Happiness Happiness, to some, elation; Is, to others, mere stagnation. Days of passive somnolence, At its wildest, indolence. Hours of empty quietness, No delight, and no distress. Happiness to me is wine, Effervescent, superfine. Full of tang and fiery pleasure, Far too hot to leave me leisure For a single thought beyond it. Drunk! Forgetful! This the bond: it Means to give one's soul to gain Life's quintessence. Even pain Pricks to livelier living, then Wakes the nerves to laugh again, Rapture's self is three parts sorrow. Although we must die to-morrow, Losing every thought but this; Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss. Happiness: We rarely feel it. I would buy it, beg it, steal it, Pay in coins of dripping blood For this one transcendent good. Amy Lowell The Happiness There’s a happiness, a joy in one soul, that’s been buried alive in everyone and forgotten. It isn’t your barroom joke or tender, intimate humor or affections of friendliness or big, bright pun. They’re the surviving survivors of what happened when happiness was buried alive, when it no longer looked out of today’s eyes, and doesn’t even manifest when one of us dies, we just walk away from everything, alone with what’s left of us, going on being human beings without being human, without that happiness. Jack Hirschman | The term “metaphor” comes from the Greek word, “metaphora” which means to transfer (etymonline.com). Metaphor is used through the poems, “The Happiness” and “Happiness”, to express the theme of happiness. In the poem, “The Happiness” the metaphor is used by Jack Hirschman in order to show that everyone has the ability of being happy, most of the people bury it in their souls. On the other hand, In Amy Lowell’s poem, “Happiness”, the metaphor is used for revealing how happiness makes feel better and relaxed. The persona of the poem, “The Happiness” uses metaphor in order to reveal that, these days people tend to live unhappy because they hide their happiness inside the depth of their souls, and simple things like jokes and puns don’t cause the true happiness. In the second stanza, the speaker showed what is not happiness, “It isn't your barroom joke/ or tender, intimate humor/ or affections of friendliness/ or big, bright pun.” Jokes, humor and puns are not happiness because they don’t make people feel good in a long term. As the poem continues, in the third stanza the persona explains what happiness is with metaphors, “They’re the surviving survivors/ of what/ happened when happiness/ was buried alive, when/ it no longer looked out.” In the poem happiness is compared to “surviving survivors” in the human souls. “Surviving survivors” are buried, but they are still in somewhere in the human soul. The persona used this metaphor in order to show that still everyone has a trace of happiness, even though this feeling is suppressed in today’s people. In the Jack Hirschman’s poem, “The Happiness” the metaphor is used to define what happiness is, Jack Hirschman explained that, today’s people tend to suppress happiness, even though the real happiness makes us feel contented of our lives. However, in the poem “Happiness”, Amy Lovell revealed, how happiness make herself feel comfortable and relaxed. In the first stanza she compared happiness to hours of silence: “Is, to others, mere stagnation./ …/ Hours of empty quietness,/ No delight, and no distress.” The persona remarked, that happiness is for some people nothing but indolence. But later, in the second stanza, the persona revealed what she thinks about happiness and how it makes her feel. She compared the happiness to the wine: “Happiness to me is wine,/ Effervescent, superfine.” She used the metaphor of wine in order to emphasize how happiness makes you forget your sad memories, and gives you pleasure. Despite the fact that, for some people happiness is something which makes people lazy, according the speaker it makes feel better, relaxed and comfortable. In both poems, theme of happiness is revealed throughout the usage of metaphors. But the two poems expressed the meaning of happiness in different aspects. In Jack Hirschman’s poem, the happiness is revealed as something more complicated than jokes and puns, the real happiness make us feel better in a long term, but unfortunately we tend to suppress happiness. On the other hand, Amy Lowell stated that, happiness make people feel more comfortable, and it makes us forget our painful memories. Although the two poems explains happiness from different aspects, both of them agrees that happiness is a good thing for people. Works Cited: Amy Lowell - Poem Hunter Comments. "Happiness Poem."Poemhunter.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2015. <http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/happiness-242/comments/>. Hirschman, Jack. "The Happiness." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 07 May 2015. <http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/happiness>. "Online Etymology Dictionary." Online Etymology Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2015. <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=metaphor&allowed_in_frame=0>. |
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