Compare and contrast John Donne and Edgar Allen Poe

br Compare and contrast John Donne and Edgar Allen Poe Compare and Contrast John Donne and Edgar Allen Poe "Annabel Lee ' stands as one of the most famous love ' poems of the nineteenth century , although it 's stature is certainly matched by John Donne 's seventeenth century masterpiece "the Anniversary " a poem which uses a number of similar poetic images and devices , but rests upon an entirely different form and theme . Each of the poems indicates the impact the poets ' individual biographies exerted upon their literary works and philosophies

Poe 's Annabel Lee

' is steeped in musical diction and meter with a view toward creating a lyric tension between the sweetness and musicality of the poem 's meter and form and the more profound and perhaps less idealized potency of the poems themes : which is human mortality . By combining technical precision with a theme of magnitude Poe pursued his policy and prescription for poetic composition as outlined in his essays The Poetic Principle ' and the Rational of Verse ' The Philosophy of Composition ' the notions of his negligible 'Philosophy of Composition ' and 'The Poetic Principle Its resources seem devices . Every effect seems due to an expedient . The repetend and the refrain are reliances with him -- not instrumental , but thematic . At least they constitute rather than create the effect -- which has therefore something otiose and perfunctory about it (Foerster 239

The opening lines : It was many and many a year ago / In a Kingdom by the Sea ' signal the intention not only to create a musical pattern with words as by the deliberate redundancy of many and many ' but also to posit and idealized world against that of grim reality . The repetition of many reveals that the ideal time of a Kingdom by the Sea ' has passed and this generates an immediate thematic tension Similarly , Donne 's poem begins with an evocation of time past : All Kings , and all their favorites /All glory of honors , beauties , wits The Sun itself , which makes times , as they pass / Is elder by a year now , than it was / When thou and I first one another saw " In both poems , the hearkening back toward an idealized time first glimpsed at the poem 's beginning will recur throughout the body of the poem in both imagery and diction : in Poe 's poem , as an obvious refrain , in Donne 's as a series of extended modulations of the original theme . The technical consequences are obvious : Poe 's poem will impress itself upon memory much more easily than Donne 's . However , each of the poems seeks to articulate the subjective and personal experiences of the poet through universally understood symbols : Kings , Princesses , the sun , the sea

The thematic consequence is a different matter . Poe 's succinct and mathematical form serves to enhance the poem 's grave themes of personal loss and morning , sparking within the poem an indelible timelessness , an eternal melancholy , which is precisely the theme of the poem . One can imagine the poems meter and rhyme...