Write a critical appreciation of poem 'death the leveller ' by James Shirley
Answers
In this poem ‘Death The Leveler’, James Shirley portrays death and fate as omnipotent powers that overpower everyone – even the mighty kings and warriors have to yield before their might.
In the first stanza the poet compares man’s glories of blood and state of kings and prices to mere shadows. Fate can pierce any armour; death, personified as the omnipotent Yama (god of death) spares no king. When it comes to claim life back, they have to yield it. They are turned into dust in their graves. So, death is a great leveler that does not differentiate between the rich and the poor.
In the second stanza the poet brings to light the fact even the mightiest of warriors who won many wars and laurels for themselves after killing thousands of people have to yield to death and fate; and finally death also turns them into dust.
In the last stanza, the poet warns man not to boast about his so called mighty deeds as they will be rendered useless by death. All the victorious and defeated have to offer themselves at the altar of death. The poet ends the poem on a very positive note. According to him though death turns all into dust, yet the actions of the righteous, noble people sprout, blossom and smell sweetly like flowers for ever.
The words are rhymed in a way that the poem does not lose its meaning and makes sense throughout and talks about the death that it is a force which haunts every human being.
The first few lines talk about the human victory and all the man-made notions which lead towards the success. and lines, in the end, talks about the death in a way that it is termination of everything we are doing in life and this is inescapable.
The same meaning is brought up in the following sentences and those lines also compare the human beings with the withering of garlands and talk about the cyclical pattern of human life and death, by comparing them with the flowers.
The idea of the poem is that the death should be feared and we should not fight against it and we spend our lives like that our lives would have been different than how they are now that is what James Shirley is suggesting.