“The Dream”

“The Dream”

By: John Donne

After reading over this several times and stopped waiting for something to jump out at me, I realized this text has apparent alliteration and the ends of some of the lines, such as “dream” and “theme”, and also “best” and “rest”, and so on throughout the poem. I feel that this adds more flow to the poem and helps the reader to better comprehend what is happening at the end of each stanza. The use of alliteration also draws more attention to that particular line or phrase, and the repetition of these letter or sounds signifies that this is of some importance to the poet and a message that they may be trying to convey with just these simple words.

Next I noticed that he uses personification to describe love as being “weak” and describes fear as being “strong”, I feel this gives the text more depth and imagery, it helps the reader to engage a bit more when the poet is more descriptive and fun with his/her words. It almost makes the object seem more alive if one personifies it into taking on characteristics of a human. One may even use personification in describing something because it is important to them in some way, shape, or form and wants that to be communicated through the object being “alive” like a person, not just an object.

I also noticed a lot of repetition throughout, but especially in the beginning and towards the end. He repeats “thee” in almost every stanza as well as repeating “thou” and “thoughts” all throughout. This means there is some significance for him with these words or maybe even that the usage of these words were simply the only way he knew how to get across what he was trying to portray.