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ESSAY SAMPLE ON "YOUR BEAUTY, MY DESPAIR" |
Your Beauty, My Despair
The statement that "Beauty is truth; truth , beauty" does not hold to be a correct
implication for everyone as far as life goes or the poem "London" goes. This poem written
by William Blake, is about life as he saw it in that time frame and environment of
society. In Blake's, poem the reality or "truth" of young girls having babies out of
wedlock, soldiers being killed in wars, and poor people struggling to make a living does
not look beautiful to me. And so we ask ourselves the question, who does this truth look
beautiful to.
"How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the new born Infants tear, and blights with
plagues the Marriage hearse"(lines 14-16). Having children at a young age and while
being unmarried is an occurrence we see far too much of today in our own society. What
animal can rejoice in this truth of breeding poverty, of child abuse, of ignorance, and
of uneducated children and call it beautiful? Those that are chosen, no forced to lead
our society in the past of our grandparents, are not getting the proper training to do so
because of teen pregnancy and drop out rates. I am reminded of a dear friend of mine who
birthed two children at the age of twelve and thirteen, how she struggled to regain her
childhood but failed miserably. Now she just lives day by day thinking that there is no
hope for her or her children. Blake saw the pain of this and yet he did not rejoice in
its reality, but wept.
"And the hapless soldiers sigh Runs in blood down the Palace walls"(lines 11-12). Yes.
Explain how the truth of families unnecessarily loosing loved ones to war can cause a
merry celebration. A war of hatred or greed that was not their war to begin with, but the
war of governments that didn't quite get what they wanted out of a verbal agreement and
needed the bloody LIBERTY of going into someone else's country and take them over. What
beast laughs in delight at this horrid truth and call it beauty?
"How the chimney-sweeper's cry..." (line 10). The poor struggle in this country every
day just as the peasants of the eighteenth century did. Low wages, bad working
conditions, thousands crying out into the night for just a chance at being more than what
they are. Where is their happiness and wealth? What tyrant sees the beauty in the truth
of these poor lives? The truth that their mentality screams "no matter how hard they work
and try, they can never earn enough to enjoy life, that rest comes with death, that money
and power will always rule and that they will never rule anything." As Blake writes in
"The Chimney Sweeper," "When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while
yet my tongue Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep. So your chimneys I sweep & in soot
I sleep."
Keats writes, "when old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst
of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 'Beauty is truth; truth,
beauty' that's all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know..." (lines 46-50), but Blake
didn't feel or see beauty when he wrote this passage, he only saw the "marks of woe"
(line 4) within this truth of society. So is it that only a tyrant, a beast, an animal,
or a brut be the only soul that can look at poverty or pain and see the beauty in it's
rapture? Yes. As this pattern of a deterializing society continues I can only feel
sadness and remorse for a society lost to its own greed and corruption. But what I do
take from Keats passage is the urge to turn to my brother or sister in any moment of
despair, no matter how life is treating them and say "it will be all right". Maybe this
is the true meaning of Keats's passage.
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