Horace Smith: Poems Literary Elements

The poem entitled ‘’Ozymandias’’ is told from the perspective of a third person objective narrator.

The poem ‘’Prologue to a Charade’’ is written in iambic pentameter.

An important similarity appears in the poem ‘’Prologue to a Charade’’ in which the narrator compares the life of the common people with the role a person may play while on stage. This comparison is important because it transmits the idea that people in general are extremely dishonest when it comes to revealing who they truly are and their true nature.

We find an alliteration in the lines ‘’At eight below par:/I Dawdle to my club at ease,/ And light a mild cigar.’’ These lines appear in the poem ‘’Young England’’.

We find an irony in the poem ‘’Prothalamion’’ in the second stanza of the poem when the narrator discusses those who want to gain as much power as possible. In the beginning, every person who wants power claims they will use it for the greater good and to help those who are less fortunate. Ironically, those people end up doing the complete opposite, using their power to promote their own agenda.

The poem entitled ‘’To a Scientific Friend’’ is a meditative poem through which the narrator tries to explain why poems have a real practical value and why a person should not be quick to dismiss poetry as having no value at all.

The action described in the poem ‘’Ozymandias’’ takes place in a desert in the present time, or rather the time when the poem was written.

The tone used in the poem ‘’Prothalamion’’ is an accusatory one, the narrator using the tone in this poem to transmit to the reader just how he really feels towards the characters mentioned in the poem.

The protagonist in the poem ‘’Love and Liberty’’ is the bird which escaped from its cage and the antagonists are the other birds of prey which try to and succeed in killing the little bird.

In the poem ‘’To a Scientific Friend’’, the major conflict is presented as being between the poet and the scientist. The reason why this conflict arises is because the scientist criticizes the poet for the way in which it decides to present reality. The poet also decides to criticize the scientist, accusing him of robbing Nature of its beauty and charm.

The poem ‘’Love and Liberty’’ reaches its climax when the little bird is killed by the birds of prey.

In the first stanza of the poem ‘’Young England’’, the narrator mentions how ‘’something strange’’ has grown in the society in which he lives in. This line foreshadows the later negative attitude the narrator exhibits when it comes to accepting the way in which society changed and developed.

In the beginning of the poem ‘’Love and Liberty’’, the narrator transmits the idea that the most important thing a person can which for his Liberty. This however is an understatement as just in the next stanza the narrator claims that love is far more important than liberty and that a person should be ready to give up liberty in favor of love.

In the poem ‘’The Curate to his Slippers’’ the narrator alludes towards the idea that the good deeds which one person makes or the meaningful work which a person does will always be seen as tiring in the end and many people will abandon them just because they want to have a more comfortable life and to avoid any type of suffering, at all costs.

In the poem ‘’To a Scientific Friend’’ the narrator addresses a character simply referred here as ‘’you’’. The pronoun is used here as a general term to make reference to those people who refused to acknowledge that poems have a real value and who regarded poetry as something which only push other further away from the truth as well.

We find a personification in the line ‘’saith the stone’’ in the poem ‘’Ozymandias’’.

We find a hyperbole in the line ‘’The feelings rise and bubble’’ in the poem ‘’To a Scientist Friend’’.

We find an onomatopoeia in the line ‘’To earn applause or ward the critic's sneer’’ in the poem ‘’Prologue to a Charade’’.