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Copy of The Spring, Darktail Thrush and Coming Class notes

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Is Philip Larkin dreading or welcoming the arrival of spring? Poetry from which even people who distrust poetry can take comfort and delightX.J. Kennedy (Writer and Poet) Sooner or later, every serious student of English-language poetry will want to tackle Philip Larkin. One of the most famous English poets, Larkin achieved this status with a surprisingly slim oeuvre: The North Ship (1945), The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974) are the sum of his four volumes of published poetry. He was provincial and taciturn by nature, eschewing foreign travel and noted positions (he worked as librarian at the University of Hull for 30 years and refused to consider any appointment to become Poet Laureate) and, as his biographical entry at Poetry Foundation says, preferred ‘to avoid the limelight’. His poetic style was often traditional (think regular rhythms, rhyme schemes and stanzaic form) although his subject matter was almost always derived from the experiences of modern life. According to one of his several biographers, Bruce Martin, Larkin believed ‘that his own life, with its often-casual discoveries, could become poems.’ Reading through his many reviewers, you will come across a common refrain suggesting that he found many of the experiences of modern life ‘profoundly disturbing’ (Alan Brownjohn), ‘dismal’ (X.J. Kennedy) and that his poems hint at the ‘endless nothing that overlooks and underlies experience’ (J.D. McClatchy). You might agree you can feel this unsettling terror lurking just below the surface of today’s poem. Entitled simply Coming and published in his 1955 collection The Less Deceived, the poem is about the coming of spring, which should be a joyful time. But for long periods, the poem seems to keep you waiting in the time between seasons, as if you are trapped in a twilight wintery world, in suspended animation, and doubting if spring will ever arrive: On longer evenings,Light, chill and yellow,Bathes the sereneForeheads of houses.A thrush sings,Laurel-surroundedIn the deep bare garden,Its fresh-peeled voiceAstonishing the brickwork.It will be spring soon,It will be spring soon –And I, whose childhoodIs a forgotten boredom,Feel like a childWho comes on a sceneOf adult reconciling,And can understand nothingBut the unusual laughter,And starts to be happy. The first stanza is incredibly economical in the way it creates a deeply unsettling atmosphere in just a few short lines. We can feel something is not quite right with Larkin’s descriptions of such an ordinary suburban scene (a long, late winter evening as the sun sets over houses and an empty garden) but are hard pressed to put a finger with any certainty on quite where the discomfort lies. Could it be the strange evening light? Described as chill and yellow, there is a contrast between the colour, which appears warming, and the feel of the light, which is cold. Spring might be coming… but it feels like winter still has a grip on the scene. The rhythm of the poetry is a little uncomfortable too. Nothing scans easily into a regular meter. One thing you might notice, though, is the number of lines that end in an unstressed syllable. Technically called falling rhythm, these weak endings hint at something unsaid, or unseen, lurking just out of sight beyond the ends of the lines. Take a look at the first four lines, with accents marked, to see what I mean: (On) /lōnger /ēvenings, /Līght, chīll and /yēllow, /Bāthes the /serēne /Fōreheads of /hōuses. The late winter light casts an odd light over the scene. Although yellow, it is strangely cold and seems to fill every corner of the garden. What else gives the scene that unsettling atmosphere? One feature is the spare and economical use of verbs which makes things appear unnaturally still. There’s almost no movement; there are only three verbs in the entire first stanza: bathes, sings and astonishing. The first describes the action of light. A word that is normally used to describe water, bathes suggests that light fills the garden like water in a tub. Alliteration reinforces this watery impression. Look carefully at the second line: light, chill and yellow and you’ll notice three L sounds and a W. Coming from a category of alliteration called liquid, L, W (and R) sounds helps conjure that fluid, watery sensation and lets the light flow into every nook and corner of the scene. The effect is almost hypnotic, lulling us into a false sense of security and creating a dozy, dreamlike feel. The thrush is an unseen voice, concealed by laurel leaves. Is the voice some kind of intercession, like the coming of Christ? Once the scene is filled with light, Larkin reveals what there is to see: almost nothing. As well as being too still, the garden is described as deep and bare. Peer even harder – the words fresh-peeled work together with light imagery to suggest that all the layers that might hide the garden have been ‘peeled back’ leaving it exposed to your view. There’s really nothing there except empty space. Even the birdsong seems to come from nowhere, the author of these sounds hidden by laurel leaves. (The choice of laurel links faintly to the title of the poem, as Coming could allude to the coming of Christ in the days before judgement day. Laurel leaves are symbolically associated with Christianity). Surrounding the space, these leaves also work to isolate the garden, separating it from the world outside the brickwork (that itself cuts off the garden from the outside world). There’s a sonic tension, too: softer sounds like the aforementioned liquid L and sibilant or fricative S, SH, TH (bathes, thrush sings, houses, laurel-surrounded) vie with harder sounds like plosive B and D or guttural G in, for instance, deep, bare garden. It’s possible that the thrush acts as a kind of harbinger, a messenger of warmer and brighter things to come; but at this point it’s hidden or concealed under the surface, struggling to break free in fits and bursts. The brickwork surrounding the garden is personified. The voice of the thrush ‘astonishes’ the garden wall, as if it had been contentedly dozing and is suddenly jolted awake. Or maybe it’s the lack of any people? A suburban garden scene should have some evidence of life – a bicycle leaning against the wall, a shoe or ball discarded in the garden. But there is no sign of anybody; even the speaker’s position is ambiguous (is he even there or is the garden scene imagined in his mind?). Instead, the houses and garden are personified. The watery light covers the serene foreheads of the houses, and the birdsong is astonishing the brickwork. There’s a dramatic difference (or contrast) between the words serene and astonished, as though the houses (and presumably their occupants) were blissfully content in their wintery solitude, and the presence of an unseen voice has shocked or startled them awake. Again, patterns of alliteration combine with the words to suggest deeper meanings: soft sounds vanish in the final line to be replaced by gutturals and plosives. Short, hard B and CK sounds fire like a gun next to the ear (see brickwork). Taking personification into account, there is something a little disturbing about the image of water covering the houses up to their foreheads. If they were people, they would be submerged, drowning. And the word serene suggests they were either content or unaware. Does the coming of spring act in a positive way, thawing out this comatose wintery scene? Or does the thrush come too late for the astonished inhabitants? The sounds at the end of the stanza had me imagining those absent people sitting bolt upright, gasping for air, suddenly realising the presence of danger. For more on the way Larkin uses the connotations of certain words, visit the shop and download the study bundle for Coming. The bundle is full of interesting and useful resources like this fully illustrated powerpoint giving you line-by-line annotations of poetic and technical devices. There’s also worksheets, quizzes, questions and activities that will help you get under the skin of Larkin’s writing - and essay questions to help you practice your own analysis. Once you’ve reached the end of the first stanza, let yourself dwell for a moment on the words you’ve just read. Given the lines are so short, every word counts. Words have meanings but also connotations. Take the word chill: on one hand it denotes the coldness of the air in late winter turning to spring. But on the other it suggests fear (think of the expression ‘a chill down one’s spine’) and foreboding. Play this game with other words in the poem: surrounding (describes the laurel trees that grow around the garden, but can also connote being trapped or captured); bare (meaning there are no plants or flowers, but connoting exposure or vulnerability) – consider a couple more (like serene, deep, peeled) for yourself. The writing is incredibly economical and a little ambiguous; the developing atmosphere of the poem is open to interpretation. The second stanza begins with repetition: It will be spring soon/ It will be spring soon – and so much depends on that hyphen at the end of the second line. Hyphens create a variety of effects: they tend to emphasise the words that come before or after, create a dramatic or pregnant pause, or even signal an interruption. The hyphen imbues the idea of spring coming soon with dramatic tension – is it time to awaken and welcome the arrival of spring, or are the unseen inhabitants of those houses still trapped in their wintery twilight? The assonant OO in soon, thanks to repetition, weighs heavy at the end of the lines. It’s an ominous sound, filled with foreboding, and quite at odds with the quick, light I sounds in the rest of the lines (It will be spring). Again, the way you feel about the poem might be intensely personal; both positive and negative feelings seem to co-exist in the poem at the same time. The third line turns the poem around. Where the speaker’s gaze looked outwards to describe the light, the garden and the weather, now it turns inwards and focuses on I, the speaker himself. Remember Larkin is a traditional poet and there is a long poetic tradition called the turn, or volta, by which a poem changes direction, develops a new idea, changes tone or switches perspective. Often a turn is marked by a line break or a connective (‘still,’ ‘yet,’ ‘but,’ ‘alas’ and the like): here it is signalled with that dramatic hyphen combined with the conjunction and. Larkin’s poem suggests there is something disquieting about modern life; we get the impression that truths hide just below the surface, suggested by the metaphor of coming into a room just after an argument and feeling the tension in the air. After the admission that his childhood is a forgotten boredom (reminding us of the cliché that childhood is supposed to be the happiest time of life, full of vim and vigour and energetic enthusiasm. Not here) the speaker presents a simile (marked with the word like), by which he compares his adult experience to the feeling of being a child stumbling into a room in the aftermath of an argument between adults (Larkin’s parents, perhaps). The key word is reconciling, which means to make up after a fight. If you’ve ever been in this situation you’ll know what he means: smiles on lips but no twinkle in the eyes; oddly stiff body language; words that are over-polite; tension thick in the air. On one hand, this might be the moment you’ve been waiting for. You may feel that the arrival of the child breaks the frozen spell that gripped the winter scene. There are obvious symbolic parallels between children and spring: youth, innocence, and playful happiness to name but three. On the other hand, you may picture the scene differently. Too young to decode the awkwardness between adults in this situation (And can understand nothing) all the child hears is unusual laughter and his natural reaction is to be happy. Play the connotation game with the word unusual – you might think: occasional; rare; odd; strange; disconcerting, forced. Read the lines aloud to hear the same auditory patterns being employed in this stanza as in the last, the occasional plosives and gutturals crackling through the often-quiet sounds of the poem, hinting at fractures and distresses swimming under the surface: forgotten boredom, who comes on a scene, reconciling, but, happy. The word forgotten has a peculiar power here, suggesting the past cannot be remembered. This idea makes the imminent arrival of spring troubling, as it too will erase the past. Like Brownjohn said, Larkin’s poetry conveys the disquieting notion that modern life is ‘profoundly disturbing’ and, in this example, oppressive. To my mind, the poem concludes with the impression that any happiness the speaker feels in adult life is inauthentic, based on a lie. This idea links the two halves of the poem: the first stanza’s image of being unknowingly, contentedly submerged is reflected in the second stanza’s image of a child being ignorantly happy, unaware of the fault lines that run just beneath the surface of a fragile reconciliation, the unhappiness that can so easily be hidden under the façade of a happy marriage or a well-to-do life. Knowing Larkin’s own ambiguous feelings towards his parents (after all, this is the man who wrote the immortal line They f*** you up, your mum and dad and described his childhood as a forgotten boredom) might help us understand the pessimistic streak that runs through so many of his poems, and the unsettling disquietude, the ‘profoundly disturbing’ feeling, of Coming itself. Suggested Poems for Comparison Sunny Prestatyn by Philip Larkin Picking just one Philip Larkin poem to recommend is a thankless ask, but this poem lends itself well to comparison with Coming. Telling the story of the image of a girl on a poster that advertises a sunny holiday destination and what happens to that image over just a few short weeks, the reader gets the impression here too that the truth about the world is hidden under the surface. A Cold Spring by Elizabeth Bishop Like Larkin, Bishop is more sombre about the coming of spring - at least to begin with. Her poem ends with the lovely metaphor of the fizz of champagne bubbles describing a flight of fireflies. Poem by W.H Auden A strong stylistic influence on Larkin, Auden wrote this untitled poem in 1937. Like Larkin, in an image of children playing in the shadow of a tombstone, the poem suggests the world is made up of more than meets the eye. The Thrush by Edward Thomas A character in Larkin’s Coming, the humble songbird thrush is the subject of this poem too. Additional Resources If you are teaching or studying Coming at school or college, or if you simply enjoyed this analysis of the poem and would like to discover more, you might like to purchase our bespoke study bundle for this poem. It’s only £2 and includes: A sample page from one of the worksheets in this study bundle. 4 pages of activities that can be printed and folded into a booklet for use in class, at home, for self-study or revision. Study Questions with guidance for how to answer in full paragraphs. A sample Point, Evidence, Explanation paragraph for essay writing. An interactive and editable powerpoint, giving line-by-line analysis of all the poetic and technical features of the poem. An in-depth worksheet with a focus on explaining Larkin’s choice of diction. A fun crossword-quiz, perfect for a recap lesson or for revision. 4 practice Essay Questions - and one complete model Essay Plan. Buy Study Bundle And... discuss! Did you enjoy today’s breakdown of Philip Larkin’s poem Coming? How did the poem make you feel when you first read it? What do you make of his depiction of modern life? If you have any thoughts about the poem why not share them with others in the comment section below. And, for daily nuggets of analysis and all-new illustrations, don’t forget to find and follow Poetry Prof on Instagram.

