Suppose I want to list three items that I bought at the grocery store: Let’s look at an example, as that is the easiest way to understand this use of the semicolon. To help separate items in a list, when some of those items already contain commas. Here are the two most common uses of the semicolon: 1. A semicolon creates more separation between thoughts than a comma does but less than a period does. The semicolon looks like a comma with a period above it, and this can be a good way to remember what it does. After reading the handout, you will be better able to decide when to use these forms of punctuation in your own writing. This handout explains the most common uses of three kinds of punctuation: semicolons ( ), colons (:), and dashes (-). Image (bottom): Glow-Worm – ‘Lampyris Noctiluca’ by David Evans via Flickr.Semicolons, colons, and dashes What this handout is about He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem. The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. For more classic seventeenth-century poetry, check out our pick of Robert Herrick’s best poems, our analysis of this classic poem about prison from Richard Lovelace, and our selection of George Herbert’s finest religious poems. We strongly recommend The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics), which contains all of his poetry along with extensive notes. Marvell’s poetry is witty, clever, thoughtful, but also powerful and memorable. This angry and impassioned discussion (though it’s more of an argument) between the soul and the body sees the soul lamenting the fact that it must exist inside a body until the body dies the body, since it will perish one day, despises the soul for giving it life in the first place. With bolts of bones, that fetter’d stands Young love is fresh and exciting and keenly felt – but will that initial fervour and passion wear off? And what if one is left abandoned by love, and by one’s lover? This is the subject of this wonderful Andrew Marvell poem, which, like ‘The Definition of Love’, examines the less sanguine side of love.

This poem reflects Marvell’s evolving attitude towards Cromwell at this time.īut soon these flames do lose their light,

(Horatian odes are often marked by their emotional restraint.) The even-handedness with which Marvell views Cromwell and the recently deceased king in this poem can partly be attributed to Marvell’s Royalist sympathies, until as recently as the year before he wrote ‘An Horatian Ode’. So Marvell describes the execution of King Charles I in this fair and even-handed ode to Oliver Cromwell, which also praises the courage and fortitude of the doomed king, who had been executed the year before Marvell penned this poem. ‘ An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’. The garland of flowers which the poem describes also serves as a metaphor for the poem itself: Andrew Marvell the poet is writing a poem about the act of making a garland, both acts of creativity, both designed to glorify God. Like much poetry written by the Metaphysical Poets, ‘The Coronet’ uses an extended metaphor – here, that of the crown, or garland, or ‘coronet’ – to discuss the poet’s attitude to Christ.

Popular poems contaiing dashes