A break in the earth’s crust along which blocks of rock move 

1.   in sonnet 18, the speaker wants to describe the beauty of his love, but can’t find the words to do so. the speaker says “then in mid-utterance the lay was lost” when he tries to think of the words to describe his love’s beauty.   through his defeat of finding words to describe his love, he shows his love for her.

2.   instead of describing how perfect his love is or comparing her to other beautiful things, he says she is average and there is nothing special about her.   at the last 2 lines of the poem, the volta changes the poem by saying that even though his love is average in beauty, his love for her is special and unique. so instead of praising her throughout the whole poem, he contrasts her average characteristics with his special love for her.

3.   the beloved asked the speaker to describe how he feels about her. she begins to describe what she feels but "drop the torch" and says that she can't do it because the words "hid in me out of reach." the the speaker says "nay, let the silence of my womanhood command my woman-love to thy belief" and that her silence will have to be the answer to his question.

the bundle of the sticks, talks about union and how sometimes people need a different point of view. when the father in this story asked his sons to break the bunch of sticks, they could not, but when they grabbed one stick each, it was easier for them to break, because they worked together.

in hofus the stonecutter shows a simple happy working man, but one day when he delivers a load of stone into the house of a rich man, he wishes to be a rich man as well and so the mountain spirit grants him that wish and many others, until he realizes that even getting all his desires and wishes come true, he just needed to be humble and have genuine reason to live and be a better man each day.