Response to the veil

The Black Veil, written by the Romanticist Nathaniel Hawthorne is a book in which a man suddenly decides to wear a random veil to a church meeting. Everyone is shocked, simply because it does not fit their conformist ideals of wearing a plain clothes, especially of his position as a minister. Wearing a veil is one of the most outrageous things a person could probably do, especially a black veil. Black is usually the dim color of death, or anything taboo. A veil is something that hides secrets, because it does not show the wearer's face completely, thus it could mean that the audience of the church had somehow hypothesized in the back of their heads that the minister was hiding something, therefore finding his presence uncomfortable and then departing. The atmosphere of the whole area was just insane, because people were left probably with an uncomfortable feeling (I know I would be) when they sense his presence. A man reading at the altar, reading the Holy Bible, in a black veil.
It's signifying that he's hiding a secret. A minister, a man of God, a man of truth - hiding a secret!? A role model in their society that they had looked up to was concealing a secret? People know that people only hide things when they think others would it unacceptable or that they're doing it for personal gain. Obviously both of these are not accepted principles, so in their eyes he is, subconsciously, a heretic.

Parable

Once upon a time, a hungry boy was playing video games. After hours and hours of playing video games, home alone, he had to find a way to feed himself. He looked through his house for hours, and finally found one precious, golden cup of noodles. Inside the package was a packet of special powder flavorings, as well as another packet of dried vegetables. The chunk of noodles itself was so perfectly formed in its dried up state that the boy started drooling before he even added the hot water.
To his surprise, he had a kettle of water boiling for some reason already. He did not know how it got there, but he was thankful and didn't ask anymore questions.
He poured the hot water into the cup of noodles, and then added the flavoring and dried vegetables.
He was really hungry, so he grabbed a pair of chopsticks and started crunching on that block of noodles. He had a spoon too, and started drinking the scalding hot water that he had just added.
It was so hot it burned his tongue, and he swallowed it to get it out of his mouth. The water made its way down his throat and burned his whole throat as well as the insides of his mouth.
Lesson here: do not drink cup noodle soup without letting it cool down first.

The Saddest of All Prisons

In the society of today, guilt does not have as much of a significant meaning as it did in the past. Before, in the past, specifically during periods where religion dominated the human psyche so much people killed each other over it, that morals and guilt, sin, etc, were all of heavy values to the human mind.
Firstly, religion was established to put forth morals in the untrained human so that they can develop basic principals to live by, pretty much a rulebook that's been embellished to send out these morals in subliminal messages through the stories.
Now, we look back and think of how much religious weight had on our thoughts. It ruled a major portion, while today, our religious followers are in decline. People do not follow strict church attendance anymore, and religion has fallen out of its seat of power on the human.
Now, we put the pieces together and think, people were taught to atone their wrongdoings, and rid themselves of the guilt. If these teachings are decreasing at a rapid rate, then we do not hold these emotions to our heart as much as we did in the past.
Even though we still might carry guilt upon our chests, it does not have as much of an impact upon ourselves as it did in the past.

Comparing Poems

In Longfellow's first poem, The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls, he mentions of some sort of stranger - a stranger, in my opinion, that represents the unnamed as a whole - that fades away in time without anyone noticing. Like a tree falling in the forest, nobody hears it. It just happens. No one knows when it happens, no one knows how, no one really cares, all of us apathetic. In Longfellow's other poem, The Cross of Snow, he is specifically talking about his wife. This is because his wife had just passed away, and he woke up one night and was perhaps inspired to write this poem.
The second poem expresses his personal grief over the loss of his wife, of how it was like a cross he has to bear on his chest. Many romantics of the time were deeply obsessed with emotions and other sorts of feelings, and so they sought to express it in the most ornate and wordiest way (while rhyming and following the rules of poetry at the same time) to display their feminism and emotional interior.
These men were caring men, perhaps enjoyed a little bit of shopping, fine cloth such as silk, walking with a strut that displayed their donkage, and urinating while sitting.

Image of Grief

The image of grief in nature would probably be something that is withering away, such as a wilting flower, a sickly gazelle, or of something even simpler such as the clashing of two glaciers. Maybe not the glaciers, because it evokes a much more violent image - but perhaps, something like sand being blown away by the endless winds and forever lost in the evanescence of time. Something fading away, because our feelings of grief are usually associated with the loss of something, such as a dear family member or a beloved pet. When we lose things, something with a deep sentimental connection with us, with our hearts, we usually stamp that setting into our heads: something fading, something dying, etc.
In nature, when something dies, we automatically associate these feelings with the scene. When poets cleverly use these images to perturb these feelings, to stir up these emotions, they go beyond of directly transgressing with our feelings but instead violate them on a deeper level, which is to directly have ourselves call upon our own feelings of grief, sorrow, and misery with scenes that we have previously been conditioned to.
So, a fallen leaf, disappearing footsteps on the shores of a lonely beach, the drowning of an island, or the petrification of creatures (to me atleast) can call upon the image of grief.