Poetry+Comparison

For this assignment I have chosen the poems __Erosion__ and __Where the Sidewalk Ends__. These poems, to me, have very little to do with each other in terms of Theme, but have much of the same structure.

The theme of Erosion is about biding your time. It tells us that, like the ocean carving into the granite walls, we need to persist with our goals. If we do not exercise patience we won't be able to reach our goals. Meanwhile the poem Where the Sidewalk Ends tell us of childhood, and how children have such good points of views. Where Erosion says the longer you try and older you become you will succeed, Where the Sidewalk Ends says that we should stay children and keep their imaginary world with us. __Erosion__  It took the sea a thousand years,  A thousand years to trace The granite features of this cliff, In crag and scarp and base.

 It took the sea an hour one night,  An hour of storm to place The sculpture of these granite seams Upon a woman's face.

 __Wher e the Sidewalk Ends __ 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 t he children, they mark, and the children , they know The place where the sidewalk ends.

 Both of these poems use frequent rhyme and rhythm throughout the poems, highlighted in blue. The second poem has much more, but Erosion has more rhythm in it. They have a pattern where on line will have eight syllables and the next has 6. Where the Sidewalk Ends uses some repetition, highlighted in green. I think this sends the meaning across more, making the words sink in. When it starts the three lines with the same two words I pictured the things adding on, forming an image in my mind layer by layer. In the poem Erosion they compare what happened in an hour to what happened in a thousand years (highlighted in pink). This is relevant because it shows that somebody can keep doing something for thousands of years and barely any differences will have been made, but if you change the circumstances a little bit it could be thoroughly altered. In Where the Sidewalk Ends the author compares the two places, reality and the place where the sidewalk ends, showing the contrast. They show that in the imaginary world of children they can leave the dark streets and enter a world where the 'sun burns crimson bright' and 'the grass grows soft and white'.