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IGCSE Past Papers | CAIE | PapaCambridge

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IGCSE Past Papers | CAIE | PapaCambridge

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Literary techniques - Language and structure - AQA - GCSE English Language Revision - AQA - BBC Bitesize

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Learn and revise skills for writing about the language and structure of literary texts with this BBC Bitesize GCSE English Language (AQA) study guide.

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Adichie was born as the fifth of sixth children and raised in Nsukka, Nigeria. Her father was a professor at the University of Nigeria and her mother was the university's first female registrar. Adichie studied medicine at the university and then moved to the United States at age 19. She received master's degrees from Johns Hopkins and Yale, and rapidly gained critical praise and numerous prizes for her writing. She was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship "Genius Grant" in 2008. She has published poems, short stories, a play, and three novels-Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2007), and Americanah (2013)-which have been awarded the Orange Prize among other honors. Adichie is currently married and divides her time between Nigeria and the United States.

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The best study guide to Purple Hibiscus on the planet, from the creators of SparkNotes. Get the summaries, analysis, and quotes you need.

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Literary techniques - Language and structure - AQA - GCSE English Language Revision - AQA - BBC Bitesize

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Learn and revise skills for writing about the language and structure of literary texts with this BBC Bitesize GCSE English Language (AQA) study guide.

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STUDENT_You Will Know When You Get There_ - Allen Curnow (IGCSE) Worksheets + Exam Prep

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Your personal response - Responding to poetry - AQA - GCSE English Literature Revision - AQA - BBC Bitesize

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Learn about how respond to poetry with GCSE English Literature poetry resources (AQA).

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At the Parrot House, Taronga Park by Vivian Smith - Poem Analysis

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Poem Analyzed by Emma Baldwin

B.A. English (Minor: Creative Writing), B.F.A. Fine Art, B.A. Art Histories

The poem was penned by Austrian poet Vivian Smith who is known as one of the best poets of his generation. His poetry is primarily influenced by the Australian landscape. 'At the Parrot House, Taronga Park' is a clever piece of writing that helps readers imagine birds interacting as human beings would.

'At the Parrot House, Taronga Park' by Vivian Smith depicts birds and their interactions.

The speaker begins the text by trying to convey how beautiful the birds in the parrot house are. It's hard for him to find the right images to describe their colors and what they make him think of. There is an interesting transition in the middle of the poem when the speaker moves from admiring the parrots to using personification to describe them.

The poet uses human-specific interactions and emotions to describe the parrots in less than complimentary detail. The poem concludes with the poet noting that although the parrots looked beautiful, many negative things were going on.

The main theme of ' At the Parrot House, Taronga Park' is appearances. Specifically, that appearances can be deceiving. The birds in the parrot house as the example that the poet chose to go with, and while describing them, he emphasizes how human-like their flaws are. So much so that it seems like an intentional example of hyperbole to imagine the parrots doing anything similar to that which the poet describes. He uses them as a symbol of humanity's flaws and how, upon first glance, someone may look quite different from how they later end up behaving.

