Stress Poems

The Second Coming

by William Butler Yeats

Here is a summary and critical analysis of ‘The Second Coming’ by William Butler Yeats, looking line by line at what this poem is about and why.

The Underground Baby Case

by Jackie Kay

‘The Underground Baby Case’ by Jackie Kay conveys the feelings and choices of a woman who lost her own child and stole someone else’s.

There came a Wind like a Bugle

by Emily Dickinson

‘There came a Wind like a Bugle –’ by Emily Dickinson depicts the incredible power of the natural world. She describes a day when a storm nearly destroyed a series of homes. 

There came a wind like a bugle;

It quivered through the grass,

And a green chill upon the heat

So ominous did pass

Winter Landscape, with Rooks

by Sylvia Plath

‘Winter Landscape, with Rooks’ by Sylvia Plath depicts a dark landscape. It’s used to symbolize how the speaker, and perhaps the poet, was feeling.

Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,

plunges headlong into that black pond

where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan

floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind

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