Surprised by Joy and William Blake’s poem, The Sick Rose...

William Wordsworth’s poem titled â€Å"Surprised by Joy† and William Blake’s poem, â€Å"The Sick Rose† employs a range of poetic techniques to highlight the pain that love can create. On the other hand, John Clare’s poem titled â€Å"First Love† and Robert Burns’s poem, â€Å"A Red, Red Rose† contrastingly explore the theme of love as a positive to be celebrated. William Wordsworth’s poem titled â€Å"Surprised by Joy† is a sonnet which uses simile, personification, metaphor, emotive language and a question to highlight the pain love can create. The poet uses the simile â€Å"impatient as the wind† to emphasize the fact that life is like the wind, it comes and goes as it pleases. In this case, the â€Å"wind† is used as a symbol for ‘life’. â€Å"Silent tomb† is a personification which shows that his love, being his daughter, is dead and cannot respond to him. The metaphor â€Å"have I been so beguiled as to be blind† is used to highlight the grief and pain his daughter’s death has caused him. â€Å"Grievous love† is an emotive language which is used to show how much heartache and misery love can bring us when it is lost. The question â€Å"how could I forget thee?† is used in this poem to stress the importance of his memories of his deceased daughter which being the only thing that he has of her. The poet successfully expresses his opinion on how much pain love can create through his use of various poetic techniques. Similarly, William Blake’s poem, â€Å"The Sick Rose† uses personification, symbolism, oxymoron and rhyme to