The inspiration for this poem came while I was on a vacation to the Outer Banks and visited a lighthouse. As I was standing next to the it, I imagined that in the long history of the lighthouse many sailors stuck in deep, menacing storms found great relief when they saw the light from the lighthouse. This is what inspired me to compare hope to the light that penetrated the storms and led the sailors to safety.

The poem has the same rhyming scheme as a sonnet (ababcdcdefefgg) but does not have an iambic pentameter in every line. Additionally, I decided to separate the sections of the poetry to address different aspects of hope and despair we all face in our lives. I capitalized hope in order to emphasize its significance.

In order to convey the dramatic difference between hope and despair I used a variety of literary features. For instance, the tone at the beginning is dark and full of uncertainty. At the end of the poem, light is seen through the storm and the tone become bright and hopeful to emphasize that darkness can be overcome. Also, the imagery used to describe the storm is dark and powerful in order to describe the magnitude of the storms we may face in our lives. At the end, hope is described as bright which connotes hopefulness, certainty, and a respite from the storms of our everyday lives. In the second stanza I used the phrase “the storms be stilled forevermore” to allude to Mark 4:39 because I have hope that eventually the storms will be stilled forever and I wanted to convey that hope through this poem.