If a poet compares a woman to a sparrow what does that say about the woman?

Question:

If a poet compares a woman to a sparrow what does that say about the woman?

School thing have to write a paper... also what does it mean about the woman if he compares her to a skittery pigeon?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

References to sparrows in literature usually refer to the House Sparrow.

The Roman poet Catullus addresses one of his odes to his lover Lesbia's pet sparrow (??Passer, deliciae meae puellae...??), and writes an elegy on its death (??Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque...??). The sparrow's playful erotic intimacy with its mistress ('To whose seeking she often gives her first finger/And provokes sharp pecks') makes the poet envious. At the climax of its elegy he reproaches it for dying, and distressing her ('Now, by your deeds, my girl's/Little eyes are slightly swollen and red from weeping'). The diminutiveness of the sparrow, and the hugeness and eternity of the afterlife, form a bathos that is typical of the mock elegy form: ??qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum/illuc unde negant redire quemquam?? ('He now goes on a journey through that gloomy place,/From where they say no one returns'). Note how the sparrow's hopping is represented metrically. The bird is also alluded to in the line "He who lives by the stick, dies by the stick" in James Wilson's "The Stick Finch".

In Phyllyp Sparowe (pub. c. 1505), by the English poet John Skelton, Jane Scrope's laments for her dead sparrow are mixed with antiphonal Latin liturgy from the Office of the Dead. It belongs to the same tradition as Catullus' poem, or Ovid's lament for a parrot in the Amores, but the erotic element is more direct: 'And on me it wolde lepe/Whan I was aslepe,/And his fethers shake,/Wherewith he wolde make/Me often for to wake/And for to take him in/Upon my naked skyn'.

In Stephen King's novel The Dark Half, unspecified sparrows play a major role.[citation needed] They are introduced as psychopomps and harbingers of the undead, which help carry the dead back to the world of the living and the living to the realm of the dead.

In the Redwall series of fantasy novels, sparrows are somewhat important to the plot. They are portrayed as fierce fighters; the main sparrow character is Warbeak.

*hope this helps* (: