 Hello and welcome to our video summarizing all you need to know about the songs of ourselves volume 1 part 3 anthology My name is Barbara and in this video. I'll summarize each poem beginning with a little context about the poet before analyzing the poem in depth Do make sure you have your anthology handy before you listen to each analysis and read the poem first in this way You'll get a better grasp of the poems meaning. So let's get started Now this collection begins with Caged Bird by Maya Angelou Now this poem is arguably one of the most moving and eye-opening poems ever written She also wrote an autobiography with this same title I know why the Caged Bird sings and it's clear that this title had a great significance to Maya Angelou as It was the title to her entire life story In her autobiography she talked about the struggle of being a black author in other words an African American as well as a poet She often felt that her words were not heard because of the color of her skin She felt that in some ways she was still experiencing slavery even if slavery had been outlawed during her time Although African American people were free There were still many restrictions that were placed upon them in Jim Crow era USA Making it so that many African Americans didn't feel free at all Now when it comes to the poem itself When with regards to the first stanza Maya Angelou begins by referring to nature She describes the way as the poem states a free bird leaps on the back of the wind She describes a bird's flight against the orange sky and a free bird has the right to claim the sky The way she describes the orange sun rays gives a reader an appreciation of the natural beauty of the sky and the description Of the way the bird dips his wing helps a reader appreciate the bird in its natural habitat as it's enduring its freedom However, the second stanza is a stark contrast to the first the stanza begins with the word but to begin and It prepares reader for this contrast Angelou then describes the bird that stalks his narrow cage this quote puts a really dark tone and it shifts drastically from the peaceful satisfied Enjoyful tone of the first stanza to one that's dark unnerving and even frustrating She says that this caged bird first can seldom see through the bars of rage While the free bird gets to enjoy the full sky the cage bird rarely gets even a glimpse of it The text from Maya Angelou's autobiography also reveals that she herself felt this way in life She felt very restricted from enjoying the freedom. She could have had as a human being in The poem the speaker then reveals that these are the very reasons that the bird opens his throat to sing The author felt this same way in her own life Angelou wrote and sang and danced because this was her only way of expressing her longing for freedom In the third stanza this reverts back to the free bird further cementing the difference between the free bird and the caged bird Angelou writes that a free bird thinks of another breeze and he can enjoy sighting trees and is free to find his own food The tone which she writes the first and third stanzas really sharply contrasts with the second stanza and the reader can really see the stark difference When we shift into the fourth stanza This continues again the parallel between the life experience by the free bird versus the difficult life experience by the caged bird The first line of the fourth stanza serves to starkly contrast the last line in the third stanza It's really dark daunting and also to some extent haunting The reality of the life of the caged bird is revealed here the poem states the bird stands on the grave of dreams This metaphor reveals Angelou's feelings about her own dreams She had so many dreams that died because she was really never given the freedom in a racist country That all her white counterparts were able to achieve The discrimination and racism that she experienced within America made up her cage and although Angelou sang She felt her voice was not heard in the wider world The second line of this stanza is not only dark but also frightening as the speaker describes the bird's cries as shouts on a nightmare scream at this point the caged bird is so Dispondent about his life of captivity that he screams like someone having a nightmare Now when you shift into the fifth stanza this final stanza focuses on the caged bird yet again The author Angelou implies that even though the caged bird may have never experienced true freedom deep down They still know that they were created to be free Although freedom to the caged bird is fearful because it's an unknown The bird still sings a fearful trill, which is an oxymoron This is because it shows the birds longing for freedom This parallels to Maya Angelou and her cry for freedom in the form of Equality and of course Maya Angelou was one of the important figures during the civil rights movement within the US that advocated for equal rights amongst African Americans and for them to enjoy the same rights as white Americans Angelou feels her choirs are heard within this poem, but only a soft background noise She still feels that she's caged and although she sings her choirs are only heard as a distant noise and the last line of this stanza states For the caged bird sings of freedom With this the speaker implies that although the caged bird may have never experienced freedom They still are able to sing about it because this bird was created for freedom This of course parallels that African Americans struggled during Maya Angelou's time She felt that a lot of African Americans wrote and sang and danced and cried out for the freedom that they deserved But they're only heard as a distant voice However, this would not stop them from crying out for freedom and equality because they knew they were made for freedom And they would not relent until they were given the rights And of course they successfully did attain their rights in 1964 under the Freedom Rights Act Now the next collections poem in this collection is Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning Now Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a renowned Victorian poet who has managed to achieve a lot of acclaim in her lifetime She influenced several British and American poets particularly Emily Dickinson A prolific writer Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems came to the attention of another famous poet at the time Robert Browning The two eventually married but were forced to wed secretly because of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's father He found out about the nuptials and disinherited his daughter who was going to eventually be wealthy had she inherited from her father Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning moved to Italy and they both encouraged each other with their writings Elizabeth Barrett Browning ultimately died in Italy at the age of 55 Now this poem Sonnet 43 is easily one of the most famous and recognisable poems in this poem the speaker essentially is Proclaiming her unending passion for her beloved and in many ways it echoes Barrett Browning's own love for Robert Browning to the extent that she gave up everything including her inheritance for him In the poem the speaker states that she loves this person with all her being and she hopes God will grant her the ability to love him even after she's passed away Now as was mentioned Barrett Browning fell in love with Robert Browning after reached out to her about their writing They wrote back and forth initially before finally marrying however their marriage was one that was totally forbidden by her father And of course this poem is a reflection of this Now firstly in terms of the structure of this poem or rather its form It's classified as a sonnet in other words It's a love poem and this is because it contains 14 lines of poetry and it has a fixed rhyme scheme of a bb a abba cdcdcd One can assume that Barrett Browning is also the speaker of the poem since it's well known Just how deeply she and Robert Browning loved and cared for each other Based on the initial line of this poem it seems that the speaker has asked a question prior to reciting the poem The first line also serves as a motivation for the rest of the work It begins how do I love thee? Let me count the ways Elizabeth Barrett Browning then uses the last 30 lines of the poem to show just how much she loves her husband Lines two to four the poem provide the first way in which the speaker loves her husband The poem states I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight For the ends of being an ideal grace Here we find that Browning is describing her love as deep wide and tall as it possibly can be and it's so Vast that she cannot even see the edges of it. It's infinite In the next two lines Barrett Browning continues to show her husband how much she loves him. She writes I love thee to the level of every day's most quiet need by sun and candlelight And these lines are particularly beautiful in their simplicity While her love knows no bounds the speaker also loves her beloved and ordinary every day life She needs him as much as she needs her other basic necessities of life In line seven and eight Barrett Browning writes of two other ways she loves this person. She writes I love thee freely as men strive for right. I love thee purely as they turn from praise These lines give an innate sense of feeling to her love Just as men naturally strive to do what is good and right Barrett Browning freely loves In addition, she loves Robert Browning purely just as men turn from praise in