Repetition
What do we do when we want to get a point across? We repeat it—over and over and over again. The speaker of "Sympathy" uses repetition in a way that allows us to understand how he's feeling, thro...
Violence
This is a poem about a bird, but this bird isn't flying around, chirruping happily from tree to tree. It's a poor little birdie that's been hurt. While we might think that a poem about a bird would...
Singing
Birds singing—how lovely. Hang on a minute, though. When a bird sings, we might think that it's all happy and joyful. It sounds so pretty after all, doesn't it? But the speaker reverses our expec...