You should begin to structure this essay by looking at the dominant themes in the five poems you have been asked to draw upon. This ensures that you will be able to illustrate the points you make. The poems share a pessimistic, ironic outlook on life. The major theme of Swift's poem "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed" is the gaping chasm between appearance and reality. This is emphasized by the difference between the title, which leads the reader to expect a description of beauty and grace, and the disgusting physical details actually related. The theme of Swift's poem "A Description of the Morning" is rather similar. In a Romantic poem with this title, the reader would expect a description of natural beauty as the birds begin to sing. Swift, however, gathers together the most sordid aspects of morning in the city.

Goldsmith is less savage than Swift, and his themes are more difficult to pin down. There is both admiration and satire in his portrait of the village schoolmaster, and this excerpt generally shares the tone of elegy and nostalgia of "The Deserted Village," the poem from which it is taken. The other two Goldsmith poems make fun of the banality of conventional language. "On the Glory of Her Sex," in particular, makes use of a characteristic technique of Goldsmith's by ending every verse with an inane truism, saying that the subject never slept except when she closed her eyes, or that if she had lived a year longer, she would not have died today.

The following are themes you might consider: the dichotomy between appearance and reality, the way in which grandiose descriptions hide the sordid nature of life, the effects of time and old age, and the disappointments that await the optimist.