English War Poetry - page 6
Keywords: With Detailed Reference to Any Four Poems from the Anthology You Have Studied, Explain the Way Different Poets Convey a Range of Aspects In war
By Riko V on 16/05/2007
Level: GCSE Key Stage 4 (Years 10-11)
Page Number: 6 of 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Civil War.
Free verse is used throughout the poem this lends itself to a narrative style. The first verse begins with the daughter’s voice beckoning her father up from the fields, she uses the words ‘our’ and ‘they’ to describe her brother this emphasises the loss they have felt with him being called up to fight. Verse two is the persona describing the tranquil idyll of an American autumnal paradise. By using the comparative adjectives ‘yellower’ and ‘redder’ the beauty of this place is stressed, comparing it to where the young by is fighting. The use of the onomatopoeic word ‘fluttering’ in this verse is placed by the persona to allow the reader to hear the sounds there. In verse three it is once again the persona describing the beauty of the place in which the farm is situated, however the persona now begins to use rhetorical questions such as ‘Smell you the small grapes of the vines’ this now involves the reader’s sense of smell and therefore creates an even more vivid description. The repetition of the word ‘calm’ creates a feeling of peace and well being, the persona once again employs the use of onomatopoeia to involve the reader more in the setting of the poem by using such words as ‘buzzing’.
A sense of urgency and panic is introduced into the poem by the use of the urgent phrase ‘come right away’, this panic was previously unseen in the poem. In the fifth verse a sense of anxiety is developed by the mother and her un-natural behaviour as the light and serene tempo of the poem is being broken. Short lines are used such as:
‘Fast as she hurries,
Something ominous,
Her steps trembling’
The poor boy who has died is described as ‘brave’, this expresses admiration for him and the chivalrous way he has died. He ‘does not need to better’ because he is a brave person. The repetition of the word ‘dead’ emphasise the fact to the reader that the boy has died. The short sentence structure employed by the poet is symbolic of the short life that he has lived.
‘But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently dressed in black,
By day her meals untouched, then by night fitfully sleeping,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and
withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her
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