What does this poem mean? I don't understand any of it, please help!?

Ooh! I'm glad I checked out this question.. I had never heard of this poem before and it's so lovely!

The above answer is quite right. If you read the poem out loud, you'll notice a lot of patterns, one of them being consonance: the repetition of certain consonants - especially in this case: "s"

There's also a lot of alliteration: the repetition of the same letter at the beginning of words : such as " longing and love", "perished pleasure", "drop by drop", vanity of vanities"... you get my drift.

Since I can't do ALL your homework for you here's a little helper website it describes words like consonance and alliteration in a way that's easy to understand.

http://www.frostfriends.org/sounddevices.html -

p.s. if you check out the website, scroll down a bit.. don't read the first part cause it's a boring intro!

good luck.

Sister Louise of Mercy is the title, so this is a religious poem that is either like a letter to a nun that would give the poet mercy from suffering, or the poem is by a nun. The repeated line, "Oh vanity of vanities, desire!" would be the destain a nun (sister) would feel getting old and feeling sorry for herself, which is what this poem is about. The poem is restating the quote "all is vanity" in a different way saying that desire is the cause of suffering, which is what Buddha said; the desire to be desirable again is the vanity of all vanities. The repetition also shows how she is trying to convince herself, like repeating a prayer or axiom, to overcome her sorrow.

When the poem keeps repeating that line, it has to use a lot of the devise of rhyming to rhyme with the word "desire." It uses dust that alludes to the Bible.

This poem might be a nun or another woman that is going through menopause.

Oh Vanity Of Vanities

Her days of youth, desire and passion are over. Metephor: fire=passion. She is questioning what she has left. Referencing her other poetry, Rossetti feels that we all have a (religious) duty to live our lives in purity. If we spend too long on vanity and passion, we will have nothing left; a "barren mire".

"Imagery" just means descriptions of sense perceptions: sights, sounds, smells, textures, tastes, etc. For example, "embers" and "mire" are things you can see, feel, smell, touch, etc., so they are examples of imagery; but "life" and "memory" are abstractions or ideas, not things you can perceive with your senses, so they are not imagery.

And the poem is full of sound devices. Just read it out loud and you'll hear all sorts of patterns.