nds from the literal sense of the burnt house, to the metaphorical idea of unrequited lost love. And although the shift is somewhat abrupt in idea from the 2nd to 3rd stanzas, it is still a smooth transition. He ties in the burnt, charred house with the empty feeling that remains after a relationship has gone awry. He says, in the last stanza, Like love it wasmis- / used and consumed (39). But after the fire has gone out, the hulk still remains. Williams is saying that after a failed relationship, the person left behind feels as empty and hollowed out as a house that has been burnt. The house has not been burnt to the ground, but rather left standing empty, just as the person in the last stanza is left standing with a vacant feeling of misery and shame (39).In The Heart, another poem dealing with a dying loved one, Williams tells of his 8-year-old sons illness. Sick with a heart condition, Williams personifies his sons heart, calling it the tiniest part of that essence Id always allowed to believe could / stand for the soul (60). He now sees the heart as some lost lunar creature biting too avidly (60). There is great irony in Williams words and feelings. If the heart is diseased, the soul must be diseased as well.All of Williams poems in The Vigil are dark. However, they all share a common thread in that they accurately interpret common situations and emotions in a way that all readers can not only understand, but also feel.Without Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes Birthday Letters would have never been written. Had her father, among other things not haunted her, Hughes would have had no material for this book. The reader can clearly see that Birthday Letters is Ted Hughes statement on his marriage with Plath, as well as his opinion on her and her various problems. Hughes felt like he had to leave her in the end because she was unstable, whereas Feminists and other scholars argue that he was the reason she committed suicide. In his poem The Te...