Structure and Form

'At the Parrot House, Taronga Park' by Vivian Smith is an eight- stanza poem that is divided into uneven stanzas. The first has five lines, the second: two, the third: one, the fourth and fifth: six, and the final three stanzas are all one line each. These mono-line stanzas stand out from the rest and ensure that readers see these poetic moments as more important in comparison to the larger stanzas. They stand out significantly from the lines around them.

The poem is written in free verse, meaning that the poet did not make sure of a specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. But, there are elements of structure, like some perfect rhymes, that give the poem some structure. For example, lines one and three of stanza four rhyme as do lines one, three, five, and six.

Literary Devices

Throughout this poem, the poet uses literary devices like:

: the use of an idea or image to represent something else. In this case, the poet uses the parrots and their interactions to symbolize the way human beings act.

Simile: a comparison between two things that uses "like" or "as." For example, the first line of stanza two that helps describe the parrots in the parrot house as "something half-remembered from a dream."

Imagery: the use of particularly effective descriptions. These are meant to trigger the readers' senses and help him imagine a scene in great detail. For example, "or shot silk or flowers on a dress / where black and rose and lime seem to caress."

Alliteration: the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of multiple words, usually in succession. One of the best examples is in stanza three with "squawk" and "sometimes scream."

Detailed Analysis

Stanza One

What images could yet suggest their range

of tender colours, thick as old brocade,

or shot silk or flowers on a dress

where black and rose and lime seem to caress

the red that starts to shimmer as they fade?

In the first stanza of the poem, the poet uses the full five lines in order to ask a rhetorical question. He's considering the birds in a parrot house, as the title has already made readers aware, and is amazed by the colors. The way the colors blend together and how they remind him of other objects and feelings is significant.

He finds their colors so exemplary that he struggles to figure out which objects might represent them. He mentions flowers "on a dress" as one possible option.

The poet uses words like "caress," "shimmer," and "fade" in these lines to describe the way the colors on the birds come together. It creates a beautiful and peaceful image in the reader's mind.

Stanzas Two and Three

Like something half-remembered from a dream

(...)

They chatter and they squawk and sometimes scream.

The second stanza is only two lines long. But, these two lines form a perfect rhyming couplet with the words "dream" and "seen." The poet also used a simile in these lines. Both parts of the couplet help convey how the speaker feels about the birds and again emphasize how difficult it is for him to put words to how he feels about the birds.

He's grasping for the right images, but after seeing the birds, he feels like they are "something half-remembered from a dream." The birds, he adds, come from "places we have never seen." The perfect rhyme helps emphasize the speaker's point, conveying the speaker's hyperbolic expression that the birds are different than human beings and other creatures in some fundamental way. So much so that one could believe they come from somewhere unimaginable to the human mind.

The third stanza helps drive him to the point that the speaker is, in fact, talking about birds (in case readers don't understand the title). He mentions how they "chatter" to one another, "squawk," and "scream." These words are at once evocative of human communication and distant from it. Humans are often described "chattering" or "screaming," but rarely does one describe another as "squawking."

It's at this point in the poem that the poet begins a comparison between these birds and human beings. The following lines use a variety of techniques to help readers see these birds as human-like.

Stanza Four

Here the macaw clings at the rings to show

the young galahs talking as they feed

(...)

Their murmuring embraces every need

from languid vanity to wildest greed.

In this unique stanza, the poet describes a specific bird for the first time, the "macaw," this is the traditional parrot, as one might imagine it, with a red or green head, red or yellow chest, and multicolored feathers.

This specific bird is trying to teach the "galahs," another type of bird, something about itself. Specifically, that it had a "dry and dusky tongue." This is the feature, the poet writes, that the two birds share. While describing it, he uses a simile, comparing the galahs' features to snow in the morning as the sun rises, emphasizing their light pink color.

As the speaker stands there and watches the birds, he sees them communicate with one another, as in this example. He also notices birds everywhere around him that represent "every need." He describes birds that convey, to him anyway, feelings of "languid vanity," or a relaxed, confident love for oneself and one's appearance, and "wildest greed."

Both of these descriptions are negative examples of personification. He imbues the birds with human feelings that one would not necessarily want to be attributed to themselves.

Stanza Five

In the far corner sit two smoky crones

their heads together in a kind of love.

(...)

asserting values everyone rejects.

In the next sestet or six-line stanza, the poet describes some other birds in the parrot house. There are two that appear to be "in a kind of love" in the corner. He describes them as "smoky crones." This is an incredibly evocative image, one that should remind readers of aged lovers that have grown entirely used to one neater throughout their lives.

The word "crone" is defined as someone, usually a woman, who is thin and ugly. These are older, skinnier, and less vibrant birds that the speaker is easily able to relate to human beings.

There is a certain degradation in this scene as these two crones demonstrate their love in the corner. One "cleans the other's feathers while it moans" as though engaging in an intimate act in public.

The array of bird life continues in the next lines, highlighting other less-desirable features of humanity. There are other birds whispering or gossiping while "dandies gamble in a room." Now, the speaker has moved on to the wealthy, those who see themselves above everyone else and have the money and confidence (that is likely misplaced).

The birds are "asserting values everyone rejects," the poet adds at the end of the stanza. This suggests a certain type of relationship with the world. These "dandy" birds have a high and mighty attitude that no one appreciates. They see themselves in a positive light, but no one else does.

Stanzas Six - Eight

A lidded eye observes, and it reflects.

(...)

For all the softness, how the beaks are hard.

The final three lines of the poem are divided into their own stanzas. The first describes an onlooker, another bird that sees the entire scene but does not interfere. It "reflects" on what it has seen, analyzing, and describing, much as the poet is doing.

The poet ends the poem with a line about the "peacocks" who "still pretend they own the yard." The word "pretend" is important here as it signifies that the peacocks know they aren't in charge but still pretend to be, unable to let go of a fantastical version of their own importance. It's all too easy to imagine this same attitude in the human world, something that the poet was very aware of.

The final line reads, "For all the softness, how the beaks are hard." The beaks are a hard, cold point among the "soft" feathers. They are a small bit of truth among false appearances, the poet is suggesting. There is a great deal of beauty in the parrot room, but it disguises the truth, that which the "lidded eye observes."

In a comparison relating these birds to human beings, it's easy to see how the poet may have been considering the ways human beings look and seem versus how they are in reality. The truth, at least, in this case, is less pleasant than it seemed.

Similar Poetry

Readers who enjoyed this poem should also consider reading some related poems. For example:

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At the Parrot House, Taronga Park by Vivian Smith - Poem Analysis

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'At the Parrot House, Taronga Park' by Vivian Smith is an interesting poem that uses personification to describe birds and their interactions.

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Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost

Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost

Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream

Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;

But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,

And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth

To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree

The drowsy cuckoo, and the humble-bee.

Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring

In triumph to the world the youthful Spring.

The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array

Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May.

Now all things smile, only my love doth lour;

Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power

To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold

Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold.

The ox, which lately did for shelter fly

Into the stall, doth now securely lie

In open fields; and love no more is made

By the fireside, but in the cooler shade

Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep

Under a sycamore, and all things keep

Time with the season; only she doth carry

June in her eyes, in her heart January.

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The Spring by Thomas Carew | Poetry Foundation

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Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost

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Where this symbol appears in the poem:

Line 6: "who love blackness"

Lines 29-30: "little cables of shadow, vanishing / dream-lines long roots of the penumbra"

Line 41: "burrowing back into blackness"

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The best Eel Tail study guide on the planet. The fastest way to understand the poem's meaning, themes, form, rhyme scheme, meter, and poetic devices.

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Judith Wright's "Australia 1970" passionately implores Australia's "wild country" to resist humanity's attempts to tame it. If the countryside is going to "die," it should die fighting to the bitter end like a ferocious animal. The poem fiercely denounces humankind's destruction of the environment and argues that people are ultimately harming themselves by refusing to respect the natural world-however inhospitable it may be. "Australia 1970" was published in Wright's Shadow in 1971.

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The best Australia 1970 study guide on the planet. The fastest way to understand the poem's meaning, themes, form, rhyme scheme, meter, and poetic devices.

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Stars Go Over the Lonely Ocean Robinson Jeffers

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Stars Go Over the Lonely Ocean Robinson Jeffers

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The Stars Go Over the Lonely Ocean Poem Summary and Analysis | LitCharts

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The best The Stars Go Over the Lonely Ocean study guide on the planet. The fastest way to understand the poem’s meaning, themes, form, rhyme scheme, meter, and poetic devices.

