Imagery is an important-perhaps the most important-device used to communicate meaning in poetry. Where other forms of literature can sometimes be over a thousand pages long, poetry is usually much shorter. The poet must get his or her point across in only a few pages, and one of the best ways to condense a long story (or message) is to use imagery. The possible uses for symbolism and imagery in poetry are endless, and a …showed first 75 words of 1095 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1095 total…sort of surreal situation that shows how the dancing girl is the object of his concentration, and his bliss. Behn offers a glimpse at young love through bawdy, sexually suggestive language. The remarkable thing about these two poems is that although they communicate in different ways, the end result is the same: in both cases a character in the poem tragically loses that which is most important to him at a particular moment in time.