The Wild Honeysuckle Poetry Analysis

In Philip Freneau’s poem The Wild Honeysuckle, he is creating a metaphor for our life. Throughout each stanza, Freneau explains a portion of the cycle of life by comparing it to a flower.  The first stanza portraying a child in the whom, growing and unharmed. The second stanza resembles the baby going through childhood. The third stanza is a person in the prime of their adulthood. They are experiencing new thing and learning as they go through life. In the last stanza the flower is compared to the end of the human life cycle. Freneau mentions in the second line of the last stanza “At first thy little being came,” this meaning that the flower came into life and it has reached the end of its cycle.

Through the poem, Freneau uses a variety of different literary devices. The flower itself is personified. The nature is personified by the planting of the flower in the guardian shade and sending soft waters murmuring personify the nature in the poem by. The poem is also set in a specific structure so that the audience easily reads it. The poem is set into four stanzas, and within each stanza is six lines. The lines are set to the rhyme scheme ABABCC. It is also structured in that the first four lines of each stanza address and describe the flower, and the last two lines tell the fate of the flower.

To me the flower means much more to the speaker than just a simple honeysuckle. The speaker speaks of the honeysuckle in a very sympathetic and caring way. He doesn’t want harm to come to the flower because to him the honeysuckle is showing the beauty of life. The speaker also understands that everything has and end and the honeysuckle must die, that is the reason for the last two lines of every stanza telling what will be the outcome of the flower. He known the honeysuckle will de, but he is dreading the day coming.

Throughout The Wild Honeysuckle, Philip Freneau writes about a flower going through a cycle of living just like humans do. He writes about the flower growing free just like we as people have great opportunities in our country. He uses each stanza to show the cycle that the honeysuckle goes through. The final stanza ends in the honeysuckle plant dying, which the speaker knows will come eventually. He writes about the fate of the honeysuckle plant in the last lines in ever stanza to transition in to the next stanza where he begins to describe the honeysuckle again. He describes the flower as fragile but beautiful and speaks of it in a cautious way. However Freneau transitions from one stanza to the next by hinting to what will happen to the honeysuckle In the end and then starting a new stanza with addressing the beauty and frailness of the honeysuckle.

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