Poetry Analysis: From Sweet Birth to Soldier
Sweet Birth of Youth
Setting
St. Cloud, Florida, in a hotel.
Characters
- Chance: Late 20s, handsome, popular. Smokes, alcoholic, nervous, obedient, high ego, too direct, doesn’t care about family, selfish, not wanted in town. Returned to St. Cloud hoping to reconnect with Heavenly.
- Heavenly: Chance’s former adolescent girlfriend, engaged to Dr. Scudder.
- Dr. Scudder: Late 30s, warned Chance to stay away from St. Cloud and informed him of his mother’s death. Warned Chance about Heavenly’s family. Engaged to Heavenly.
- Alexandra Del Lago: Good-looking, rich, independent. Alcoholic, bossy, treats Chance negatively, breathing problems, smokes, demanding, short-sighted, forgetful, experiences panic attacks, nervous, domineering, rude, careless about her health.
The Cow in Apple Time
- “Something inspires”: Raises the reader’s curiosity about what the cow is looking at.
- “To make no more of a wall than an open gate”: Visual imagery; the cow easily overcomes the wall.
- “No more”: Repetition emphasizes that the wall, meant to be an obstacle, is easily bypassed.
- “She drools”: Visual imagery; the cow enjoys the apple.
- “Scorns a pasture”: Visual imagery; the cow prefers the apples to the grass.
- “Runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten”: Kinesthetic imagery; the cow’s delight in eating apples.
- “She leaves them bitten when she has to fly”: Metaphor; the cow must escape.
- “She bellows on a knoll against the sky”: Auditory imagery; the cow’s distress.
- “Her udder shrivels and milk goes dry”: Kinesthetic imagery; the apple’s effect on the cow.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
- “Woods are lovely, dark and deep”: The speaker’s pleasure in the woods.
- “But I have promises to keep”: Contrast between desire and duty.
- “And miles to go before I sleep”: Can be interpreted as the speaker’s remaining life.
- Opening line: Creates tension; the speaker is an intruder in someone else’s woods.
- Closing line: The speaker wants to stay but must continue with life.
- Four stanzas of four lines.
Gathering Leaves
- “And bags full of leaves”: Visual imagery.
- “Are light as balloons”: Simile.
- “I make a great noise”: Auditory imagery.
- “Like rabbit and deer”: Simile.
- “But the mountains I raise”: Hyperbole and visual imagery, emphasizing the quantity of leaves.
- “Flowing over my arms”: Kinesthetic imagery.
- “I may load and unload”: Emphasizes the repetitive task.
- “Again and again”: Repetition; the task feels endless.
- “Next to nothing for weight”: Repetition of “nothing” portrays frustration.
- “But a crop is a crop”: This necessary, man-made action is compared to harvesting a crop, giving it importance.
A Soldier
- “He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled”: Metaphor comparing the soldier to a lance.
- “Unlifted now, come dew, come rust”: The soldier deteriorates.
- Lines 4-6: Criticism of humanity’s lack of appreciation for soldiers.
- Lines 7-8: The damage caused by self-defense.
- “They fall, rip grasses, intersect”: Violent actions of missiles, hurting their own kind.
- “Stone”: Word choice evokes fear.
- “Checked”: Contrast; the body is vulnerable, but the soul is beyond reach (“further than target ever showed”).
- Modulation of tone: From anger to optimism and drama.