Hardships In The Poem Life's Tragedy '

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Poem “Life’s Tragedy” depicts Dunbar’s hardships in his life, but desiring to be on top. Alfred Edward Houseman’s poem “Be still, My Soul, Be Still” asks the reader to pause and explore their souls to know what true love is and experience the sensation coming from the heart. Both poems have a sorrowful tone, with vivid imagery and shifts through content. The common scheme of both works is exploring your own life and self-reflect upon your thoughts. “Life’s Tragedy” shifts around Paul Dunbar’s life which is broken down to how he sees misery, how his life shifts through tragic stages and how he depicts it. In the first stanza, sorrow begins of being “[miserable] not to sing at all.” He later finds it worse “never to be

The first stanza states that it is simple to understand the feeling of love, but we “think rather” difficult to explain. “The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long” depicts the feeling when we are dead and arrive to meet and grin at Jesus. From this sorrowful tone houseman then takes us to this negative aspect of life where people do not sleep, “tears fell down, [but he] did not mourn”. So, vivid he described how “sweat ran and blood sprang out” but he never felt sorry. But then at the end, at the last line he talks about being born indicating he was born into this painful world. The third stanza is followed with a comment of why “muse [because he] never found a reason”, because all Houseman did was just walk the earth and pondered. The final thought is just to “endure an hour and see injustice done” which makes the reader presume that he is dead and just sat there. In the first line of the final stanza we are taken to “high heaven” which does prove he is deceased. “All thoughts to rive the heart are here and are all vain”, are twisted with “horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation”. In the end it turn out to be a dream because he woke up and wonders when he will “sleep again?” Leaving this man in the sorrowful world he wanted to leave. Self-reflecting upon your very own thoughts is really helpful because it helps you realize who you are and your character based upon those thoughts. Both poems taking this meaning with vivid imagery, the sorrow they want to leave, and the shifts of content help the reader understand these hardships. “Be still, My Soul, Be Still” by Alfred Edward Housman, tells you to think about life. “Life’s Tragedy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar tells we are the ones who hold ourselves