How William Shakespeare and Billy Collins poems' are different.

Essay by dude13College, UndergraduateA, April 2004

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Poems are compositions in verse which might have several interpretations based on the readers` comprehension. All poets like William Shakespeare and Billy Collins use metaphors, similes and personifications to help the reader to relate what the poets are saying to an individuals` life or experiences. Although both poets have different styles of writing, they both seem to have some things in common. For example, they both use metaphors, similes and/or personifications to do comparisons and both of them seem to focus on life, love and/or death. The use of comparisons in both writing styles help the reader to relate the message carried out by the poets to his/her life or experiences.

In "Sonnet 116" Shakespeare contrasts true love from love which isn't true love when he says "admit impediments; love is not love/ which alters when it alteration finds." He also says true love is "an ever - fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken."

In this quote, Shakespeare compares tempests to difficult situations in our lives. I think he implies that true love will remain unchanged even in our worse situations and will never give in to divorce, adultery and long periods of misunderstanding or quarrelling. To Shakespeare, true love exists forever and does not even succumb to death. "Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,/ but bears it out even to the edge of doom." (Shakespeare). In this sonnet, time is being personified. Shakespeare implies that true love prevails even at the point of death, in other words, death cannot separate people who are truly in love hence there is an interaction between the living and dead so long as true love exists. Even though true love is eternal, time changes the physical appearance of an individual possessing true love, "love's not time's...