 Hello and welcome to this summary of the poem, Mild The Mist Upon The Hill by Emily Bronte. Bear in mind that this poem features as part of Edexcel's belonging anthology, okay? Now, before we go into the details of analyzing the poem, its stanzas and so on, I think it's really important to always have a brief contextual knowledge and overview relating to things that influence the poet Emily Bronte herself, okay? So as you can see behind me, I've created a very brief mind map of key contextual factors you need to understand before we then look at the poem in detail. Now, first you remember that Elizabeth Bronte, or rather Emily Bronte, is a Victorian writer, okay? So she's a Victorian writer and she comes from the very literary and very famous Bronte family. Indeed, the Bronte sisters are really, really famous for producing some of the greatest Victorian fiction pieces, including, of course, by Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights and her sister Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre, okay? So she comes from a fairly famous literary family. But do bear in mind that she actually didn't come from a rich family. Her family members, her dad and her mom, they were clergy members. Her dad was the head of a postage and this kind of gave them a sort of very shaky middle class status, okay? But they were in no means rich at all, okay? The other thing to bear in mind is that because during the Victorian era, women were not seen as equal to men and she probably would not have had a great readership. If she had written under her real name, she took on a fake name, what is called a pseudonym, so a kind of gender-neutral name. And the pseudonym was Ellis Bell, okay? So she wrote during her time and during her life, she wrote under a pseudonym, which was a gender-neutral name, Ellis Bell. And she wrote this particular poem, So, Mild The Mist Upon The Hill, in 1839, okay? So do bear in mind that the Victorian society really saw women as inferior to men and it was often seen as even improper for a woman to do lots of writing, to engage in lots of writing, activism and so on, okay? Women were expected to be passive, they were expected to be angels of the house, okay? The other thing to bear in mind contextually is that she suffered traumas and losses herself, okay? Specifically speaking, in 1825, two of her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, fell really gravely ill and they died and passed away, which is one of the things that really influenced her and influenced her a mini-bronte and also did bring on bouts of melancholy. And this melancholy, which is clearing up, is obviously hinted at within the poem, okay? So she suffered the loss of two of her sisters and she wrote her most famous book, Wuthering Heights, in 1847, okay? So much later than the death of her sisters, Wuthering Heights, if you do have the opportunity to read it, you will find that it's set on the Yorkshire Moors, which is where she's from and there is this overwhelming gloom, darkness and so on, okay, and it's a very classic piece of gothic fiction, okay? The other thing to bear in mind is that Emily Bronte, I'm like what was expected of women at the time, so women were expected to also get married, that was the main job of a woman to get married and have lots of children. She was very silent reserved and she never ever married, okay, so she remained an unmarried woman, basically a spinster, till the end of her life. And finally, this poem, so the Mild the Mist Upon the Hill, it never actually received a title, so this poem, the name of the poem is actually taken from the first line within the first stanza, okay? So this poem always remember that it actually never had a title. So now that you have this contextual factors in mind, okay, remember that when you're analysing any poem, you always have to know the poem and show, of course, your understanding of the poem on the one hand, but also you need to show an understanding of context and how this influences context. So now that we have this understanding out of the way, let's analyse the poem in detail. So let's read the poem, Mild the Mist Upon the Hill, Mild the Mist Upon the Hill, tilling not of storms tomorrow, no, the day has wept its fill, spent its stall of silent sorrow. Oh, I'm gone back to the days of youth, I am a child once more underneath my father's sheltering roof and near the old hall door. I watch this cloudy evening fall, after a day of rain, blue mists, sweet mists of summer pool, the horizon's mountain chain. The damp stands and the long green grass, as thick as morning tears and dreamy sense of fragrance pass that breathe of other years. So this poem is essentially illustrating the narrator looking at this mist as it's clearing from the hill and they are reflecting on the clouds and of course, even sorrow and sadness passing and they are reflecting on how they used to fill as a child and so on, okay? So now, given that we've read this poem and of course we have this sense of melancholy mixed in with nostalgia, let's analyse this poem in detail. The first thing to note is the title itself, Mild The Mist Upon The Hill. The title shares the first line of the first verse because Emily Bronte had never actually given this poem an official title, okay? So do bear that in mind. Now, when it comes to the first stanza, so as I've mentioned, Mild The Mist Upon The Hill, there's lots of alliteration here and of course the alliteration of M, especially Mild and Mist, reveals how there's a mild mist that's covering a hill that the narrator can see and this can also