A painter is gazing into the pond with a paintbrush in his hands and an easel in front of him.

In the pond, rows of water lilies seems like a soft snow from the sky. This painter will produce a beautiful landscape - although the reality of the pond would have been greatly under-represented. In his poem, To Paint a Water Lily, Langston Hughes explains this incongruity between the real nature and the re-created world the painting shows. Through use of difference sound devices, caesura, enjambment, diction and tone, Hughes reveals the speakers ambivalent attitude towards artists task of capturing beauty despite the violent reality of the nature. Hughes uses sound to show the two different world the speaker sees. In general, rhyme scheme of the poem is relatively constant. AA rhyme gives a repeated, lyrical feeling that seems to reflect the peacefulness of ponds chamber and paves (2). Yet, there are occasional interjections of slant rhymes, such as settle (13) and metal (14) as well as still (23) and all (24). These slant rhymes reflect the incongruity between the beauty of long-necked lily-flower (22) and the violence reflected in the flies furious arena (3). The use of sibilant sounds emphasizes this imbalance by creating a sinister mood. The way the dragonflies stand in space... others as dangerous (7-8) reflect the natures struggle for survival underlying in the beauty of the nature. If the sound devices show the inconsistency between painting and reality, caesura and enjambment further reinforce this concept. Hughes breaks the line in middle of a sentence such as in Think what worse/is the pond-beds matter of course (15-16). Through enjambment, Hughes creates a sense of disconnection, just the way the painting (24) the speaker mentions is not connected to the real world that is filled with battle-shouts (9) and death-cries(10) that rise from constant struggle of the dragonflies. Similarly, Hughes uses caesura to create a discontinuity in a line. By pausing in line 15, Through the spectrum. Think what worse, Hughes once again reveals the distance between the speaker and the reality of the pond-beds matter (16). The speakers ambivalence between art and nature is revealed through diction and tone. Hughes uses strong words that suggest warfare such as bullets (6), battle-shouts (9) and death-cries (10). Word choices such as meat (6), Jaws (20) and horror (26) also take the readers away from the beautiful scenery to a microscopic world of insects that is filled with danger and even death. However, the tone of the speaker is indifferent. As the struggle of the dragonflies would be turned into a scenery, ignorant of age as of hour (21), the speaker is aloof about the dragonflys plight. Since the painting is unchanging, trembling hardly at all (24), the speaker does not care about whatever horror (26) that the dragonfly will face. Hughes shows the speakers indifference through contrast between the war-like diction and the speakers matter-of-fact tone. In To Paint a Water Lily, Hughes reveals the incongruity between the reality and art, and the speakers indifference about an inevitable reality that is not portrayed in the painting. this is quite ironic, as Hughes, as artist himself, is conveying the dual nature of the world through his poem. Nonetheless, for the speaker, the inevitable discrepancy that is embedded deep[ly] in both worlds (23) will continue to discourage him from seeking to satisfy the two minds of this lady (4).