Beginnings--The Idea

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to do with his beloved? Maybe she's uncommon ("rare"). Maybe she should be treated with courtesy and gentleness. Maybe she's young, or young to love (innocent), or just new to him.

So translating the images takes quite a bit of time and thought to figure out what meanings probably fit the poem's context and to reject those that probably don't.

Eventually, readers probably try to work out a complete paraphrase of the poem--realizing that they are stripping the meaning away from the crafted wording of the poem for the sake of putting it in terms they can understand.

Given all these preliminaries, readers eventually try to capture the idea of the poem in a sentence or two--to state its theme, the meaning they are supposed to carry away as a final impression of the poem. Both paraphrasing and forming a statement of theme require double-checking against all of the poem, especially the ending.

Many beginning readers mistakenly stop with the idea of a poem, believing they've mastered ...

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