order to maintain their humility The speaker indeed doesn't want thanks or attention for her love just like these good men She loves because that's what she was created to do. That's what she wants to do Barrett Browning continues this pattern of showing how much she loves her husband by writing I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs and with my childhoods faith And the diction here is really interesting because she's taken the feelings she has about something relatively negative And comparing it to the feelings she has for her husband Old griefs can be defined as anything that a person passionately despises Therefore here she's telling her husband that she has as much passion for him as she does for the things in life that she just can't stand She also loves him with the faith of a child, which is very innocent Children's faith is usually very steadfast and true And just like a child has faith so too does the speaker have love for their husband Barrett Browning continues with a religious motif in the next lines when she writes I love thee with the love I seemed to lose with my lost saints I love thee with the breath smiles and tears of all my life and her reference to lost saints Is a reference to all those people she once loved and adored in her life The love she once felt for them and that she has eventually lost has now been transferred into the love she feels for her husband And additionally she loves him with all that she is her breath her smiles her tears And Barrett Browning confesses that she loves her husband with all that has made up her life The perm ends by acknowledging that She will continue to love her husband forever if God allows her to do so Not only will she love him well into eternity she writes But she'll also love him better than she does so presently and her love will only continue to grow Now the next poem in this collection is Form Hand by James K. Baxter Now this poem is a five stanza poem divided into sets of four lines which are quadrains And these quadrains vary in a number of different ways, but they are unified through one important element The unique from one another in the line lengths the pattern of meter the syllable numbers and word choice However, the poet has chosen to unify them through punctuation So each stanza is made up of one long phrase that ends with a period or a full stop in the fourth line This punctuation choice means that each stanza is itself a separate thought or scene And the first set of lines show the main character from one angle Then the second from his own perspective and so on until the reader reaches the end of the narrative Now this poem describes a lack of confidence that a farm hand somebody who works on a farm Has regarding his appearance and relationship prospects The poem starts as a speaker describing an interesting man who's both social and contemplative He can often be found watching the dance floor of a music hall and observing all the beautiful comings and goings It becomes clear however that he never does more than just observe He doesn't see himself as deserving or being suited to the life of a lover The farm hand who appears to be down on his life and appearance is able to take some comfort in the fact that he can still hope Something good will happen to him In the final lines the speaker asks the reader not to judge the man based on how he looks Or what he thinks he doesn't have but on what he displays during the harvest season This man is uncommonly strong and hard-working and he also has a gentle side that he takes advantage of to careford's machinery Now in stanza one The speaker who's really not the main character of the poem introduces the reader to the farm hand The poet has made the decision to thrust the reader into this narrative right from the middle in the middle of the action in other words a media array The farm hand is experiencing a moment and a set of emotions which are common in his life The speaker places them in the scene leaning against the hall door and lighting a cigarette This image is enough to give the reader a sense of who this person is or at least what the narrator thinks of him The narrator also sees his actions as being somewhat careless The man doesn't seem to consider those around him as he moves or perhaps he doesn't think about whether his action of smoking is even allowed One night One might rather come upon the farm hand in this location and one might find him telling some new joke to a friend It's clear that this man is social and confident enough to tell untested jokes to his friends and he's not alone in his life In the final phrase in this stanza the farm hand is said to be sometimes looking to be sometimes found Looking out into the secret night and this statement, especially when considered with a first paints the man as being rather contemplative The farm hand we find looks out windows stares into the distance enough where one might look to find him there And this personality trait seems somewhat at odds with a man who's confidently telling jokes to his friends Now in stanza 2 the speaker continues on to state that even if the man spends a good amount of time staring outside His eyes always end up back in one place. This is the dance floor and especially to the girls drifting like flowers And of course before the description of the dance or bar is furthered one is already able to tell that it will be romanticized The women are not dancing but they are drifting they're not women but they're characterized in this simile as flowers The world of social romantic engagement through the farm hand's eyes is unattainably perfect He's only able to spend a short time considering the beauty that he sees playing itself out on the dance floor His mind is quickly forced into a pattern of thinking which is much too familiar The music makes its way to his head and breaks an old wound open Now in stanza 3 it's at this point that the farm hand's main internal struggle is really revealed in its entirety to us as readers The entire poem hinges around the reasons why the farm hand believes he's not suited to any other life in the one he has thus far The man's connection to this music returns him to the real life And he begins to take stock of his own body He remembers as the poem states his sunburned face and hairy hands He sees these features in contrast to the flower-like appearance of the women. He believes he was not made for dancing with Solely based on the mental image he holds of his own worth and position It seems that this farm hand believes that love is not really meant for him And he thinks that he's better suited for breaking the earth with a plow And for the crops that seem to grow as slowly as his mind does Now in stanza 4 this idea is continued as we get a description of all the things the farm hand believes he can't have and how he misses them He aches over the fact that he has no girl who rots her hair her fingers through his hair He considers that there are no intimate moments with another person that he can cherish Nor are there happy times that he can enjoy the only things he has to hold on to are his awkward hopes and his envious dreams They show him what he thinks it can't have but also comfort him with a reminder that just maybe it may be possible Now in the final stanza stanza 5 the narrator's voice is more apparent He's speaking directly to reader and asking that one not judge the farm hand over what he does not have or what he lacks in confidence Instead this person should wait until the harvest and watch him as he works An observer would see him lifting effortlessly and showing off his strength humbly to the world One would also see his tender side something he takes advantage of to fix and care for machinery These final lines prove that this man although he doesn't have he does not see it in himself rather He has all the attributes of a lover He doesn't need to change who he is to become better or to fit into a mold Now the next poem in this collection is Maliberty by Sojata Bhatt Now this poem is an 18 line poem which is contained within one long block of text So maliberty is a word that's used in the title but not in the text of the poem And it can be defined as the qualities of womanhood This choice of title will make more sense as one understands the purpose behind the speaker's description of the girl She sees on the streets near her home Now this poem describes the sight of a young girl in India who spends her days picking up cow dung and the inherent glistening power she has The poem begins the speaker describing how she's been unable to forget the sight of one particular girl on the streets nearby where she lives The girl was often on the streets of the city picking up cow dung to self for a small profit It's not only the sight of the girl that's halting, but it's the smells that flow around her The speaker is able to sense the smell of road dust, canola leaves and freshly washed clothes and these smells are in stark contrast to one another And they show the complicated existence that the girl is living By the end of the piece the speaker has come to describe the power that she sees in the girl's presence She has an inherent glistening that imbues her with abilities and a power that others don't have Now if we look at lines one to four the speaker starts this piece by describing a thought that's often passed through her mind It's of a girl whom the speaker often sees around the area in which she lives However, there's very minimal description given of this girl. However, one is able to infer that she's quite poor The following line