never shall know. And the stream as it flows

Sweeps them away,

Each one is gone

Ever beyond into infinite ways.

We alone stay

While years hurry on,

The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

(I put a picture of pink heart candle,

since candles eventually burn out and will disappear,

but the beauty and fragrance is still left)

TITLE: I was very appealed to this poem by the title. I knew that it related to flowers, and guessed that it’s a beautiful poem about life and nature. However, I also thought about the petals of the flowers falling down gradually because of death.

PARAPHRASE: Life doesn’t just stay where we always want to stop and when we are ultimately happy. Like petals falling down from the flowers after some period of time, or waters dropping from the petals, it explains how life travels down the stream. We never know how our life is going to end up; our past, memories, and life will eventually end up, but our life will be remembered as “beautiful.”

CONNOTATION:

• Imagery- “Petal by petal the flower of our heart”


• Hyperbole- “Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy”


• Rhyme Scheme- abcabc (ex. Stream strew heart, dream view start)


• Metaphor- “Life is a steam”


• Personification- “on which we strew”, “While years hurry on”

ATTITUDE: lovely, beautiful, soft, peaceful, mysterious, joyful, thoughtful, hopeful

SHIFTS: Even though I don’t really think that there are ‘shifts’ in this poem, the middle part where it starts with another paragraph slightly shows a shift. The first paragraph was telling how life has to go on, and how it travels so fast like a petal. However, on the second paragraph, it’s “kind of” indicating that life is beautiful, and our fragrance is left in this world. It’s hopeful and encouraging, which I like, because I think the endings are very important when it comes to poems.

TITLE: The petals are connected to our life and relationships. It shows how our life is so simple and based on just one flower, however, our beauty is left in this world. Petal is the metaphor of how our life is being traveled and moves on.

THEME: The poem is somehow saying not to give up and not to be depressed about how time flies and our best moments goes away. That is life. It never seems to end, but we can never also keep only our best moments.

February 14,08

Grace Lee