Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Ralegh's "What is our life?" uses the metaphor of life as a play to convey the transience and insignificance of human existence. He compares life to a "play of passion" and a "short...

In "To His Son," Sir Walter Ralegh warns his son about the dangers of reckless behavior. The poem uses the metaphor of a tree, a weed, and a wagging rope to symbolize the perils that can lead to a...

Walter Raleigh's "A Farewell to False Love" conveys the speaker's rejection of deceptive relationships, using metaphors to emphasize false love's hidden dangers. He compares it to a "poisoned serpent...

As one of the earliest accounts of Guiana, Walter Raleigh's The Discovery of Guiana depicts the land through a colonialist lens as as an unspoiled virgin territory ripe for European appropriation. He...

Sir Walter Raleigh's "On the Life of Man" compares life to a theatrical play. Life is portrayed as a passionate drama, with laughter akin to intermission music, and birth as preparation in a dressing...

Sir Walter Raleigh's poem "Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay" can be analyzed as a tribute to fellow poet Edmund Spenser, praising his work The Faerie Queene. Raleigh uses the sonnet form to...

The poem "To His Son" by Sir Walter Raleigh explores themes of caution and the dangers of destructive combinations. Addressed to a young boy, it uses metaphors of wood, weed, and wag to symbolize...

Sir Walter Ralegh's poem "On the Life of Man" compares life to a theatrical play, emphasizing its transient nature. He uses poetic conceit to illustrate how life is like a drama, with God as the...

The sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, with a pronounced caesura, or pause, near the middle of the poem. There are effective emphases on the monosyllables “the wood” and “the weed,” to which...