describes the type of life that this girl was living and how that life Overlapped with that of the speaker the first line describes how the speaker has been unable to stop thinking about the The poem states girl who gathered cow dung And this opening phrase is quite shocking and it forces the reader into an immediate questioning of why anyone would do such a thing While it's not explicitly stated in the poem It's most likely that the girl was gathering the dung so that she might sell it It was and still is used in parts of india and pakistan as a source of fuel as it's rich in concentration of methane And this therefore makes it a viable source of power in more rural parts of the country Now in lines 5 to 9 the dung that the girl has picked up goes into a wide brown basket as the poem states Which she carries along with her She travels down roads that are well known to the narrator so much so that speaker can pick out markers that the girl would have passed along the way She mentions the temple located in this one particular district maninaga And this temple is of the vai shnava Domination and is devoted to radhani who's also known as radhika or radha a popular hindu goddess It's important to note how the grandiose the name sounds and the purpose of this temple Contrasts with the young girl whose only source of money is made by gathering cow dung. There's a real stark contrast here The poet thus creates a powerful thought provoking setting for her narrative These lines also describe what it is about the girl that's so attracted the narrator's attention She's been continuously thinking about the way this girl moved and the poem states moved her hands and her waist The girl's body and her physical movements have stuck in the speaker's mind and this could be for a number of different reasons Perhaps the girl's quite thin during due to her economic situation Or perhaps she moves in a very intriguing way The lines continue to state that the speaker has also been remembering the smell of cow dung as well as that of as the poem states Rode dust and wet cannellillies Once more the poet has created an interesting contrast this time though It's among smells rather than sights on the streets The beauty of the environment portrayed through the image of the cannellillies is juxtaposed with that of rode dust and cow dung It's clear that the world the speaker is living in is a complicated place An additional note of interest in regards to cannellillies is that they often use in India in the production of alcohol A fact that dampens the purity in this piece The speaker continues on to describe a number of other smells that she can remember around the girl There's that of monkey breath as well as freshly washed clothes And once more the poet has crafted a really interesting contrast to these images She also describes the smell of the dust from the crow's wings, and this is a different smell One that's not easily recognized and perhaps more ephemeral than physical Now in lines 10 to 13 the speaker returns once more to the smell of cow dung This seems to be a constant in the girl's life. It's something that neither she nor the speaker in her obsessive thoughts can get away from The smells that she's surrounding the girl are important to the speaker's image of her or at least the word They've now come to represent something much more meaningful The smells come to the speaker simultaneously They're almost overwhelming in the number and presence and it's for this reason that she's been unwilling so far to use the girl for a metaphor Now in lines 14 to 18 which is a final section the speaker comes to the main point of the poem and describes Why it is she spent all this time thinking about this one poor girl she saw on the streets She had been unwilling and still is unwilling to utilize this girl's metaphor in an effort to create a nice image The speaker doesn't want to take advantage of the beauty that she sees in this young woman to advance her own words and above all else The speaker is unwilling to forget her or take the time to explain to anyone why she sees the girl as great The speaker doesn't see the girl as being great She knows she is great She can see in this young person equality that she can't find anywhere else Furthermore, there is a power glistening from the presence of the girl that radiates out through her cheekbones Every time she passes by and it doesn't matter what task this girl is working at In fact, the degrading nature of picking up cow dung only further emphasises from the narrator's perspective at least the beauty that's inherent within her It seems that the girl has all the qualities of womanhood that makes a person strong And she's doing what she needs to do to survive just because it's not something that's traditionally thought of as being empowering or feminine Doesn't mean that she can't do it elegantly and powerfully Now the next poem in this collection is plenty by isabel dixon So this poem focuses on the contrasting feelings of a person who as a child experienced growing up in relative poverty Yet who now as an adult is able to put her memories into context Especially with regards to her mother and also as an adult she's become far more financially stable This is also a poem about nostalgia taking the reader back through the first person speaker's mind to a household in kuru South Africa where the poet grew up with her sisters and mother As the poem progresses the domestic scenes from the past increase in details With the antics of the sisters fraying the nerves of the historical mother with the class black smile As the importance of water becomes increasingly clear That part of the world being subject to extremely dry weather We find that isabel dixon herself had left her own native south africa to study in the uk for better opportunities And it's interesting that of course this poem might be potentially semi-autobiographical because It could be a nostalgia look back for somebody who now based in cambridge and london looks back at her early years Thus we can argue that this poem really explores isabel dixon's past her homeland and her roots But also her present in the uk Now plenty is a lyrical poem that focuses on the family household of the past The speaker looking back as she luxuriates in the present And she seems to be reminiscing about childhood scenes as her mother tried to keep a tight hold onto things The main theme in this poem is time and how precarious time alters In particular, there's a change in how the speaker in the poem sees her mother There's a profound difference between the mother of her childhood and the mother of her present who's now passed away The speaker's childhood takes the bulk of the poem and the final two stanzas Are the retrospective part where a new awareness becomes apparent The once poor but happy child is now an adult who relishes sensual luxury However, despite this awareness the speaker feels an emptiness and misses her home and her scattered sisters Even if the speaker is now materially more rich than she was when she was a child She still misses this past There's strong imagery and constant shifts between the personal and the collective So we have the contrast between I and we my mind and our This draws a reader into the chaotic household of the speaker The first object of focus in this poem is a bathtub and the fact that it was never full due to a lack of water Which is a sub recurring theme From this initial opening image the reader is then treated to a close-up profile of the mother In particular her hard-pressed smile. We wonder if it's a forced grimace brought on by the rioting children or if it's a genuine chuckle smile Also make note of the language contrast between the atmosphere and the house and the mother's attempts to keep keep things stable There's the words riot despair age-stained poked anger chaos as well as Anchored down clasps snagging locks and straps clamped hard With very yet careful straightforward syntax in other words sent in structure From single sentence stanzas to short pithy half lines like mummy smile This is interesting use of contrast within language that Dixon employs Now the ignorance of the child back then unaware that her mother had to be firm and Harsh to keep the house and the family afloat Contrast sharply with the adult narrator who can now enjoy plenty and really understands the reason for her mother's strictness The newfound freedoms come only because the speaker once experienced times that were lean hard and difficult We could argue that perhaps Dixon or the narrator in this poem is feeling a little bit of guilt with the bubbling up water To her chin in her current place well once upon a time it felt sinful to be stealing even an extra inch There's a mix of contrasting musical everyday language There's lots of imagery and colorful recall and this poem explores the feelings that accrue over time between the past and the present between ignorance ignorance and knowledge as well as innocence and maturity In particular this look back into the personal history and family routines is something really common to all people Indeed attempting to put childhood experiences into perspective is tricky However, this poem seems to achieve its goal with a humorous mischief and a keen observation to the fore This poem has is a free verse poem of eight stanzas with 32 lines and there's no set rhyme scheme or meter The beat alters and it produces a far more conversational feel to the poem There's a great deal of assonance as well as in Jean Vermont And this occurs in every stanza specifically on Jean Vermont, but