Hi! I need help urgently for my assignment. I'm supposed to compare and contrast the 2 poems paying particular attention to the ways in which the poets evoke the persona's feelings which are prompted by the situation.
PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!!

RAIN


Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be for what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.
-edward thomas-



All Day It Has Rained


All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground
And from the first grey wakening we have found
No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap.
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream,
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers - I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home; -
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,

And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees;
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.


And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard's merry play,
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o' Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty - till a bullet stopped his song.



Alun Lewis


Thanks a mil!!

the ways in which the poets evoke the persona's feelings ...

I'm guessing persona means the speaker in each poem? I have not read these two before, but it would seem the one by Alun Lewis is referring back to the other by Thomas, although the shoulder o' muttun thingee escapes me. Perhaps the place it was written?

They both sound like war poems to me, intending to evoke a bleak/hopeless response in the reader. So the question is then, how does the poet use language to evoke the proper response in the reader?

They are both in iambic pentameter, it appears, one in blank verse and the other in heroic couplets. Are those good choices? One then looks for words and/or sounds that give feelings of despair & hopelessness. We see Thomas's starts out with repetition, for example. Lots of 'L' sounds to lull you. What imagery is used for the same purpose?

I don't want to do the work for you, but such are the directions I would look if I were doing the assignment .

Thanks so much for your help! The directions were extremely helpful in aiding me to understand the requirements of the essay. I was stumped by the question at first after i have annotated the poems. Well, Thanks again!