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I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

In a full-hearted evensong

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

Was written on terrestrial things

That I could think there trembled through

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

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The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy | Poetry Foundation

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I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.

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Eccentric Concentrism: Traditional Poetic Forms and Refracted Discourse in Stevie Smith's Poetry on JSTOR

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Romana Huk, Eccentric Concentrism: Traditional Poetic Forms and Refracted Discourse in Stevie Smith's Poetry, Contemporary Literature, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 240-265

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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You Will Know When You Get There Allen Curnow.docx

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Allen Curnow suggests that there's a right time to die in this tough, but rewarding, poem.

"He wrote of things on the edge of our vision and he made them clearer for us."
Sir Paul Reeves, Governor-General of New Zealand 1985-1990

You Will Know When You Get There is from Curnow's 1982 collection of the same name, full of poems describing memories of his youth and family. One critic wrote in an obituary (Curnow died in 2001 at age 90) that this book was best known for dealing with "a creeping sense of the nearness of death." It would be an apt description of this poem - except here, death doesn't so much creep as hurtle forwards at one-hundred miles per hour.

Nobody comes up from the sea as late as this
in the day and the season, and nobody else goes down

the last steep kilometre, wet-metalled where
a shower passed shredding the light which keeps

pouring out of its tank in the sky, through summits,
trees, vapours thickening and thinning. Too

credibly by half celestial, the dammed
reservoir up there keeps emptying while the light lasts

over the sea where 'it gathers the gold against
it'. The light is bits of crushed rock randomly

glinting underfoot, wetted by the short
shower, and down you go and so in its way does

the sun which gets there first. Boys, two of them,
turn campfirelit faces, a hesitancy to speak

is a hesitancy of the earth rolling back and away
behind this man going down to the sea with a bag

to pick mussels, having an arrangement with the tide,
the ocean to be shallowed three point seven meters,

one hour's light to be left, and there's the excrescent
moon sponging off the last of it. A door

slams, a heavy wave, a door, the sea-floor shudders.
Down you go alone, so late, into the surge-black
fissure.

The man races against the sun to reach the shoreline first. The fading light is a way to measure the time he has left in the world - when the light turns dark, he will die.

The poem describes the last few hours of a man's life as he takes a favourite walk down to the seashore to pick mussels. It seems that he knows he is soon to die and wants to get there before it's too late. Perhaps he wants to die in his favourite spot, or he wants to see the sea for the last time. At the end of the poem he wades out into the sea and into a surge-black fissure, a deep crack in the sea floor, like a canyon or abyss. It's a direct metaphor for death: once you fall into that fissure there is no coming back.

When the poem begins it's already 'late... in the day' which you can understand to mean late in the man's life. Look how, in the first few words, the component of time is introduced into the poem. We'll be getting back to that very soon. In the meantime, watch as he begins his final walk down a steep path, which is made slicker and more treacherous by the rain. He has an arrangement with the tide which will be at just the right depth for him to wade out into the sea. What is this arrangement all about? Well, the first couplet ( Nobody comes up from the sea as late as this/ in the day and season and nobody else goes down) introduces a rather interesting idea: nobody goes 'down' at any time other than the correct one - there is a time for everybody to live and everybody to die. Before Curnow worked for the BBC in England, he studied theology in New Zealand and planned to enter the church. While he abandoned his religious practice to pursue a career in journalism, it's not a huge stretch to think that as somebody gets older, they might contemplate whether or not their time of death is preordained.

Light mixing with rain forms the poem's most beautiful imagery. Water becomes a motif in the poem, a way to suggest the flowing away of time, and the way death is a natural part of life.

I get the feeling that the man in the poem is aware of his approaching death. His concern is to meet it at the right time and in the right manner. Just as we all, ultimately, have to face death in our own way, the first couplet makes it clear the man is by himself, it's his time alone. This idea is reiterated in the final stanza: Down you go alone. That also explains the hesitancy to speak of two boys camping on the beach as he passes by: they symbolise youth, which has a revulsion of old age. By this point in the poem his journey has become pretty metaphysical anyway: their reluctance to acknowledge him is echoed by the hesitancy of the earth rolling back and away behind this man. This line reminds me of a Sylvia Plath poem, Suicide on Egg Rock: as she watches a man prepare to throw himself into the sea, he turns his back on the world, positioning everything else in the poem physically behind him, separating the living from the (soon-to-be) dead.

To be honest, even at the start this was never just a comfortable evening walk. Pretty quickly we get the feeling that the path down to the beach is steep and treacherous. We've already seen the word down (to begin with, the sense of downward motion is counterbalanced using juxtaposition: nobody else goes down / Nobody comes up. This equilibrium doesn't last long though). Soon, the feeling of downward motion accelerates, becoming faster and wilder. The image of a man descending a steep cliff path and scrabbling down the last steep kilometre is quite powerful; the lurching downhill motion is accentuated by the phrase wet-metalled, helping us picture the slip-and-slide descent of a man barely in control of his footing on a slick wet surface. Everything in this poem moves down: the man, the path, rain, the sun. The sense of downward motion is accentuated partly through repetition (... and down you go... this man going down to the sea... Down you go alone) and partly through enjambment as the poem careens from one line to the next, one stanza to another. Its arrangement in couplets seems entirely arbitrary as there are no end-stops to match the sense of the lines to the stanza arrangement; neither are there any capital letters marking the beginnings of the stanzas, so when you read the poem out loud the ideas from one verse fall into the next. The descent is both literal, as he heads down to the beach, and figurative: 'up' means life where 'down' means death.

There is a real sense of urgency to the man's journey - he wants to get there before the light fades. Like the fissure, 'darkness' is a direct metaphor for death: when it's dark, he dies. But he wants to reach the sea first - so he has to get there before the sun goes down. In narrative writing this race against time is called the 'ticking timebomb' technique; Curnow uses it brilliantly here to create tension. So at the start of the poem it's still light - but not for long. Mentions of light are qualified so that it never really seems like there is much light left, for example: as late as this in the day; half celestial (which means he can half see the stars); while the light lasts. Other words describe the light as weak, for example: glinting.

One description of the light involves Curnow quoting from another poem, Ezra Pound's Cantos, in which he wrote: ' it gathers the gold against it'. The best way to understand this allusion is to replace the two its with 'light' and 'dark', so the line reads: 'the fading light gathers its own golden colour against the coming dark'. Imagine watching a sunset: the light briefly becomes more beautiful, powerful and precious as the dark encroaches. Or stare closely at a candle as it burns to the end - notice how the flame settles and strengthens just before it goes out. The image also suggests the man armouring himself with the determination to prolong his life just that little bit longer, so he can reach his destination before dark falls. Actually, the sun drops below the horizon before the man can reach the beach ( the sun which gets there first) and from this moment the light recedes more quickly. A campfire casts flickering light mixed with shadow and soon there's only one hour's light to be left. No wonder he personifies the moon not reflecting light, but selfishly absorbing ( sponging off) the last of it, a thief robbing him of precious time to reach the tide-line.

The sun goes down and the greedy moon quickly sponges up the last remaining light. The man only has a few moments to make his 'appointment'. Finally he reaches the shore, at just the right moment.

There's another dimension to these light descriptions, some of which concern its 'quality', as if this late-in-the-day light is a brittle thing, easily broken. The third couplet describes a passing rain shower shredding the light, refracting it into a million broken pieces. This image is compounded later: the light is bits of crushed rock randomly glinting underfoot. I can picture him walking on a beach where every grain of sand is twinkling, catching the last little bit of dying light. Notice the position of the light relative to the man: it was above him, now it's below him. It's like he's walking on a vista of stars. Briefly, the poem reminds me of one of those movie images where some tragic character faces the universe, the stars wheeling above and below, and comes to terms with their own mortality. The brittle, fractured quality of light in these lines may suggest the man's feeling as he realizes his own death is imminent.