and this speeds up the pace of the poem The poet also uses hyperbole, metaphor, oxymoron and simile to really describe particularly the mother Now the next poem in the anthology is The Three Fates by Rosemary Dobson Now this poem is a five stanza poem Which is separated into sets of three lines of tercets And each of these stanzas are formatted similarly in that generally the first line is the longest and the third line the shortest Structurally this poem acts as a narrative with a clear beginning middle and slightly ambiguous end The title of this piece The Three Fates is a reference to three goddesses from greek mythology clotho the cases and a tropos These three are responsible for human destiny and are in charge of making sure that those who are meant to die at a specific time do die This poem describes the life of a man who's forced to live through the same events in reverse for eternity The poem begins with the speaker stating that the main character is in the verge of death He's in the water of a river and is about to drown The man calls out to the sisters of the three fates asking them to save him They do so but not without forcing him to pay a terrible price When the man emerges from water his life resumes but in reverse He puts his clothes on backwards who returns to his home and is forced to watch his true love grow younger and younger Indeed his life is falling apart and there's nothing he can do about it He can't even write poetry from beginning to end and his tears fall before he feels sadness In the final lines of the piece it's become clear that this is not a one-time occurrence The man has been granted eternal life, but only for this one specific period of time When he reaches the end or the beginning of his life Everything returns to the moment before he fell into the river and it all begins again Now when you look at stanza one particularly From the first line of this piece the narrator position is clear The speaker is a semi omniscient narrator and they're able to look into the mind of the main character and understand and describe their motivations Also do note that this story is not occurring as the speaker describes it But it's being retolder to later date the narrative picks up at an extremely dramatic moment in the main character's life When he's on the verge of drowning It's not clear at the beginning of the poem how the man got to this point, but he's quite desperate He's about to lose consciousness when he cries out for as the poem states the three sisters The reader should be prepared for this invocation having read the title of the poem the three fates Indeed as described above the three sisters and the graces and the fates are a group of goddesses who are responsible for the deaths fated for humanity Thus the main character asked the graces at that moment to intervene on his behalf and while the reader Doesn't hear what he said one can assume it took the form of a prayer which was granted Now in stanza two while the narrator and reader know at this point that the more troubles ahead of the man because he got what he asked for He has been saved from the waters. He bobs up to the surface of the water and makes it back The next line is a first clue to what exactly has gone wrong He seems to be moving reverse and his life has entered a new period in which he must experience all things backwards Now in stanza three the third terset describes how this change in his life has forced him into even worse suffering The speaker makes sure to note that one particular thing that drove him to passion was the way he was made to write poems from the end backwards Not only is he physically living in reverse, but his mind seems to be working that way too He's able to predict at least emotionally things that are going to happen next and he brushes away tears that had not fallen Experiencing the sadness before the actual emotion itself Now in stanza four His true loss is described. He's forced to watch the world go in reverse around him The speaker introduces the fact that this man loves a woman someone who's incredibly important to him and whom he's forced to Watch grow younger and younger He observes her swinging in the garden growing even more younger He sees her bare feet and the straw hat she wears on her head The world is still vibrant and very real to him. However, he sees it different from how he used to see it He's not being relieved of the prior knowledge of how his life was It's clear that the fates and the effort to punish the man for his brash invocation Have given him exactly what he wanted, but with a really terrible twist Now in stanza five the full breadth of the man's now terrible life is made clear He not only has to watch his life go backwards, but experience it repeat itself over and over again from the moment before he begins drowning He's made to see the woman who loves referred to childhood and watch the end of the wind and daylight and then there's a pause in this part of the poem In the moment of hesitation the life he's living is taken back to its new beginning Again, he's standing on the bank of the river with as the poem states the real unrolling Now the speaker reveals to the reader how the narrator ended up in the river to begin with He was fishing and was poured into the water It's quite fitting that in a narrative defined by its reversal of time, the beginning of the story is only revealed at the end Now the next poem in this collection is Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden Now this poem is a three stanza work where the sections vary in length Though the theme remains from start to finish This poem is a narrative of a time when the speaker's father would care for his family in ways that went unappreciated Even though the speaker gives indications that the work done by his father was something worth appreciating In fact, the speaker notes that he benefited from that work, but there was no gratification shown towards his father In other words, there was no gratitude towards him This concept is prevalent in the poem's lines and eventually it becomes clear that the unthankful child has become an adult who criticizes his youthful lack of gratitude Though he lengths the fault with the early inability to understand his father's struggles In the end it seems the relationship faltered because of the division created by misunderstanding and no inclination is given that it was ever repaired The end result is a poem that is encumbered with guilt Now the first stanza dives directly into a general recollection from the speaker's youth and the narrator begins their count of how hard the father worked to tend to his responsibilities In the first two lines the reader can note one clue regarding the father's ongoing work schedule since the speaker doesn't just say Sundays were a day of work but also Sundays too What that detail denotes is that the father worked throughout the week Something that is such a given that the weekday workload doesn't need to be elaborately addressed On those Sundays the work began early for his father Indeed his work day obviously stretched into the weekend and he hardly started his efforts in pleasant circumstances Instead he had to commence his daily labors in cold with lingering effects from prior workloads like As the poem states cracked hands that ached It's worth noting as well that the only task that is specifically labelled in this first stanza Is he started the fires of blaze Which showcases a care being extended towards the family that he himself didn't experience The stanza ends with a declaration though that no one ever thanked him This statement begins an impassioned case against a child who would let such actions go without a word of gratitude Given how much the father worked to ensure the child's comfort and well-being In stanza 2 the reader is introduced to evidence that the father's work ethic was great Since the speaker is stating he was not awake when the father started working rather He would as the poem states wake and hear the cold splintering breaking By the time he was awoken by the call his father would send him the rooms were warm already Which shows a level of care from the father He didn't just start the fire to cater to his child But also he didn't want to wake his child from sleep until the room had lost his chill The childhood seemed felt no rush to join his father in the daily chores since Slowly he would raise and dress as the poem states So again the reader is met with indications that the father went out of his way to make the existence of his child better than his own However in the final line of this stanza a confusing prospect is brought about into this discussion In that while the child seemingly had every reason to appreciate the father He also had some sort of fear about his living situation The poem states that he feared the chronic angers of that house There are a number of possible explanations we can consider one being that the house itself was falling apart And the adult who was once the child in this situation reminisces on these issues by labeling them chronic angers If such is the case the notion that the child was afraid of what the father dealt with Creates another reason why the father was worthy of gratitude As a child worried over the disrepair of the house the father continued his duties in spite of the problems It's also possible that these chronic angers are referenced as an indication of tension between the father and child Already the concept that the child neglected to show the gratitude has been established The father knowing of this disregard