Perspective Experimental

FAMOUS POETRY

A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Analysis

In this poem, the poet Edgar Allan Poe, reveals a daydream in which there are two perspectives of separation from reality. The first stanza in the poem reveals a lover leaving his partner through first point of view.  This poem exploits multiple themes such as death, love, the subconscious self, nature, and the human imagination.  It's true that each person may interpret this poem in his or her own way.  Most words in every language around the world have more than one meaning.  Because of this each person reads and interprets a passage or text differently, creating various perspectives.  The second stanza involves sand slipping through the narrator's hand symbolizing time as it goes by.  With each passing moment his reality starts to fade into a dream.  The narrator's perspective on life reveals the effect of time on our daily lives.  Our present day actions begin to turn into dreams of the past. 
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Analysis

Shel Silverstein calls for the rejuvenation of our childhood innocence.  She declares it imperative that people living in joyless situations should leave and find a new place filled with happiness and regaining our childhood sense of euphoria.  Silverstein can't stress enough how important it is that we regain our childhood perspective because through it we are able to see everything differently.  Almost everyone's childhood perspective has allowed them during their childhood to find the good in a negative scenario.  Where there is danger, the child sees excitement.  The same can be said for poverty.  Children new to the idea of poverty don't see the negativity in it because their parents shield them from realizing that they are not in the best of situations.   Instead they see an adventure where a simple spoon can become a sword.  A child's imagination is limitless, creating a new world that stretches the truth passing for reality in the child's mind.  
A Life by Sylvia Plath
Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless thread work of a tapestry.

Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork,
Every one of them permanently busy.

At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper:
Stalling in midair,
Short-reined, pawing like parade ground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy

As Victorian cushions. This family
Of valentine faces might please a collector:
They ring true, like good china.

Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.
The light falls without letup, blindingly.

A woman is dragging her shadow in a circle
About a bald hospital saucer.
It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paper
And appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.
She lives quietly

With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,
The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture
She has one too many dimensions to enter.
Grief and anger, exorcised,
Leave her alone now.

The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea.

Analysis

Sylvia Plath was a childhood prodigy.  She was very talented, but with each talent there came a certain fear to match it.  Sylvia started to isolate herself and become depressed.  Shortly after she started to become afraid of old age.  Her fear and perspective of old age becomes apparent in this poem when she writes "Grey seagull".  Sylvia Plath attempted to suicide multiple times, eventually succeeding with the use of an oven.  Her previous attempts to suicide resulted in failures forcing her to live in a mental institution.  She was compelled to live a life that she despised and feared.  Sylvia is not alone on her perspective of life. Almost all middle aged adults go through a short period of depression after realizing that they're prime years are gone.  Many people can't deal with the fact that eventually as life goes on they will lose both their mental and physical abilities.  In some cases, people will start to lose their memories and in others people will lose the ability to fully control their hands.  The results of old age are able to terrify a vast amount of people.  It's fears and thoughts like these that influence our daily perspectives on life and the way we live it. 
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Sources:
http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/sylvia_plath/poems/18897
http://www.furtopia.org/choice_of_the_week/poetry/perspective.html
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/
See all sources on our bibliography.