It's also worth looking at the way the light interacts with the rain more closely. Curnow gives us a couple more images to ponder: the first is a reservoir up there keeps emptying; the second is the light which keeps pouring out of its tank in the sky. Both images suggest that we all have a store of time ( reservoir, tank) that slowly drains away. The man is acutely aware that his store is emptying fast, like the last few grains of sand falling through an hourglass. In the second image Curnow employs synaesthesia to mix up the way we perceive this. Notice how the quality of rain ( pouring) is transferred to the light itself. Remember, light has been conflated with time: the amount of light left in the day is the same as the time he has left to live. Water becomes a strong motif in the poem, present in the rain, the wet path, the reservoir and tank, the shower, the wave and, of course, the sea. Even the ground moves like water, rolling away from him like a receding wave. Through the element of water, Curnow suggests that the process of dying is a natural one; as rain falls from the sky and flows into the sea, so too do we slip easily from life to death.

For more detail about sound patterns - plus other techniques - download the Study Bundle for this poem. Visit the shop to find more information on You Will Know When You Get There. While our site is still new, this study bundle is free for you to try out. We hope you'll like the line-by-line breakdown, and find the worksheets, essay questions and essay plan helpful.

Above all, the sense of forward motion, that inexorable tumble towards the fissure, comes from the form and sound patterns of the poem. Curnow very deliberately employs consonance, assonance and alliteration, as well as half-rhyme and internal-rhyme, so that repeated sounds fall through the poem like rain, that shower... shredding the light again. In this example you can easily see the doubled SH sound. You can choose almost any stanza and hear Curnow playing with the possibilities of sound arrangements: sounds repeat themselves in one line, echo through a couplet and even trickle down from one stanza to the next. Take this section as an example:

Repeated sounds multiply and overlap. You can see how, just for example, the hard K in multiplies in and thickening. The TH in thickening was preceded by and repeats in . rhymes with . Actually, while the poem has no rhyme scheme, this case of internal-rhyme is far from the only one - you can hear rhyming words scattered about like splashed raindrops: pour/ vapour, reservoir/over, there/ where. The quoted section finishes with ' it' - read on a few lines to find the light is bits and campfirelit . One of the most obvious instances of internal-rhyme comes at the very end when door is rhymed with sea-floor. There are many more for you to discover.

So what about that ending? Curnow gives us a sequence of metaphors mixed with literal language depicting the moment of the man's death:

[a door] slams, a heavy wave, a door, the sea-floor shudders.
Down you go alone, so late, into the surge-black
fissure.

Death is figuratively a door that slams, suggesting there's no way back. In reality this door is a heavy wave which submerges and drowns him. The metaphorical door returns in an ambiguous repetition: I like to think it's the same door, seen from the other side. The sea-floor shudders could be figurative or literal. Finally, death is the surge-black fissure from which there is no escape. Curnow uses synaesthesia again here, connecting the colour black with the kinaesthetic word surge. It's at this point that the poem's tendency to address the poem directly to the reader, you, pays off. We are forced to contemplate the uncomfortable idea that one day we too will be in this moment. What I really like about the end is that, when it comes, the experience of death is very concrete - which may come as a bit of a surprise after the abstract meanings in the poem so far. But, like he said in the poem's title, although death is a mystery to all of us, and no-one living yet knows what it is really like to die, one thing is for certain - you will know when you get there.

Suggested poems for comparison:

If You Will Know When You Get There hasn't put you off reading more Curnow, try Time. In a series of descriptive metaphors, this poem explores how we perceive and relate to time. And it's much easier, I promise!

Among Buddhist poets and monks in Japan, there is a tradition called jisei: the composition of a final poem a few hours before one's death. This poem, translated from original Japanese, is a lovely example of this slightly known poetic tradition.

In this poem, the speaker watches as somebody prepares to throw himself into the sea. All around him on the beach life is bustling, but he purposefully turns his back on the world. The poem interestingly implies that it is in the moments before death that he feels most alive.

Be very careful with this poem - it's devastating. Told from the point of view of children taken to different concentration camps, it is, not surprisingly, hard-hitting.

This poem is a great counterpoint to Curnow's frenetic fall into the abyss. In Dickinson's poem, Death is personified as a courteous gentleman who comes to escort you in a carriage with all due ceremony into the afterlife.

Additional Resources

A sample page from one of our bespoke worksheets for this poem, available as part of the You Will Know When You Get There Study Bundle.

If you are teaching or studying You Will Know When You Get There at school or college, or if you simply enjoyed this analysis of the poem and would like to discover more, you might like to explore our bespoke study bundle for this poem. Normally costing only £2, you can try the materials for this poem for free. The bundle includes:

4 pages of activities that can be printed and folded into a booklet for use in class, at home, for self-study or revision.

Study Questions with guidance on how to answer in full paragraphs.

A sample Point, Evidence, Explanation paragraph for essay writing.

An interactive and editable powerpoint, giving line-by-line analysis of all the poetic and technical features of the poem.

An in-depth worksheet with a focus on explaining Imagery.

A fun crossword-quiz, perfect for a recap lesson or for revision.

4 practice Essay Questions - and one complete model Essay Plan.

And... discuss!

Did you enjoy Curnow's exploration of what it might be like to die? Or did you find the poem a little confusing? Do you agree that there is a 'right' time for everybody to die? What did you make of the symbolism in the poem - the two boys who refused to speak with him, or the heavy door slamming? Share your ideas and suggestions for other readers in the comments section below. And, for daily nuggets of analysis and all-new illustrations, don't forget to find and follow Poetry Prof on Instagram.

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Allen Curnow suggests that there's a right time to die in this tough, but rewarding, poem. He wrote of things on the edge of our vision and he made them clearer for us.Sir Paul Reeves, Governor-General of New Zealand 1985-1990 You Will Know When You Get There is from Curnow's 1982 collection of the same name, full of poems describing memories of his youth and family.

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You Will Know When You Get There - Allen Curnow

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You Will Know When You Get There - Allen Curnow

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You Will Know When You Get There Allen Curnow

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Documentary about art from the post-war period in Japan

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Made by keane, maxim, enrico, etienne

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Guidelines for poetry analysis questions

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Read a poem and think about the effect it has on you. Read it through again at least two or three times before starting to write about it. If you are writing about a poem you have already studied before, re-reading it will remind you of its effect.

If there are parts of the poem you don't understand or confuse you, don't worry. At this stage, you are just trying to work out your general response to the poem.

Questions to consider:

how does this poem make me feel?

are there particular parts of the poem that stand out for me and why?

what is the poet saying or how is the poet expressing themselves that makes me feel this way?

are there other ways that someone else might interpret the poem?

what are the details in the poem that might support another interpretation?

Example question

Read this first of Jackie Kay's poem Dusting the Phone. Think about what your response to it is and what stands out to you. Try reading it twice and closing your eyes and looking away, what do you remember from it?

Sample response
We can see that the speaker is 'in love' and she imagines 'the worst that could happen'. This is striking because we imagine being in love as being something that makes people happy. However the first stanza shows that this isn't always the case and that love can make someone anxious and worried.
This response demonstrates the reader's engagement with the poem and shows an understanding of the way the poem offers a surprising view of love. It includes short references from the poem that is effectively woven into the response.

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Your personal response - Responding to poetry - GCSE English Literature Revision - BBC Bitesize

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Read a poem and think about the effect it has on you. Read it through again at least two or three times before starting to write about it. If you are writing about a poem you have already studied before, re-reading it will remind you of its effect.

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John Clare gets maudlin when he falls in love with an unattainable woman.

"We can see his poetic impulse as something born of the wish to preserve as well as celebrate; even the most simply joyful pieces are soaked in... regret and unsatisfied longing."
Andrew Motion, (Poet Laureate 2015 - 2019)

Love at first sight - do you believe it can happen? In John Clare's poem First Love, the emotion strikes with sudden force, captivating and incapacitating the speaker till he can do nothing but stare forlornly at the object of his affection. Unable to tell her how he feels, his love is doomed to remain unrequited - it is never returned.

I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet,
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.
My face turned pale as deadly pale,
My legs refused to walk away,
And when she looked, what could I ail?
My life and all seemed turned to clay.

And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my eyesight quite away,
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.
I could not see a single thing,
Words from my eyes did start -
They spoke as chords do from the string,
And blood burnt round my heart.