is being is Phil's hurt and resentful and this could be conceivable A worse prospect could be that the child may have neglected to thank him out of resentment for some kind of emotional neglect Or physical abuse that the father may have inflicted on him. However, this seems unlikely and this would alter the theme of the poem Now in stanza three It seems the idea that the father is abusive really does lose a portion of possibility as the speaker admits that the father had been there for him against the cold And through preparing his good shoes and because the speaker in his older years describes his father's feelings for him as love He pairs that idea with the term austere Indicating a strict environment and that detail could grant the missing information from the second stanza The reason for the tension the chronic angers that were mentioned could be that the father was strict in his parenting way in a way that the child may resent This idea is further cemented since the speaker doesn't seem to hold the same tension towards his father that he had in his youth And he seems to have applied years of wisdom and growth to the situation to conclude that as a child He simply had not understood his father's intentions Overall, the reader can leave this poem feeling the regret of youth wasted and a relationship that never healed from perhaps the speaker's Ungratefulness and the lack of gratitude It seems that the speaker is expressing guilt and grief on what they should have felt could have been a closer relationship with the father Now the next poem in this collection is midterm break by Seamus Haney Now this poem is a seven stanza poem which is made up of sets of three lines or turssets This turssets remain consistent throughout the poem until the reader comes to the final line This line is separate from the preceding stanzas and acts as a point of summary for the entire piece Midterm break doesn't follow a specific rhyme scheme but it's still unified through the similar line lengths and the moments of half and four rhymes that exist throughout the text One other important poetic technique that we're going to talk about in this poem is a set of three lines The poem begins with the speaker that the poet utilizes that alliteration This is seen quite clearly in the first stanza in which the poet uses a number of words that start with the C sound including college, counting classes, clock, all within three lines Now this poem describes the emotional turmoil experienced by a speaker who's a loved one in a very traumatic way The poem begins with the speaker stating that he's been quarantined within a sick bay of his college It's here he waited for his neighbors to come and pick him up and take him home The boy has suffered a loss one which doesn't become clear until the final line of the poem He travels home in his mitt by suffering family. His father is crying and his mother is unable to even speak Also, the boy arrives for an ambulance the next day and he takes a look at it or rather At what he's supposed to be looking at one morning It seems that the no great injuries that he can see but he knows that this is due to the fact that the person was thrown by the bumper of a car The final line of this poem states that the coffin will only be four feet long the same length as a child's age And it's clear to the reader that the speaker has lost his young brother in an accident Now to go into a bit of detail of the under poem In stanza one the poem begins the speaker stating that he's been trapped within a sick bay of his college medical center for the entire morning One might initially think this is due to an illness that the speaker has contracted However, the poet has chosen to emphasize the alienating impact that this loss or whatever it is He's experiencing the sick bay may have on the speaker Indeed the speaker seems to be suffering alone And whilst it's not very clear as yet to us why he's suffering alone It seems to be incredibly a moment filled with tension The speaker can hear the bells ringing and they understand within the sick bay that it's two o'clock before anyone comes to get him We get a sense of the depth of the speaker's loss And this is made clear by the fact that it's not a family member who retrieves him But the neighbors and so we as readers realize that something is terribly wrong In the second stanza the speaker arrives home and the first thing he sees is his father and the porch crying This is a shocking sight as in the past when they had attended funerals before the father always took them in his stride He's never even very moved However, his actions right now of grief are a stark contrast In stanza three the speaker is now inside the house with his closer family members There's a baby in the room blissfully unaware of the morning that's going around The men in the room are associates of his father And the father who's grieving appears to be caught off guard and embarrassed by his grieving At this point we as readers still don't know what the speaker is lost In stanza four, however It's made clear that it's not his mother who's died as she's there holding his hands As all the strangers speak to him and endless numbers of strangers line up to speak to him The young speaker is able to hear them also telling one another that he's the eldest child who's away at school when whatever happened happened In stanza five this mother is still holding her son's hand and she's unable to express herself and all she can do is cough out Angry tearless sighs It seems that this mysterious loss is too great to have any meaningful words An amount of time has passed since the boy learned of this loss And the corpse has now been processed In stanza six the speaker is finally able to confront a body He goes up to the room in which the body is kept the next morning And sees the the poem states snow drops and candles beside the bed This is a peaceful scene one of meditation and quiet contemplation This is the first time we realize that this boy has seen this person in six weeks And it's unclear how long the body has been there or how long the accident has been However, we get the sense that the boy has been away from school for quite some time In the final stanza the identity of the person is finally revealed We realize that the body is the belongs to somebody who is very young And it seems to be highly twisted from an accident because as the poem states The bumper knocked him clear Whoever this person is died from the impact of a car accident The final line makes clear the person's identity The body belongs to the speaker's brother Who was only four years old when he was killed and he now rests in a coffin Now the next poem is Little Boy Crying by Mervyn Morris This poem is a four stanza poem that's separated into sets of lines which vary in length The first stanza contains seven lines while the following contains six And the poem concludes with a short line And this phrase attempts to wrap up the entire theme of the piece Each stanza is dedicated to a particular part of the young child's experience The first stanza describes the general state of being and his initial reaction to being slapped by his father The second one turns to the father and depicts him through the eyes of the child He's an ogre to him in this moment The final six line stanza is told closer to the father's perspective and describes How he longs to comfort his child But he must maintain his composure to ensure the lessons he's trying to teach are not lost This poem seems to describe the emotions of a child who's stuck by his father Who rather is struck by his father to playing in the rain The poem begins with a boy's emotions and his lack of control over how he acts How he reacts to things that haven't happened around him It seems one moment is laughing however the next he's crying as his father slaps him The reaction from the father is described in the third stanza However the second stanza is devoted to a boy's feelings towards his father Who he sees as an ogre as he feels very resentful The final six lines of the stanza speak of the father's love for his son And how that love has driven him to want to teach him important lessons And this particular lesson involves not playing in the rain He wants to reach out and comfort his son But restrains himself in an attempt to teach the son not to be foolish Now in stanza one the narrator of the poem is able to look into the mind of the child Who's the main character and describe the intense emotions that they're feeling This child is young only three years old and is unable to control themselves The stanza emphasizes transition from laughter to sadness from fear to anger The first lines describe the physical appearance of the child as he laughs And how his mouth contorts into all sorts of interesting shapes The laughter he was just enjoying quickly turns to howls And his recent relaxed body becomes tight We don't receive any further description of what's happened to the child until the end But of course we learn that his father had slapped him Now in stanza two the child is disappointed As he sees the father as an ogre who's standing over him at this moment This ogre who of course we later find out is the father Seems in the child's eyes to be beyond love He's not a member of the family, he's a giant and wants it to be aboard The child looks at the father and feels that he must be empty if he contains anything That's such colossal cruelty In this moment the child hates his father There's no room for any other emotion in his young mind His mind works creatively acting off the image of