Contrasts Within a Poem: Study Guide (English Literature 2.3)

A contrast is a difference that does work

Poems are short, so each change counts. A contrast is a difference between two parts of a text that the writer makes the reader notice. Contrasts come from two sources, and the first is easy to confuse with the second.

• A shift is a change as the poem unfolds: from past to present, from confidence to doubt, from one image to another.
• A juxtaposition is the placing of two things side by side, so that setting one against the other highlights what is true of each. The two things may sit in one line, in neighbouring stanzas or in two images that the poem never connects with a word.

A poem can use either or both. A contrast is not simply “this and that”: your analysis must say what is set against what and what difference it makes.

What can be contrasted

The same poem can contrast several things at once. The common kinds are:

Kind of contrast	What changes	Example in the guide
Focus	What the poem is looking at	A face of stone, then the empty sands
Tone	The attitude or feeling	Boast, then desolation
Point of view	Who is telling or seeing	The speaker, then the traveller, then the inscription
Speaker’s perspective	How the speaker understands things	Childhood belief, then adult understanding
Dramatic situation or moment	The event or moment	Before and after
Setting or time	Place or period	Past glory, present ruin
Imagery	The kind of pictures	Stone and colossus, then level sand

How a shift is signalled

A shift may be signalled by three kinds of cue.

1. A word. “But”, “yet”, “now”, “then”, “still”, “however”.
2. A structural convention. A stanza break, a new quatrain, the turn of a sonnet (the volta), a refrain that returns changed.
3. Punctuation. A dash, a colon, a full stop in mid-line, a sudden question.

Signals show where to look. They do not prove that something changes, so always check that the content on either side really differs.

Worked example 1: a contrast in a public-domain sonnet

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” (1818) is a poem of fourteen lines. The text below is from the Project Gutenberg edition of The Golden Treasury; punctuation varies between editions.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Step 1: Spot the contrast. There are two things set against each other: what the inscription claims, and what the place actually shows.

Step 2: Name what is set against what.

• The claim: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Here the voice is a king’s, proud and commanding. The imperative “Look on my works” invites admiration or fear.
• The reality: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.” The scene is of wreckage and empty desert.

So the contrast sets power and permanence (the claim) against loss and emptiness (the setting).

Step 3: Name the signals.

• Punctuation and quotation marks. The inscription is enclosed in quotation marks and ends with an exclamation mark. The next sentence starts without a connective and is a flat, short statement, “Nothing beside remains.”
• Word choice. “Nothing” answers the king’s “works” at once. The word “despair” is meant as a threat to rivals; in the context of the ruin it takes on an ironic meaning, because the only thing left for the “Mighty” to look at is “nothing”.
• Structure. The inscription fills lines 10 and 11 of the fourteen. It comes after the long description of the ruin, and the final three lines follow it. The position gives those last lines the effect of an answer to the king’s claim.

Step 4: Name other contrasts at work.

• Focus: from the broken face to the whole desert, from the near (“Near them on the sand”) to the far (“stretch far away”).
• Tone: from the king’s command to the stillness of the final lines.
• Imagery: “colossal” and “vast” set against “lone and level”, so that the largest things become small in a boundless space.
• Point of view: the poem has a speaker who reports a traveller, who reports the statue, which carries the inscription. The distance between voices adds to the effect that the king’s voice is now only a few words on a stone.

Step 5: Say what the contrast emphasises. The contrast shows that the king’s claim to lasting power is undone by time. The structure does not state the lesson; it lets the inscription stand in its place, followed by a plain description of the sands.

Model sentence: “The contrast between the king’s command ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ and the flat sentence that follows, ‘Nothing beside remains’, turns the inscription into an irony: the ruler’s boast is preserved only as a few words on a broken pedestal in empty sand.”

Worked example 2: a shift signalled by “But” (original poem, written by Marlbridge)

Snow Day

All morning the radio read out closures:
schools, then roads, then the whole bright county,
and I, at nine years old, believed the snow
had personally cancelled the world for me.

But the plough came, the way it does, at four,
and by five the road was a black stripe
and my father was shovelling the drive again,
and the world, unasked, resumed.

Step 1: Spot the shift. The second stanza begins with “But”. There is also a stanza break, so the shift is signalled by both a word and a structural convention.

Step 2: Name what is set against what.

• Speaker’s perspective: the child “believed the snow had personally cancelled the world for me”. The child sees herself at the centre; the world exists to please her.
• The later view: “the world, unasked, resumed”. The adult speaker recalls that the world went on without needing her permission.

Step 3: Name the other contrasts.

• Time: morning, then “at four”, then “by five”: the day moves on.
• Imagery: “the whole bright county” (white, shining, magical) against “a black stripe” (a road cleared, ordinary).
• Tone: from wonder to a dry, mildly rueful acceptance.
• Focus: from the radio’s list of closures to the father’s small, repeated task (“shovelling the drive again”).

Step 4: Say what the contrast emphasises. The poem sets a child’s feeling of control against the plain facts of an adult world that carries on. The word “again” suggests that the father’s work is routine, which makes the child’s magic seem even more temporary.

Model paragraph opening: “The word ‘But’ and the stanza break turn ‘Snow Day’ from a child’s belief that the snow ‘personally cancelled the world’ to the adult recognition that the world ‘unasked, resumed’. The contrast of ‘the whole bright county’ with ‘a black stripe’ of road shows wonder giving way to the ordinary.”

Strong and weak statements about contrast

Weak	Why it is weak	Stronger
“There is a shift in line 12.”	Names a location; no content	“After the inscription ends, the flat statement ‘Nothing beside remains’ shifts the poem from the king’s boast to the emptiness of the sands.”
“The poem uses contrast.”	Names a technique	“The poem contrasts the child’s belief in control with the adult recognition that the world ‘unasked, resumed’.”
“The tone changes from happy to sad.”	Vague; no evidence	“The tone moves from wonder (‘whole bright county’) to wry acceptance (‘a black stripe’).”

Checking your inference

1. Can you quote both sides of the contrast? If you can only quote one, you may have a description, not a contrast.
2. Have you named the signal? A word, a structural convention or punctuation.
3. Have you said what the contrast emphasises? The shift should lead to a point about meaning.
4. Is the shift really there? Check the content on both sides, not only the signal word.

Common misconceptions

• “A shift always happens in the middle.” It can happen anywhere, and some poems have several.
• “A contrast must use opposite words.” Contrast may be subtle, with a change of tone or imagery rather than direct opposites.
• “The word ‘but’ always marks a shift in meaning.” Sometimes “but” only adds a qualification. Check the content.
• “Juxtaposition and shift are the same.” A shift is a change over the poem; a juxtaposition places two things side by side. They often appear together.
• “Naming the contrast is enough.” The point is what it emphasises or reveals.
• “The poet is changing their mind.” Treat the shift as part of the speaker’s thought or the poem’s design, not as a record of the poet’s mind.

Where this leads

Try the practice questions, then use the checklist and revision notes. The next topic, The function of specific words and phrases, looks at how particular word choices create emphasis within a contrast. For the structure that makes shifts possible, see The structure of a poem.