Are flowers the winter's choice?
Is love's bed always snow?
She seemed to hear my silent voice,
Not love's appeals to know.
I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before.
My heart has left its dwelling-place
And can return no more.

Over his professional life. Clare's poetry was inspired by two great muses: nature and love. Poems, Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, was the collection that catapulted him into the public eye; all of the poems in this book beautify countryside scenes. His subsequent works were less widely read and he only really garnered huge appreciation a hundred years after he died. His later work became more and more serious, including one entitled which is actually a frightening description of a nightmare. In 1841 he was committed to Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where (despite an incredible escape attempt in which he walked 80 miles home over four days eating nothing but wild grasses) he spent the last 18 years of his life.

"Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower..." But is it Patty's face - or Mary's?

Although he married Patty Turner (who was to give him 9 children over their life together) John Clare's childhood sweetheart was called Mary Joyce. Unfortunately, his social station was far below hers, and he had no realistic hope of ever consummating his feelings for Mary. Over his life, he was to write verse dedicated to both women although, on balance, Mary was more often the subject of his love poetry. Here's a quick snippet from another poem:

We'll never be more parted
And changing as her love may be
My own shall never vary
Nor night nor day I'm never free
But sigh for abscent Mary

It's hard to imagine what Patty would have felt if she ever read these lines; maybe that's why she seemed never to have visited him in hospital! His love for Mary was to last his entire life: in fact, on learning of her death in 1838 (at the age of 41) he refused to believe the news. It's easy to see aspects of his unrequited love for Mary Joyce in First Love, and also to find moments of disturbing intensity in what is otherwise quite a sweet poem.

Having said this, it's important to remember when reading any poem that the speaker and the poet are rarely the same person. Poets, like writers, create characters (in poetry we call them speakers or personas) through which their thoughts are passed. Strictly speaking, the speaker in the poem is not exactly John Clare - he's a representation of John Clare's thoughts and feelings. Accordingly, I've never been absolutely sure that the poem actually does describe love at first sight:

I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet,
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.

The diction here all points to a first seeing: struck, sudden, sweet. When her face blooms like a flower, figuratively this would mean it's the first time her face has seen the light of day; more likely it's simply the first time he has lain eyes on her. On the other hand, the simile would work equally well to suggest the way a person known for a long time can appear completely different under the influence of love. This would fit with Clare's biography; he met Mary in 1803 when he was barely 10 years old. His feelings would surely have developed afterwards.

When you download a Study Bundle you get a fantastically detailed line-by-line analysis helping you to identify and understand the poetic and technical effects of First Love. Visit the shop to find this - and many other - downloadable resources for teaching and learning, including a completed essay plan to help with your own analytical writing.

The intensity of emotion is partly created through the frequent hyperboles Clare employs to suggest the transformation of a person struck suddenly by feelings of strong love. I ne'er (never) was struck before this hour, stole my heart away complete, and even the repetitions of so and sweet play into this hyperbole. Further examples of hyperbole in the poem include: my life and all; seemed midnight (being the very middle of night); took my eyesight quite away ( quite, in this context, means 'very'); I could not see a single thing - there are many more for you to find. How you respond to this frequent hyperbole largely depends on what kind of reader you are: do you think it's cute when someone falls so completely under love's spell that all reason is thrown out of the window; or do you think he goes too far in his protestations of extreme love?

Considering this point will help you understand the literary context of the poem: letting yourself fall in love has long been depicted as a kind of tug-of-war between the forces of reason and emotion. In Greek mythology these oppositions were represented by the two sons of Zeus: Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo is the god of the sun, associated with order, reason, logic and clear-thinking. Dionysus is like your irresponsible younger brother: the god of (appropriately enough) wine who loves to drink, dance, carouse, who acts on instinct and is prone to being led by his emotions. These two figures have a long and illustrious literary rivalry; you'll find their avatars in Wilde ( The Importance of Being Earnest), Shakespeare ( Twelfth Night; A Midsummer Night's Dream), all the way up to Stephen King, to name just a few. In a way, the use of hyperbole always involves Dionysus getting one over on his clear-headed brother; the triumph of emotion over reason. Think of the kinds of things you say when you're being at your most unreasonable: "this is the worst day ever," "I wouldn't talk to you if you were the last person left in the world," and you'll see what I mean.

Whether or not you think he's exaggerating, Clare certainly feels the physical as well as emotional effects of first love, and he presents a series of images illustrating these effects on his body:

If you've ever felt this kind of hopeless infatuation, you might recognise these signs: your legs turn to jelly, your lips dry and stiffen, you don't know where to look or what to say. Clare's use of personification when he says my face turned pale and my legs refused to walk away illustrate how his body turns against him, disobeying his commands. The severity of his helplessness is compounded by the rhetorical question, what could I ail? cleverly using words from the lexical field of sickness ( ail is the root of 'ailment'; pale is associated with feeling unwell) as a substitute for 'what could I do?' The world seeming to stop still ( my life and all seemed turned to clay) is an image straight from a romantic movie, when the lovelorn hero sees his intended for the first time in cheesy slow-motion. Again, hyperbole plays its part: My life and all and deadly pale both suggest this feeling is life-threatening!

Look at the first word of the second stanza - you might already have noticed Clare frequently breaking the old English-teacher rule that a sentence should not begin with and. In this poem and... and ... nicely suggests the rush of thoughts and feelings that can overwhelm you when you are so suddenly hit with powerful love:

Stanza 2 creates the impression that up is down, black is white - the world turned midnight at noonday.

Compare these lines with the last few of stanza 1. Remember that freezing of the world when everything seemed mired in clay? The slowing sensation was reproduced through the sounds of the line: long assonant A sounds in all and clay, plus a long EE in seemed, slowed the pace of the poetry right down. Now you have a combination of sounds that speed everything back up again as the blood rushed to my face: the sibilant SH creates this sensation for us, as do quick dental and guttural sounds in blood, took, eyesight, and quite. What's also interesting in these four lines is how modern the ideas seem. We often use the phrase 'my world turned upside-down' to describe the feeling when something new and wonderful suddenly drops into our lives. Clare gives us an image of trees and bushes round the place, with the speaker positioned in the middle, as if things are whirling dizzyingly round him. A simile completes the topsy-turvy sensation: seemed midnight at noonday speaks to the transformative power of emotion.

The modern, recognisable experience of Clare's love crosses the years between his life and ours: we already discussed the way his body won't obey him anymore, and his easy surrender of reason to emotion. Some people might think these count against the poem, though; the sentiments are a bit hackneyed and corny. I concede, love blooming like a sweet flower is hardly original. Actually, Clare's reputation at the time of his writing was as a naïve and simple poet. People were prejudiced against his 'earthy' background. He grew up on a farm, and only sometimes attended day school. His parents were basically illiterate and much of his poetry praising nature is steadfastly pastoral. In defence of this poem against accusations of cliché, however, you can point out how Clare subverts expectation as often as not. Look at the way he employs pathetic fallacy, a literary technique by which the background (including the season, weather, geography and the like) mirrors human concerns. At a moment of great love, you might expect the sun to shine or the clouds to lift. By contrast, Clare's poem turns dark: his speaker is blinded ( I could not see a single thing) and noonday turns to midnight.

Love paralyses the speaker; he is tongue-tied.

The poem intensifies in the second half of stanza two, in which an even more peculiar transformation takes place: words stream ( start) from his eyes, not his mouth:

There's a strange contradiction here: the ideas of being tongue-tied or serenading a loved one with a song are sweet, but Clare presents them with such intensity they become a little disturbing. Firstly, the speaker is not in control of his actions. Words come forth involuntarily, personified with their own agency. They spoke by themselves, without his participation. Secondly, the suggestion that love can bring pain as much as delight is strong in the final line: the image of blood burning is painful in itself, and the idea of blood burning around his heart suggests he is trapped in this helpless state. The feeling is further emphasised by plosive and guttural alliteration (underlined above), the combination of which can be very intense. Too, the whole scene is conducted in that unnatural darkness. I can't help but think that the love portrayed in this poem is destructive to the speaker.