his father as an ogre And he imagines he can trap him in a pit and cut down a tree he's scrambling down These imaginations help the child move through that his emotions of sadness and anger Now in stanza three the speaker turns to the thoughts of his father But describes him as if from a distance, as there's no true emotion in them From a new perspective the reader is able to grasp why it is the father acted this way The speaker knows that a reader will be just as confused as the child is as to why he was slapped Therefore he makes it a point to describe what was being done However the speaker states that the child's tears have the ability to scold the father Showing that the father didn't just engage in this cruel act for unnecessary reasons He himself is hurt by having to discipline his own child Their presence and their emotions which accompany them burn the father as if they are acid He hates that his child is crying and he wants to pick him up However he refrains from doing so in an effort to teach him a lesson that he should learn Now in stanza four the final line of the poem which makes up this short stanza Gives the speaker a glimpse into what it is that angered the father It's the simple statement you must not make a plaything of the ring Which lets the reader know that the child was probably playing around outside and lost control Perhaps is splashing in paddles or running from his father Now the next poem in this collection is Rise and Fire by Norman Nicholson Now this is a four stanza poem divided into varying sets of lines And the longest standards contain nine lines and the shortest six One of the most striking aspects of this poem is the way in which the lines are formatted In an effort to emphasise the repetition of not statements The poem has indented those lines in and this creates a rhythm from stanza to stanza And draws further attention to the theme the plot intended Indeed this poem describes how one's perspective of life and time changes from birth to childhood adulthood and old age The poem begins with the speaker reflecting the words of his child or child in his care The child claims to be Rise and Fire rather than four years old He's looking into the future towards an increased age as a positive This is something which scares the speaker and sends him into layers of contemplation about his environment and what it means to live He looks around him and sees the landscape is gracefully changing It's no longer winter but rising spring He broadens his view further up into the sky and sees that the sun is setting The day no longer exists as it's not a rising night In the final stanza he reflects on how one considered the process of aging while young and how that changes with marriage and parenthood By the end of the poem he sees living not as life but as rising death Now in stanza one the speaker presents a reader with few personal details about his life that help draw one into the narrative The poem begins with the specific a child that the narrator is raising and it ends with broad statements on life and death In the first lines the poet is relaying the words of supplementary character in this narrative The son of the speaker or at least someone who is taken care of refers to himself as rising five The child doesn't want to be four any longer but instead claims to be closer to five As the poet writes this section he adds intimate details of the boy's appearance The speaker describes little calls of head that bounce on their head and little spectacles that he wears The child seems full of life in his eyes appear to be enhanced by imagination This vibrant description is punctuated by the final lines which speak to the tentative nature of life and aging In stanza two the speaker pardons the range of life that he's analysing He moves his attention from the child to the day which is all around them These two characters are in a field among cells of life of spring Everything around them is moving and changing as if in part of a dance This feeling is emphasised through the poet's alliteration of the B and S sounds The world appears to be in a state of constant change a fact that the speaker doesn't take any comfort in It seems the world is changing just as the child is It too is aging and the seasons are progressing While it's technically May it's so late in the season that it could be referred to as rising June In stanza three the speaker takes another step back from the moment and looks at the larger passage of time in this place He's no longer focused on the boy whose words sent him on the tangent but he casts his gaze instead to the sky It's here that he sees how the dust is first separating in the light The sun can be bright and fall one moment and then it can be rising night The setting of the sun is a clear illusion to death and the dark subject matter the speaker will tackle in the final stanza All of these stanzas make clear to a reader that having this child under his care has made the speaker think deeply about what it means to be alive and how limited time is Aging might seem like a good thing to a four-year-old but to their caregiver or parents it's a very terrifying prospect And the fourth stanza the speaker elaborates on what it means for the seasons to change and for the old to be pushed out by the new The speaker describes this elegantly with a phrase We drop our youth behind us like a boy Who's throwing away candy wrappers When one is young it's impossible to value youth and the possibilities inherit in the time ahead In the state of mind one is never able to see the flower They can only see the fruit Indeed life is all about instant gratification with no appreciation for the simple beauty of a moment A flower will be overlooked On the other hand as one ages it's impossible not to see time and the future When one looks at the marriage bed once he is a baby cradle Then when one looks for the bed they see the grave Life becomes intertwined with death so that one is not living so much as rising dead Now the next poem in this collection is immense by Adrienne Rich Now this poem is a four stanza poem which is separated into sets of four lines While Rich chose not to utilise the rhyme scheme in this piece she made use of other poetic techniques for instance she chose to repeat the short phrase as if a number of times throughout the poem These two words begin eight of the poem's 24 lines She'll also use very little punctuation and the entire poem is comprised indeed of one long drawn out phrase which runs from the first word to the last word without a full stop This poem describes the purity of the moonlight as it passes over and soaks into the face of the earth The speaker begins by describing the purity of the moon's light and how on certain nights it's more meaningful than others The night of this poem's telling as is one such night The light emerges on this particular night from behind an apple tree This light crosses the ocean it then pauses for a moment on the sound of the shore relishing the solidity of the earth and then it begins to climb The moonlight moves up a clear face and then comes into contact with humanity It's then forced to travel through gash-like quarries and across the vast piles of waste humankind has discarded This light finally reaches the population of the earth and rests the eyelids of the sleepers hoping to amend their actions of humanity The purity of light is wielded as a weapon for the good of the earth Now in stanza one the poem begins the speaker stating that there are certain nights of the year or perhaps certain nights scattered throughout time where light has a certain property It holds an increased amount of meaning in these instances It's on one of these nights that the speaker begins to make amends The first and the second lines state that the light on a night like this seems to explode out of a cold apple bow The light emanates from this very specific place and it's likely that rich chose these bows of an apple tree as the apparent source of light for its literary and religious significance The tree bore forth knowledge and now it's shining a light upon the world much like the tree of knowledge and life in the Garden of Eden was one which bore apples The light isn't appearing from nowhere but it's actually shining from the moon through the branches of the tree It just looks as if it's coming from the bark when in reality it comes from a force far greater It moves from the tree to the ground and across the landscape picking its way over small stones and this is just the start from the moonlight It has a long journey ahead as it moves across the surface of the earth Now in stanza two this stanza picks up right where the first left off with the first of the lines as it phrases Due to the fact that this poem is one sentence the reader won't come to the end of the phrase until the final line Many of these lines seem to hang in space without a conclusion and this is done in purpose so that it would seem as though there's no end or beginning one line just runs into another The moonlight appears to be moving over the small and greater stones and begins to rise with the surf Now a reader will understand that the light started below the horizon in the place that the apple tree resides and has begun to touch the ocean waves The light has made its way onto the shore and like a human being it lays its cheek on the sand This light only pauses briefly according to this personification however it takes a moment to feel the solidity of the earth and the texture of the sand From here it moves up a cliff face that abuts the coast The