The bracelet as a symbol of joy to the poet
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The first poem talks about a bracelet and the poet talks about how special it is to the poet. The bracelet is a symbol of joy to the poet and as it is in the stanza, the poet only ‘wears it on special occasions’. That expression shows the worth of the bracelet that is attached to it by the poet. Being an object of only special occasions, then it means that the bracelet is of high importance or value to the speaker in the poem. The bracelet is evidently of great importance even from the first stanza that reads ‘old gold bracelet’. Yes, the bracelet is old, but it is of gold. Gold itself is an object of value, and only a small quantity of it would return a high value. By the fact that the bracelet is old, it is of gold and the speaker in the poem only wears it on a particular occasion. It is common that if a person has a thing of high value, then at each time the item is accessed it will bring some good feeling.
The speaker feels like putting on the bracelet forever, but its high value only makes him, or her keeps it and wears it on special occasions. The poem has symbolism, as the bracelet and the ‘shine bright’ symbolize joy (Mahoney, p. 11). The poet goes ahead to write that in the dark days, it ‘reminds me to smile’ portraying the feeling associated with the item that makes it gives a good impression even on bad days. The poem has a rhythm pattern that makes a reader flow through it. Even though there is no regular rhyming scheme, the reader can flow to the rhythm of the poem. The poem brings a good mood to the reader and has a flow of ideas presented by the poet, personifying the bracelet by referring to it as ‘her’ in the second stanza.
The second poem talks about life, and compares it to an old beautiful painting of high value that no one has ever thought of acquiring it. The poet tries to portray speaker’s feeling about life and thought of the actual person to care about it. The speaker in the poem can be a woman, who is trying to show the type of a person who can be her suitor. The person who will value her life, erase the sad past and stay with her ‘until death’ as it is in the final stanza. When the speaker says her life is a beautiful painting in an art gallery, it means that there are more paintings, meaning there are more lives. However, the speaker tries to justify why there is yet no person who has expressed interest in her life by saying that it is of higher value. Maybe the speaker has not yet identified a person who matches her life too.
The poet uses a metaphor in the first stanza saying ‘life is an old beautiful painting' (Mahoney, p. 27). This compares life to an old beautiful painting, and by the fine art being old in a gallery, already gives readers a picture of how valuable the painting may be that no person has ever tended to afford it, or relate its cost to its value. The poem can be given different titles relating to the life and its value, and it cannot be presumed to be obvious. It presents a normal mood to the reader that is neither sad nor happy mood just to express how the speaker portrays life and the feeling of a person to take charge of it.