Perhaps this is because, just as in Clare's real-life infatuation with Mary Joyce, the third stanza reveals that his love is not requited:

Read the two rhetorical questions with a heavy sigh. Then look carefully at what they say - Clare is implying that falling in love is beyond our control, and that we often find the conditions for love are completely unsuitable. He does this through oxymorons: flowers in winter, a bed of snow, silent voice are all words and ideas that shouldn't sit alongside one another, just as Mary was an unsuitable match. The unsettling intensity of the words are at odds with the sing-song form of the poem: Clare unfailingly follows an ABAB, CDCD, EFEF rhyme scheme and the rhythm is a steady iambic pulse (de-dum, de-dum, de-dum) that, resembling a heartbeat, reminds us that love is associated with the heart.

Unusually for a love poem, the focus of the poem has not often been the object of his affection but the speaker himself. You can count how many 'I's and 'my's there are throughout: even at the end, when he briefly returns our attention to her sweet face, there's three of them! By now, he's totally feeling sorry for himself and so, fittingly, he ends with one last hyperbole:

It's almost as if the speaker blames the Mary-figure for not loving him back, despite his own inability to articulate his feelings. Most tellingly, he accused her of being a thief who stole my heart away. We discussed before how hyperbole indicates uncontrollable emotion; perhaps we should reconsider this when looking at the hyperboles in the final lines. Suppose he employs hyperbole purposefully. In saying I never saw so sweet a face might he be expressing cynicism that she is hiding her true colours behind an innocent mask? Is it a calculated ploy to win our sympathies by turning us against her?

Or maybe he's just gutted that her Dad wouldn't let them see each other. I'll let you decide.

Suggested poems for comparison:

Another of Clare's love poems, this piece explores what it's like to be in love with someone who cannot return your affections. In many ways it is very similar to First Love.

You may have thought Shakespeare's love sonnets were all as nice as Shall I compare thee to a summer's day... Well, you thought wrong! In Sonnet 147, he describes love as a 'fever' and the one he loves as 'black as hell.' It's dark stuff.

This brilliant poem, translated from Polish, considers the role of chance and fate in meeting your loved one.

Additional Resources

A sample page from the resources you get as part of this study bundle.

If you are teaching or studying First Love at school or college, or if you simply enjoyed this analysis of the poem and would like to discover more, you might like to download our bespoke study bundle for this poem. Costing only £2, the study bundle includes:

4 pages of activities that can be printed and folded into a booklet for use in class, at home, for self-study or revision.

Study Questions with guidance on how to answer in full paragraphs.

A sample Point, Evidence, Explanation paragraph for essay writing.

An interactive and editable powerpoint, giving line-by-line analysis of all the poetic and technical features of the poem.

An in-depth worksheet with a focus on hyperbole in John Clare's poem

A fun crossword-quiz, perfect for a recap activity or revision.

4 essay questions for you to practice with - and one complete essay plan for you to use.

And...discuss!

What do you think about John Clare's depiction of First Love? Did it seem like love at first sight to you? Do you agree with the suggestion that he might blame her for not returning his unspoken affections? Why not share your ideas and opinions in the comment section below. And, for daily nuggets of analysis and all-new illustrations, don't forget to find and follow Poetry Prof on Instagram.

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John Clare gets maudlin when he falls in love with an unattainable woman. We can see his poetic impulse as something born of the wish to preserve as well as celebrate; even the most simply joyful pieces are soaked in...

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Percy Bysshe Shelley exhorts us to rise up in this powerful poetical polemic.

'Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.'
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (LINES INSCRIBED UPON SHELLEY'S GRAVESTONE)

It's not everyday that you read something by someone who thought that " government is an evil" and it is only because of the "thoughtlessness and vices of men" that we have to tolerate governance. In this poem, Shelley rails against those who use their power and positions to exploit the working classes - and also saves some of his ire for those 'thoughtless' ones who, like sheep ambling casually towards the slaughterhouse, allow such evil to be perpetrated upon them. This poem was written after the Peterloo massacre (sometimes called the Manchester massacre) of 1819, in which a crowd at a political rally were charged by the local militia, resulting in nine deaths and many injuries. Written at the same time as several other political poems, Song to the Men of England was actually deemed too risky to be published during Shelley's lifetime:

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay thee low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save
From the cradle to the grave
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat - nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?

The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.

Sow seed - but let no tyrant reap:
Find wealth - let no imposter heap:
Weave robes - let not the idle wear:
Forge arms - in your defence to bear.

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells -
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.

With plough and spade and hoe and loom
Trace your grave and build your tomb
And weave your winding-sheet - till fair
England be your Sepulchre.

My favourite Percy Bysshe Shelley story is that he once gave up sugar in tea. "So what?" I hear you say. It doesn't seem like the most exciting piece of information. And, given the out-of-the-ordinary life he otherwise led, I concede it is a little mundane. Consider, though, that he not only gave up himself (his wife second wife, Mary, of Frankenstein fame, also gave up in support) but he spearheaded a campaign which resulted in up to 400,000 Britons doing the same. Why? Sugar consumed in Britain was grown in Caribbean plantations by African slaves, so had become synonymous with the evils of the slave trade. Shelley - despite famously craving sweets, cakes and sugar - switched to green tea so that he could drink his favourite beverage without needing to add sugar.

Shelley's poem isolates various industries which form the backbone of the industrial revolution in England, arguing that the few are made rich through exploitation of the many.

In 1811, in defiance of his father and grandfather's wishes, he eloped with and married Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a London tavern keeper. They ran away to Ireland where he continued to distribute material advocating political rights for Roman Catholics, demanding political autonomy for the Irish, and preaching free-thinking. In 1813, he abandoned his first wife - just after she gave birth to their first child! - and later married Mary Wollestonecraft, against the objections of her father (perhaps because by this time his own family had cut him off and he had been forced to turn to moneylenders; or perhaps because he had already published poetry and essays attacking the evils of the time: commerce, the church, war, eating meat, the monarchy and even the institution of marriage!) His death was appropriately rock'n'roll, not least in that he died much too young at the age of 29. He and Mary had moved to Italy (the hills and lakes, not to mention the incredible storms, would form major parts of the setting of the novel that made her famous) where he drowned when his boat overturned while out on a lake near Livorno.

The word 'wherefore' means 'why' - and this repeated question carries Shelley's incredulousness: why do the working people of England allow themselves to be exploited?

Shelley's belief in social justice suffuses this poem which, the title informs us, is directed to the men of England: we can understand this to mean the working men of England: the uneducated, unwashed masses whose labour provided the muscle for widespread agriculture and the industrial revolution, generating unprecedented wealth and plenty through working in fields and factories, often in deplorable, dangerous conditions, the length and breadth of the country. Shelley's poem isolates three industries which can be seen to represent the bulk of this workforce: farming; textiles; manufacturing. Unfortunately, very little of the wealth and materiél they produced through forced toil was allowed to trickle back into their pockets, most of it concentrating instead in the hands of a privileged few: members of the aristocracy, landowners, landlords and the like. At one point in the poem he quite directly states that these people drink your blood, portraying them as vampires that can only exist by consuming the blood of others.

For more detail on the poem's form, rhythm, rhyme scheme, and many other poetic and technical effects, consider visiting the shop and downloading the study bundle for Song to the Men of England. Containing worksheets, a quiz, help with your own analytical writing and more, there's also a line-by-line breakdown of the poem in the form of an interactive powerpoint.

The tone of the opening stanza is one of anger and incredulousness: the word wherefore actually means 'why.' Put on your best teenage voice and try mewling 'Why? Why?' out loud. Do you hear that indignant tone? Shelley makes liberal use of rhetorical questions here (and throughout the poem): he provides no reply because he considers the answer to be self-evident - there is no good reason why so many strong men should allow themselves to be brought so low by so few. Shelley's anger is carried through the sound patterns of the opening stanza: alliteration in and ; assonance in . O can be a deep, round sound good for carrying strong emotion. You might also hear an emphasis on the last word of each line: while the prevailing rhythm is trochaic (two syllables arranged in a stressed-unstressed pattern are called trochees), Shelley has each line end on a stressed beat. Plough, low, care and wear are all verbs, emphasising the notion of work - and work that only benefits others at that.

