From Vashti Explicitive Essay
“From Vashti” Explicative Essay In his poem, “From Vashti”, Lascelles Abercrombie develops the poem’s theme through successfully using a nature motif. By displaying many comparisons between women and objects relating to nature, Abercrombie brings about the theme that a woman’s beauty is incomparable to anything else and that it is a major part in a man’s life. Abercrombie compares a woman’s beauty to the world and the nature it contains. Nature is thought to be the most beautiful thing on earth because it was created perfectly by God. However, by comparing the world’s nature to a woman’s beauty he describes the world as “an awning scaffolded amid/ The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge/ This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty”. Diction in the words such as “scaffolded” and “waste” display the world as a wasteland when compared to the beauty of a woman. Abercrombie also describes a woman as “this Heaven-wander’d princess”, which, through the diction of the words “Heaven-wander’d” and “princess”, accurately promotes the theme of a womans beauty being incomparable. In another section of the poem, Abercrombie says, “How is earth good to look on, woods and fields,/ The season's garden, and the courageous hills,/ All this green raft of earth moored in the seas”? He asks how can the earth still look good in the presence the greater beauty of a woman. The theme of a womans beauty being superior is supported by this quote because the diction in the words “courageous” and “good to look on” describes the beauty in nature as extreme. This supports the idea of a woman’s beauty being superior because if the world’s nature is extremely beautiful, yet it cannot compare to a woman’s beauty, then a woman’s beauty must be a thousand times more beautiful. In another area to support the theme, Abercrombie explains man's dependence on a womans beauty. He writes, “They do but glaze a lantern lit for man, And woman's beauty is the flame therein”. The imagery of a man being a