texture of this feature is less pleasing than the small grains of the sand The cliff is broken and their ledges of the light must overcome and it does so easily and flows up the cliffs to the tracks This is the first moment of true human presence that the poet has allowed to enter into the story Indeed it seems that the poet deliberately made a choice to show the purity of the world without humankind Now in stanza 3 the poet confronts the impact of humankind on the face of the earth The moonlight has moved away from the purity of the previous watery landscape to a new one that has been cut up and added to by humanity The light is now pouring unavailing into a gash and it's clear from the word choice that the quarry to which it refers is not natural it's a blemish or a gash upon the landscape The quarry is made of and filled with a sand and gravel that's been tuned to that purpose Next the light moves onto fuselage This refers to the body of a crop dusting airplane that has been discarded and stored in a hangar The location is most likely less of a hangar and more of a trash dump for ancient pieces of equipment Now in stanza 4 the light reaches its last narrated location Up until this point it was more like the light was moving over surfaces rather than penetrating them However now the light is soaking into the cracks of trailers The pure and untouched light of the moon is entering into the dirty contaminated lives of human beings who are with tremulous with sleep These people are shaking or shivering in their sleep and they're filled with their own lives and histories The moonlight pauses on the eyelids of the sleepers and these sleepers are all humankind All people have played a part in changing the face of the earth and thus they're receiving equal treatment from the light of the moon In the last sign of the poem all of the as-it statements come to a conclusion The light has been moving across the face of the earth in an attempt to hill as if to make amends The purity of the moon is hoping through its sheer beauty and presence to fix what humanity has done to the planet The damage refers to structures built, the harm done to the environment and even the shareway sets accumulated through human use It also refers to the mental and spiritual state of humanity itself Perhaps the moon will be able to change something that's so far been ingrained into the minds of humankind that need to dominate control and consume This is what needs to be amended most of all Now the next poem in this anthology is Sonnet 29 by Edna St Vincent Millay So she was an American poet and playwright and she received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 the third woman to ever win the award Her poetry includes many sonnets including this one however later in her career her poetry turned more political as she focused more on the allies' efforts during World War II which was between 1935 and 1939 rather and 1945 These poems drew a tremendous amount of criticisms It's her sonnets however for which Millay is best known for Unfortunately she died at 58 from a heart attack however today she's considered to be one of the US's most beloved and popular poets It should be noted that this poem which is called Sonnet 29 is also known as Pity Me Not The speaker of this poem is asking her reader, perhaps even the man with whom she's in love, to stop pitying her While the tone throughout the poem is quite melancholy the speaker also seems to be realistic when it comes to love comparing the circles of nature to the circle of romance The speaker recognises and accepts that her lover no longer loves her and she says that she has always known that this is the way of love it's fleeting and fickle As is quite common in a sonnet the first line of the poem doubles as a title of the poem This work is typical of a Shakespearean sonnet with 14 lines a set rhyme scheme so an A B A B C D C D E F E F G G in three rhymed quaterines and the last two lines of the poem form a rhyming couplet Throughout the poem the speaker compares love to nature which begins in the first quatering The speaker then makes a request to her reader who may also be her former lover to not pity her She also begins an extended metaphor in the poem comparing the love to the ever-changing aspects of nature She also asks that she not be pitied because the light of love has also been extinguished for her as well as her lover In the second quaterine of this sonnet it's evident that Millie is using or rather utilising repetition with the phrase pity me not just as she begins the first quaterine of her poem She writes pity me not for the waning of the moon nor the ebbing tide goes out to sea again she asks that she not be pitied because the moon is not as bright or as big as it had been just like the love she and her lover had experienced is no longer as vivid and as powerful as before It becomes evident that the speaker is directly talking to her former lover as the poem progresses and she doesn't want them to pity her because the desire and the love he once felt for her has fled and therefore she does not wish to be loved any longer In the third quaterine in this sonnet her pessimism comes out in full force The speaker has a very cynical way of looking at love They claim that they've always known that love is fragile and fleeting like a delicate flower that's beaten by the wind it's like the tide on the shore that must return back to the ocean and the wreckage that appears after a strong wind it will eventually be broken Now the next poem in this collection is Marysong by Dennis Scott Now Marysong by Dennis Scott is a 17 line poem that does not follow a particular rhyme scheme Although careful reading of this piece one will discover that there are a few sets of lines or couplets that do rhyme One such example is Find and Mind in the last two lines of the poem The title of this piece is quite literal The poem seems to be a song that describes the marriage between two people and all the quirks that come with it The poet also makes repetitive use of the technique of enjambement which is when the end of a line runs into the next as there's no punctuation All of these moments are created intentionally in an effort to control the reader's pace and understanding of the poem Oftentimes enjambement can cause a poem to feel halting or choppy and this can work in the poet's favor as it tends to carry a reader on to the end Additionally, the strategic placement of these line breaks references the changing landscape that's mentioned in the poem Just as the husband is forced to contend with the world his wife is constructing so too is a reader made to navigate the syntax of Marysong This poem describes a relationship between a husband and wife whose relationship to each other is constantly shifting due to the wife's mental and emotional state The poem begins with the speaker saying that although the couple have been married for years and years the husband has yet to fully figure his wife out She's an enigma to him and he wonders about the changes of her personality There are moments in their lives which she's charming, calm and clear but others in which she can compare to a powerful, tempestuous storm The wife's shifting perspectives are violent enough to change the landscape of their relationship She can cause rain, wind or sun with a turn of her emotion And the final lines of the poem, the speaker states that the husband has long since come to term with the fact of this relationship and he knows that he cannot change his wife However, he's chosen to remain alongside her as much as he possibly can in an attempt to understand her Now looking specifically at the lines, so in lines one to six the speaker introduces a reader to the two main characters the husband and wife whose marriage is going to be described Throughout the poem the speaker is semi-omniscient in that he can see into the mind of both the husband and describe the emotions experiencing as well as his connection with the wife In the first line the speaker says a line that describes the entire poem and the portion of the husband and the relationship The pronoun he, referring to the husband, develops and the poem states he never learned her quite, referring to the wife Although the two have been and will be together for a long time the husband has yet to fully understand his wife who he sees as an enigma The two have been together year after year and during that time the places they lived emotionally and walk together communally have shifted Although they were side by side, things were always changing The speaker blinks this change in the nature of the wife's emotions towards the husband One moment should be walled in anger and the next should be laughing like cold water Now in line 7 to 14 the speaker continues to describe the nature of the relationship While they moved through the lives together and the husband took note of his wife's changing mind and emotions he made a real effort to remember why and how she changed What made her feel one way and what made her change her mind The speaker refers to this effort as charting The narrator is essentially comparing the way that the husband attempts to understand his wife to the way that an explorer might map a new destination Every time the husband thought he had made progress with his wife he made wilderness again as the poem states She has complete control over everything and is capable of crafting any world she wants to There are roads which disappear making it so that there's never one true map to really understand her Now in lines 15 to 17 the speaker states