serve as a metaphor for how nature is taking a break from being sad and by extension you can interpret this as the speaker themselves are taking a break from being sad, from the sorrow, the melancholy. Then the mention of storms, okay? So this mist is covering and it's not telling us of the storms that will come tomorrow. Now, the weather here represents the sorrows and problems that may come the following day. However, the mist hides all of this. Again, the speaker could be also by extension reflecting on how the day that is starting as it can on the mist, it seems like it has no issues, but this is hiding maybe issues that will come in and problems that might come then following day tomorrow. Then we're told that the day has wept its fill and spent its store of silent sorrow. So here we have semantic field of grief, so wept and sorrow and of course also the day is personified as weeping and having sorrow which shows that the day is emerging from a period of sadness. Again, this could be by extension reflecting the narrator themselves, the speaker who is emerging from a period of sadness. Now, as I've mentioned, contextually speaking, remember that Emily Brontë had lost two sisters so we could also maybe see this as an extension of her herself, thinking about how nature, just like the way it's coming from its sadness, she's emerging from a period of mourning and sadness after the loss of her sisters. Furthermore, in line number three of the first verse, the day has wept its fill. As I've mentioned, personifications used here to show that the rain has ended and the day is now clearing up. Moreover, the use of sibilants is spent to store silent and sorrow. It creates an atmosphere of silence so there's a quiet and somber mood that's established in the first verse. In the second stanza, the speaker states, oh, I'm gone back now. The caesura after oh conveys a sense of longing that the speaker has for the younger days when they were youthful, innocent and happy before all the problems came and befell them. Then they state, I am a child once more. Now here, it's interesting because there's a shift from the third-person perspective, which we see in the first stanza, now to the first-person narrative. So the speaker feels like a child again in nature. Furthermore, they refer to my father's sheltering roof and old hall door. So sheltering roof and hall door, here we sense a sense of shelter and protection that's mentioned through the roof and the door. And this suggests that the speaker wants to feel safe in nature as providing them with the semblance of safety and comfort, like a loving protective father who's given them shelter, who's given them a roof over their heads and a door which protects them from the outside. In the third verse, the speaker states, I watch this cloudy evening fall. Again, here, pathetic fallacy indicates that evening is now falling. However, it's bringing rest and respite. Furthermore, there are myths that they see. So blue myths, sweet myths, and here the adjectives blue and sweet describe the mist as seeming quite calm, pleasant, and soothing from what the speaker can see. Also, the repetition of myths turns our attention back to this myth that had began the first verse. Furthermore, the reference to summer pawls. Now the idea of pawl has negative connotations, okay? When something is pawled, it's kind of covered in a shadow and this is interesting because it's actually prefixed. So the word that comes before is summer which gives the verse a pleasant, sunny feeling. So even if there's a bit of a shadow, actually this shadow has been brought on by summer. And again, always remember that summer represents happiness. Furthermore, there's a reference to the horizon's mountain change. Now, the assonance of O in horizon and mountain focuses our tension back to the horizon of the hill. And here we can see that speakers looking at the hill again very reflectively. In the following verse, that entire stanza shows that the narrator is switching back to observing everything using third person narrative. So we wonder whether they are viewing the scene through their own eyes in the present or if they're remembering a memory and thinking about it through their eyes in the past, okay? Then in the second line, so there's a mention of thick as the morning's tears and then the third line of this verse, dreamy sense. Now here, morning's tears and dreamy sense creates a really conflicting description of the scene that's before them. One scene which has morning tears is filled with sorrow. However, the other which has dreamy sense, it's filled with reminiscence, okay? So there's now really conflicting descriptions here. Also, the similarly as thick as morning tears creates a really vivid image in our minds of really dense grass that they can see near this horizon and surrounding this hill. Furthermore, the mention of sense and fragrance belongs to the semantic field of sense. So of course, what the author is using here, so Emily Bronte herself, she is using visceral sensory language, okay? That she's appealing to a sense of smell. And this illustrates at the moment that the speaker is witnessing and the miss is quite brief and fleeting. Remember that a scent can be quite brief, it can be very fleeting, okay? So the speaker reflects on both the pain and joy of life. So that's it when it comes to analyzing Milder Mist Upon the Hill by Emily Bronte. I hope you found this summary of context as well as the detailed analysis that we've done of the stanza really helpful in understanding this poem. And thanks so much for listening.