Metho Drinker by Judith Wright

Throughout the poem, Laurie Lee uses personification to relate that the arrival of autumn causes death to different aspects of nature. Lee describes how “slow moves the hour that sucks our life” (Lee 21). She uses personification to compare a prolonged period of time to drawing out death expressing that fall kills everything slowly. Also, Lee explains that “the day hangs fire, taking the village without sound”(Lee 5-6). Lee compares the sun illuminating the village to an assassin quietly killing off its prey. Furthermore, she believes that the sun is overpowering everything when it rises earlier as days shorten. Lastly, Lee uses personification to describe how autumn slowly changes the atmosphere of nature and destroys life as each day passes.

Literally, the persona of the poem is outside when some aspects of the nature around her, like violets and a blackbird, trigger a memory from her childhood. The poem then flashbacks to a childhood memory of the persona as a young girl, which is shown through the indentation of the stanzas, where the girl wakes up in the afternoon thinking it is morning and becomes upset when she

     Frost moves onto autumn and shows what little life is left begins to wither and fall, or as he put it in the first line of the third set ?Then leaf subsides to leaf.? The playful spirit of the young is lost in time as age quickly pours what seems like endless duties upon adults. Things once learned are forgotten and the sun creeps slowly below the horizon. Time once again takes it toll on all things living

This poem brought me back to my home town and the wonders and beauty that it brings around winter time, and made me nostalgic with memories of past winters with my family and slightly saddened for those who have never seen the magical ability snow has. This poem reminded me that there are people who live in states where their change in seasons is not as noticeable, as the ones that I grew up with and have come to miss. Similar to many of the romantics, natures true beauty can transform the mundane into a work of art that would never have existed

The seasons in the poem also can be seen as symbols of time passing in her life. Saying that in the height of her life she was much in love and knew what love was she says this all with four words “summer sang in me.” And as her life is in decline her lovers left her, this can be told by using “winter” as a symbol because it is the season of death and decline from life and the birds left the tree in winter. The “birds” can be seen as a literal symbol of the lovers that have left her or flown away or it can have the deeper meaning that in the last stages of our life all of our memories leave us tittering to our selves.

The three poems show exile and keening, but the poems also show tactile imagery. The Wanderer show tactile imagery in line three, “wintery seas,” describes the setting is in this poem along with the tone. The Seafarer show’s tactile imagery as well, in line nine, “in icy bands, bound with frost,” the tactile imagery in this line describes the coldness of the thoughts in the lonely man’s head. In The Wife’s Lament the tactile imagery is shown in line forty seven, “That my beloved sits under a rocky cliff rimed with frost a lord dreary in spirit drenched with water in the ruined hall.” The wife in this tactile imagery is show how her husband is suffering just

The poem starts with a description of the setting of a summer day, Levertov writes: “The fire in leaf and grass/ so green it seems/ each summer the last summer”. The green leaf and grass refers to a fresh new day, which emphasizes a good day to start in the summer. The author goes on with her describing the beautiful sunshine of the summer by giving the images of the wind, the leaf and the sun. She writes: “The wind blowing, the leaves/ shivering in the sun, / each day the last day”. The poet uses the words “fire, blowing, and shivering” to gives us how urgent and immediate we feel in our lives. It is also a reminder the poet wants to send us that these beautiful natural things won’t last forever, as well as we

The poem “That Winter,” is the seasonal poem describing the environment has changed by using imagery. It’s impressive for describing the poem with imagery. From lines 1 to 6 on “That Winter” poem:

Olds starts off the poem by saying: “That winter, the dead could not be buried.”’(1) This creates a sad tone for when the rest of the poem. She then talks about the

The poem describes the weather and its effect on cotton flower by pointing out the dying branches and vanishing cotton. The image of insufficiency, struggle and death parallel the oppression of African American race. The beginning of the poem illustrates the struggle and suffering of the cotton flower; which represent the misery of African Americans and also gives an idea that there is no hope for them. But at the end the speaker says “brown eyes that loves without a trace of fear/ Beauty so sudden for that time of year” (lines 13-14). This shows the rise of the African American race, and their fight against racism. The author used mood, tone and

When she first talks about winter, she says that “Thus in winter stands a lonely tree,” (9). When referring to winter, it is the season of death. The speaker is realizing that her days left is slowly approaching an end. She then turns and references summer, “I only know that summer sang in me” (13), and “that in me sings no more” (14). As she is talking about summer, she is also talking about her memories of herself when she was young. This corresponds with the seasons because in summer things are new and want to be experienced however, in winter this is the season when everything is dying and no one wants to be a part of it. The speaker can feel this happening to herself because she sees herself as winter, and she longs to be like summer again. In the summer stage of her life, she is youthful, and she has men aching to be around her. However, now that she has approached the winter stage of her life she is feeling strong feelings of regret. Thus, this shows how she feels about herself by showing how she talks about winter and summer and how it compares to the sorrow in her life

Imagery is used by the author to illustrate immortality. As the future comes to the young woman, the reader visualizes, “rain failing on the lawns of her children” (Strand, 1990). Strand uses this statement to emphasize how the young women’s children mourn over her death, as a way to imply that one is immortal in the memories of a loved one. In the third stanza, Strand introduces a man who is writing a poem about the young woman, “thinking of death, thinking of him thinking of her” (Strand, 1990). As the man

In the second stanza it is the semantic field of cold: ‘winter’, ‘ice’, ‘naked’, ‘snow’. All these lexical items give us a feeling of cold which evokes loneliness, unknown, fear.

To start off the analysis, the setting of the entire poem is significant. Though the poem takes place in a house, the atmosphere the house is set in is also important. The month is September which is a month of fall which can be seen as a symbol for decline. It definitely insinuates that the poem is leading towards death. Line 1 has “September rain falls on the house” which gives the feeling of a dark and cold night with a storm on top of that. To further develop that, Bishop gives us the failing light in line 2 to also give us an idea of the grandmother’s struggle. Bishop uses the cyclical theme of changing seasons to show the unending nature of what is transpiring within the

This is significant because it emphasizes the melancholy and mournfulness that he depicts with imagery in the first stanza. Later on in the second stanza, he author describes the tree the narrator would have planted as a “green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs”. The author uses visual color imagery of the color green to describe the sapling in order to emphasize just how young the newborn was when he died. Later on in the poem, the narrator speaks of himself and his brothers kneeling in front of the newly plated tree. The fact that they are kneeling represents respect for the deceased. When the narrator mentions that the weather is cold it is a reference back to the first stanza when he says “of an old year coming to an end”. Later on in the third stanza the author writes “all that remains above earth of a first born son” which means that the deceased child has been buried. They also compare the child to the size of “a few stray atoms” to emphasize that he was an infant. All of these symbols and comparisons to are significant because they are tied to the central assertion of remembrance and honoring of the dead with the family and rebirth.