that the husband has long since accepted this enigmatic geography He knows nothing is ever going to change in their relationship but he embraces this In conclusion the speaker says the husband's solution to solving his wife is to spend more time alongside her and understand the, as the poem states, landscapes of the mind Now the next poem in this collection is Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith This is a three stanza poem which follows a rhyme scheme that slightly deviates as the poem progresses In the first stanza the line's rhyme with an A, B, C, B rhyme scheme In the second stanza we have a D, E, F, E rhyme scheme and the third G, B, H, B The B line words are all unified by an I and G end rhyme This is not the only way in which they're related though as the poet has chosen to use the same exact ending words in the same order in these lines The second line of both stanzas end with moaning and the fourth with drowning The choice to rhyme every other line in this poem lifts up the dark tone There's something that's slightly more light-hearted The rhymes allow the reader to enjoy reading the poem without being too distressed by the dark subject matter On the other hand the contrast between the rhyme scheme and the discussion of death and unintentional neglect only draws attention to the most somber elements of this piece This poem describes the emotional situation of the speaker whose true tribulations go unnoticed by all those around her The poem begins with the speaker stating that there's a dead man who's not really dead He's not dead in that his story has more to offer to the world His death comes at the hands of apathy and neglect The speaker shows this to be true as she's struggling out in the ocean waters and no one realises this She's trying frantically to get somebody's attention but all the onlookers believe her to be waving rather than drowning In the second stanza the speaker critiques the emotionless reactions of the beach goers and acquaintances she's met in her life by describing the words regarding the dead man They see him, attempt to recall something about his life and then declare him dead without further ceremony They believe that it must have been too cold for him and his heart gave out The speaker continues to tell her listeners that it has always been too cold for her She has always been too far out to see to make people understand her especially when she needs understanding the most Now when you look at stanza one specifically the speaker begins with a line that's meant to hook a reader in and convince them to continue on through the short stanzas The poet Smith writes, nobody heard him, the dead man This is a phrase when read literally seems obvious Of course a reader might think one is unable to hear dead person But in the case of this poem there are other factors at work The muteness of this person is not really what's at stake The poet continues on throughout the following stanzas A reader will be then presented with a critique of the listener and observer It's the beachgoers and the watchers at scene who end up being at fault The second line in this stanza works similarly to this first It's equally as shocking especially when read after the first The reader who reads this asks if the person is dead and if not why did the speaker say he was dead It's revealed that the dead man is, as the poem states, still moaning Although he's dead, in a location the speaker has yet to reveal, he's still making sounds It is his death itself which speaking The loss of life is something to say on the man's behalf and the onlookers are not listening In the third and fourth lines it becomes clear that while the speaker is not a direct participant in the scene this speaker is in the vicinity and has access to the dead man through the line of the sight or omniscient understanding The speaker is suffering in a way she feels the dead man who's perhaps on the beach did as well She is in the ocean and is on the verge of drowning She's attempting to flag people down on the beach but they neither see nor hear her and they don't interpret her in frantic movements as causing alarm but instead waving In these last two lines the speaker moves into the first person referring to herself as I She also addresses you This could refer to a single person or more likely a collective body of people who are unable to see her and understand the distress she's in The second stanza continues the narrative of the woman in the sea and the man who's already died and washed up on beach This stanza is told from the perspective of onlookers but relayed from the speaker's perspective she's unable to hear the words and relays them back in a way that shows an underlying apathy and distates for the dead The people on the beach don't pity the dead man Indeed it seems like they use pithy words like poor chap and they're able to remember very general fact about him however no specificities Indeed the words show no understanding or true sadness and some of them even speak flatly that the man is now as the poem states dead They look no deeper into his life or his death than what the first guesses are and the speaker who's observing this appears to be criticising them as she believes that there's much more to this person than they are seeing She can see herself in his place In stanza 3 the speakers emotion begin to come through She's reenacting what she believes a dead man must have been thinking as he died and in turn what she is thinking now The speaker is fretting over the situation that she's in and wishing that somehow she had managed to find a way to make those around her understand what she was going through She states that not only is the water to this day too cold but it was always too cold Her life, her emotions, the reactions from what she got from her friends, family and peers all of it was too cold Although she's suffering deeply out of the water the dead man is still moaning on the beach His death which represents the death and final climax of neglect is hovering in the background ready to take the drowning speaker The last line of the speaker repeats the phrase which was used to end the first stanza and became the title of the poem She's not living the life she enjoys any more than she's happily swimming in the ocean She's not waving but drowning The next poem in this anthology is She dwelt among the untrodden ways of William Wordsworth This poem was written in 1798 and it's one of Wordsworth's best known works It examines loneliness and loss but also unrecognised beauty and dignity This poem has three quaterins with a simple language and it has a very straightforward ABAB rhyme scheme Furthermore this poem can be read as a legit poem with graceful descriptions and a mourning tone Thus the main theme of this poem is death a death that's ascribed and grieved for throughout the entire poem The poem also celebrates a girl by associating her to nature with more straightforward language and emphasising a natural expression Now in the stanza one we learn the area and we get a description of the area in which Lucy, the she, lived This rural scenery that's painted for us describes an interesting, idealised, beautiful place From the first line the lyrical voice refers to a she and this pronoun is the loved one that will later acquire a name which is Lucy Notice how it's described as she dwelt meaning that she lived there in the past Although this rural scenery is described as idyllic and magnificent Lucy was alone and there was no one to praise her all of her The first line which serves as a title of the poem suggests that Lucy lived both physically and spiritually unrevealed and distant In stanza two this stanza focuses on nature As a representative romantic device the lyrical voice compares the beauty of nature to the grace of Lucy She's likened to two, as the poem states a violet by a mossy stone half hidden from the eye and a fair star when only one is shining in the sky These comparisons serve to exemplify Lucy as an embodiment of beauty Notice how the description is made by an economic use of words and they depict Lucy's simplicity by using short straightforward everyday words These words create a meaningful and powerful poem that emphasises the passionate feelings of love and grief Now stanza three serves as an antithesis The lyrical voice accentuates Lucy's isolation It states she lived unknown and few could know when Lucy sees to be This poem follows a cyclical person but a pattern rather Notice how the stanza repeats the characterisation of Lucy as distant and unknown back in the first stanza Moreover this cycle is related to the movement between growth and death and the cyclical form conveys great dramatic intensity Lucy's death is expressed with great sadness as the poem states but she is in her grave and oh Love is asserted by the lyrical voice's exclamation of difference and the lyrical voice, dissimilar from others feels that they are unlike what they were before because they can never love Lucy passionately and this is what changed them This difference functions powerfully through understatement and establishes a dramatic ending for the poem Notice how the lyrical voice focuses on their experience and how Lucy affected them rather than on the beloved one So that's all If you enjoyed this video do subscribe to our channel and give this video a thumbs up But also do visit our website which is www.firstreadtutors.com There you're going to find useful revision guides model answers written at a grade and exam papers that you can use to practice Thank you so much for listening