To Paint Water Lily

To Paint Water Lily

      The poem “To paint a water Lily” depicts the theme of nature. Ted Hughes uses literary devices such as personification, visual imagery and the structure of the poem. To reveal the speakers attitude towards natures and the artists task.

      The poem evokes a part of nature, since the main subject is a water lily. Indeed, the construction of the poem shows an evolution the two first stanzas talk about the water lily. The poet introduces nature  as a manner to focus the attention on the warlike activity. The poet writes the poem as if it celebrates the beauty of the nature in its violence. Hughes uses some literary devices to create this ambiguity. He employs words by changing their first meaning and their traditional context “bullets by” is used as a verb and suggests the trajectory of the flies around the plant. Although “bullet” is used as a noun so also refers to the missile that is set from a firearm. This terms conveys an idea of war or violence. 

        The work of the poet is also to create some new words with the associations of expressions that gives more senses to the language the compound words like “battle shouts” and “death cries”. Ted Hughes poetic is based o emotion and no longer laid upon to the traditional conventions. The nature is considered as essential being. The poetic writes his poem in a consider way in two different dimensions. At first with a return to the elementary system. The nature is associated with human being the violence that man is able to create is included. The poet combines good and ban in order to solve a “problem”. Creation is a way t go beyond the opposition built between a good nature and the violence. The eye of the artist is the only way to see or to read the nature.

        Hughes used in his poem a symbolic use of hyphen in “long-necked lily flower” these two hyphens represent the neck of the water lily and suggest its fragility since it is “deep In both worlds”. Perhaps the poet may have in his poem a met textual reflection at the place oh his point of view. He is both a writer and a painter at this point the is in two different worlds. His role is to paint a scene, but without colors and images, and is just to convey the readers imagination which is a real difficulty. For the reason being that it is complicated to a narrator to transmit a vivid view through words and stay in a poetic mode. So that the reader can experience through reading the same image the poetic is trying to make him/her feel or imagine.

       The narrator Ted Hughes brings together or reunites man with his imagination, the senses and perhaps a bit of history. The nature is finally seen in its description movement. Structure of the poem and the short independent stanzas show that each thought is simply an idea in the speakers mind. His mission is to create a painted representation of a water lily in a pond. However as he observes his subject, he begins reflecting on aspects of the pond not on plain sight but yet real.