Shelley's incredulousness at the passivity of the working classes reaches its peak in stanza 3. Part of the power of his poem comes from repetition- this is the fourth time he asks 'wherefore' - why? Listen to how that trochaic rhythm puts an incredulous note into the word wherefore: rhythm serves to underline his anger, and puts emphasis on the rhetorical question - why? You can see that the trochee runs through the first four verses, creating similar effects in each one. For example, drain your sweat - nay, drink your blood is hard to say without overly stressing both verbs.

Shelley criticises those who work in blacksmithing, forging the very armour and weapons used to keep them in poverty.

Throughout the poem he casts his critical eye around various institutions and industries, all of whom prop up the wealthy classes and form the backbone of the English economy. Here he directs his gaze onto those who work in manufacturing workshops: forges, blacksmiths and armament factories. He asks why people are willing to fashion the very tools that will be used against them to keep them in poverty:

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain and scourge
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil.

The aristocratic classes are interestingly characterised by Shelley as stingless drones, a metaphor that needs consideration as a more obvious comparison might be the queen bee, who lives a cosseted, sedentary life while her workers ( Bees of England) see to her every need. However, the queen can be considered to be the heart of the hive, without her the other bees would be directionless and bereft. Shelley doesn't want to credit the upper classes with such a comparison. He would rather us think about how the upper class are 'stingless' - read this as 'powerless.' They only have power over the working classes because the working class are complicit in their own exploitation. In my opinion, this is what makes Shelley's Song to the Men of England much more interesting: he doesn't spare the workers from their share of his righteous anger. He is angry with the tyrants, yes - but, more so, he is angry with the men of England who wilfully allow such blatant injustice to be perpetrated upon them without resistance. His poem can be read as a protest song - an exhortation to action and call to arms.

One danger of this kind of polemic is that it can become a little one-note. By now, Shelley has repeated the patterns of his poem three times and the use of rhetorical questions as a device to convey disbelief and anger is wearing thin. Shelley begins to switch things up in stanza four, in which he presents the most basic aspects of life (e.g. shelter, food, love) and juxtaposes them against pain and fear. Like any good persuasive speaker, Shelley is fond of patterns of three (also called triple structures and tricolons). We've already had feed and clothe and save and weapon, chain and scourge. Check out the first two lines of stanza four - we get two in a row: leisure, comfort, calm, shelter, food, love. His message is clear - the working classes don't get a single one of all the things they are entitled to, many of which sit on the lowest tier of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

The next two stanzas can be seen as playmates; by themselves they do just fine, but they work much more powerfully together. First, Shelley lays out the state of the things as they are - then, he lays out what he thinks the state of things should be. Look at them placed side by side:

The seed ye sow, another reaps; Sow seed - but let no tyrant reap:
The wealth ye find, another keeps; Find wealth - let no imposter heap:
The robes ye weave, another wears; Weave robes - let not the idle wear:
The arms ye forge, another bears. Forge arms - in your defence to bear.

The poem can be read as a protest song, exhorting those who allow themselves to be exploited to rise up and cast off their invisible chains.

There's a clever term for a structure like this: antithetical parallelism. This means the structures of the lines are similar ('parallel') but the ideas are opposite ('antithetical'). So line one of both stanzas is about sowing seeds, line two about finding wealth and so on. The dual stanzas also function as 'mirrors' of one another or partners in a question/answer game. In the second stanza, Shelley powerfully uses the imperative tense (also called the command tense, in which the verb is placed first) to order the working men onto a better course of action, and negation (words like no and not) to correct what he sees to be huge social iniquities. His triple structures are subtly at work again: he figuratively labels the exploiters as tyrants, imposters and idle in successive lines.

Following the poetic tradition of the volta or turn (at a certain point in the poem, the writer changes the perspective, shifts the tone, or introduces a counter-argument) the final two stanzas abandon his critique of those in power who exploit the men of England and focus solely on the working classes. Shelley leaves us in no doubt as to his opinion of those who, after reading his exhortations, still won't stand up for themselves. The final stanzas present the future, for those who want to blindly go on co-operating with the systems that oppress them. You can almost hear the disgust he feels as he tells them, to shrink to your cellars, holes and cells. He employs one more question: why shake the chains ye wrought? But this time he provides an answer: ye see the steel ye tempered glance on ye. In other words, the weapons ( steel) you make ( tempered) will be used against you ( glance on ye) should you try to stand up for yourselves. Rhythm really comes into it's own in these two lines, imprisoning the words in an iambic de- dum, de-dum beat just as the men are imprisoned by invisible chains. It's a curious admission to make; he seems to warn that death awaits those who try to revolt against the status-quo.

But what if they don't rise up? Well the final stanza presents us a powerful image of the whole of England as one giant Sepulchre, a resting place for the dead. Shelley suggests that to live in ignorance - or worse still, complicity - is a form of living death. All people do is build their own graves, tombs and weave winding-sheets (the white shrouds that bodies were wrapped in before burial). The images are so powerful there can be no doubt as to Shelley's belief - what is the point of a life that amounts to nothing more than slavery? If people are going to die anyway, they may as well do so by claiming what is rightfully theirs.

Suggested poems for comparison:

A poem by a New Zealand minister written in the form of an address to a millionaire, warning about the dire consequences of inequality and corruption. It's even angrier than Shelley's Song.

One of Shelley's most famous poems, this piece contains the immortal line: ' Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair! '

Additional Resources

A sample page from the focused worksheet included in this study bundle.

If you are teaching or studying Song to the Men of England at school or college, or if you simply enjoyed this analysis of the poem and would like to discover more, you might like to purchase our bespoke study bundle for this poem. It's only £1.50 and includes:

Study Questions with guidance on how to answer in full paragraphs.

A sample Point, Evidence, Explanation paragraph for essay writing.

An interactive and editable powerpoint, giving line-by-line analysis of all the poetic and technical features of the poem.

An in-depth worksheet with a focus on exploring the meter and rhythm of the poem.

A fun crossword quiz, perfect for revision or a recap lesson.

4 practice Essay Questions - and one complete model Essay Plan.

And... discuss!

Did you enjoy this breakdown of Shelley's protest song? Do you agree that he reserves the strongest criticism for the men of England themselves? What do you think of his descriptions of the upper classes? Why not share your ideas, ask a question, or leave a comment for others to read below. And, for daily nuggets of analysis and all-new illustrations, don't forget to find and follow Poetry Prof on Instagram.

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Percy Bysshe Shelley exhorts us to rise up in this powerful poetical polemic. 'Nothing of him that doth fadeBut doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.' WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (LINES INSCRIBED UPON SHELLEY'S GRAVESTONE) It's not everyday that you read something by someone who thought that government is an evil and it is only because of the thoughtlessness and vices of men that we have to tolerate governance.

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Notes about Lament
To read poem click the link at the bottom

(I need your questions on this poem. I'll add Q&A as soon as I receive questions)

'lament' is an elegy, an expression of grief. It can be a sad, military tune played on a bugle. The poem uses the title as the start of a list of lamented people, events, creatures and other things hurt in the war, so after the word 'lament', every verse, and 11 lines, begin with 'for'.
The poem is about the Gulf War, which happened in 1991 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the United States, with Britain's help, bombed Iraq. This war has never really stopped. As we begin a new school year, it still threatens the world.

War can't be waged without grave damage to every aspect of life. All the details in the poem came from reports in the media. There were newspaper photographs of cormorants covered with oil - 'in his funeral silk'. 'The veil of iridescence on the sand' and 'the shadow on the sea' show the spreading stain of oil from bombed oil wells. The burning oil seemed to put the sun out, and poisoned the land and the sea. The 'boy fusilier who joined for the company,' and 'the farmer's sons, in it for the music', came from hearing radio interviews with their mothers. The creatures were listed by Friends of the Earth as being at risk of destruction by oil pollution, and 'the soldier in his uniform of fire' was a horrific photograph of a soldier burnt when his tank was bombed. The ashes of language are the death of truth during war
Read the Poem

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Notes about Lament To read poem click the link at the bottom (I need your questions on this poem. I'll add Q&A as soon as I receive questions) 'lament' is an elegy, an expression of grief. It can be a sad, military tune played on a bugle.