gabe's final essay of the year

Gabriel Campbell

Mr. Salsich

English B

5/26/09

 

            Once the future has come, all we have left is the past, but people don’t realize how precious the past is. The past contains memories of everything that we won’t possess again. Memories of friends, memories of homes, and memories on how places used to be (parallelism). Overall, memories has persisted as a recurring theme in the poem Tintern Abbey and my own life.

            A persistent theme in the poem Tintern Abbey was memories. Upon his return to Tintern Abbey, he was flooded with images of how the church used to be. He remembered the “hedge-rows” and “pastoral farms [that were] green to the very door”. In essence, all he had left of the church was his memories. With the church being destroyed, everything he had known of the church was gone. It had been shrouded (fast) in “joyless daylight”. Now, all he had was his memories of the “beauteous forms” that gave him “tranquil restoration”. Without his memories, his Voyage to Tintern Abbey would have been pointless.

            Visiting Pine Point in five years will bring back memories similar to Wordsworth’s. Almost certainly, when I return changes will have been made to the school. There will be areas that have been renovated or destroyed in the past five years. All that will be left of those areas will be the memories I’ve kept. Similarly, walking the hallways of Pine Point will trigger some memories. Even today, I can walk down the hallways and remember jokes Parker and I made in 7^th grade on the way to French class. Walking down these hallways five years from now (participle), I am certain that memories will be present. Finally I frequently reminisce about my class. While we have yet parted, it is pleasant to look back on they five years they and I have spent together. People have matured, people have left, and people have grown closer (parallelism). When visiting Pine Point in five years, all the classes, lunches, tests, and jokes will persist in my mind (tetracolon climax).

            In the Writer by Richard Wilbur, Wilbur hopes his daughter’s dreams won’t die. While listening to his daughter type, he hears frequent stoppages due to frustration. He then states that “it is […] a matter of life or death” for his daughter. What this means is that if his daughter gives up, her dreams will die and become memories. Similarly, he compared his daughters dream to a bird trapped in a room. This bird was flustered and disoriented, and even though it was hurt severely, it kept getting up and attempting to escape. The comparison was that his daughter frequently struggled with her work, much like the bird struggled to escape. The bird never let its dream of escaping the tomb disappear and Wilbur hopes the same for his daughter. Overall, in the poem the Writer by Richard Wilbur, a story of struggles and dreams is present.

            Time passes faster than we think. Five years has passed for both William Wordsworth and myself and the outcome is shocking in some aspects. Cherishing those memories of past life is important. To summarize, the memories that William Wordsworth had of Tintern Abbey and the memories I have of my life have recurred frequently.