similarities in work by Emily Elizabeth Dikinson and David Herbert Lawrence

Essay by PHATCAT97College, Undergraduate January 1996

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Although Emily Elizabeth Dikinson and David Herbert Lawrence lived and wrote during two different times, and in different parts of the world, their poetry contains many similarities. At the time Dikinson was being laid to rest in Massachusetts, Lawrence was born in Nottingham, England. Also, along with the likenesses, they both have many differences. These affinities and dissimilarities can be seen in poems written by these authors dealing with snakes.

The first disparities can be seen in the meter of these two poems. Lawrence writes his poem, Snake, in a free verse style, whereas Dikinson writes her untitled poem as she did many of her poems, in iambic tetrameter and trimeter. The meter of her poem shifts in every other line from four meters to three. "A narrow fellow in the grass, Occasionally rides;", exhibits this form of rhythm. Lawrence's free verse style is also a characteristic of many of his works.

His poem contains no conventional style of meter, only alternating long and short lines which can also be witnessed in the structure of the poem.

The rhythm and the structure of these two poems directly influence one another. Lawrence and his free verse style are reflected in the long and short lines in his poem, whereas Dikinson's structure is more of a conventional structure. Lawrence has no set number of lines per line or stanza. Dikinson, on the other hand, has four lines per stanza and although no set number of words in a line, the meter is repeated throughout the poem. Once again, we see two diverse styles from the two authors.

When we examine rhyme patterns of the two poems, we begin to see similarities between the two authors. both authors seem to ignore a strict rhyme pattern. Lawrence appears to have absolutely no...