"The Arrow and the Song" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1.I shot an arrow into the air,
2.It fell to earth, I knew not where;
3.For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
4.Could not follow it in its flight.
5.I breathed a song into the air,
6.It fell to earth, I knew not where;
7.For who has sight so keen and strong,
8.That it can follow the flight of song?
9.Long, long afterward, in an oak
10.I found the arrow, still unbroke;
11.And the song, from beginning to end,
12.I found again in the heart of a friend.
In "The arrow and the song" by Henry Wadsworth Longefellow, he uses a central metaphor to compare loss and sadness to friendship. In his first two stanzas he talks about how he shoots off an arrow and then he looses it, and how he is not sure where it is going and he looses it and he is sad, but he doesn't know what to do. "Could not follow it's flight" (4). He is puzzeled and he does not know figuratively where to look for it. But then in the second stanza he talks about how he sang a song and it was lost, and he was said but he says "For who has sight so keen and strong,/That it can follow the flight of a song?"(7-8). He is very sad that he has "lost" the song and he is puzzeled again with the song as he was with the arrow.
In the last stanza however, he finds that even though he had lost the arrow it was "still unbroke" (10). And it was the same with the song "from begining to end"(11). But the last line of the poem really brings it together, "I found again in the heart of a friend" (12). I think that what he means by loosing the arrow and the song is that sometimes in a friendship we have arguments and things don't always work out exactly how we have planned, and we are can leave things in a mess. But, as he says in the last stanza, they are still unbroke, which means that the friendships that we had before are unbroke, they are still as they were before we had a fight, and that we need to treasure friendships. By using this central metaphor, Henry Wadsworth Longefellow is showing that friendship can be difficult but it will always be there and we need to treasure it.
4 comments:
I like the poem you chose. I agree with the way you analyzed it, by saying that "Friendship can be difficult but it will always be there and we need to treasure it." Anyone can relate and you did a nice job explaining it!
This poem has a very and smmooth feeling. I really enjooy this poem! Wonderful analysis!
This poem really meant something to me. I like all the support you included in your post and the part about having "lost" the song. Friendship can be difficult.
Nice analysis,
Hey Ruth! Great analysis. The topic of your poem was nice because the majority of the poems that I read recently were about death while yours was about freindship (: Your theme was great. I agree that despite it's difficulties, friendship is a thing to be treasured.
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