Response to "The Dream Called Life"

     I read "The Dream Called Life" by Pedro Calderon de la Barca.When I read it, I imagined someone going through their fantasy land. In the beginning it talks about being acknowledged as a king with a castle, but then it changes and the fantasy breaks, as dreams do. After that, the author is talking about how fickle and unrealistic dreams are, because waking up is inevitable. The story was sad, but at the same time it was nice because the poet was realizing the truth and seeing things with a new clarity.
      There were many poetic elements used in this poem. There was a very unique rhyme scheme, with some lines not rhyming at all and others rhyming with the next line. There was a lot of assonance with the vowel sounds in the middle of the lines, things such as repeating the "a" sound saying "palace that was all" or the "i" sound with "this in which". There was also some alliteration, saying "Dreamer or doer" and "Confounds and clouds". There was a great repetition of the words "waking" and "wake" as well as of "dreaming". I think it is very fitting that he used those words so often, because those are the main ideas in this poem. There is the waking side and the dreaming side fighting for power.
     There were several lines in this poem that I really liked. For example, when he said "Who make believe to listen; but anon" because I liked the way he said that people just pretend to be listening, when really they are ignoring you and putting you off. I liked when he said "Walking as one who knows he soon may wake" because it gave me this image of tiptoeing around, waiting for the impending end of your time. I enjoyed the last line "When dreaming, with the night, shall pass away.". It summed up the poem in a few words; dreams can only survive as long as the night does, and that is not long enough.