Language analysis on each of the peoms

1. Song (When I am dead, my dearest)


"Plant thou no roses at my head"

• About remembrance, death, mourning
• Attitudes to process of mourning - resignation, acceptance, forbearance
• Not accepting, not trying to change but being patient/ tolerant
• Accepts way things are but still sees it needs changing
• Working against convention
• Metrical variation - stress falls on imperative - adds confidence / inner strength / quiet strong voice
• Tetrameter

"... dreaming through the twilight"

• Euphemism for death - softens it - making it easier to accept

2. From The Antique

• Addresses sense of disappointment with how the world is
• Strength of narrator as deals with disappointment
• Acceptance with recognition that not right

"Still the world would wag on the same
Still the seasons come and go:"

• Tetrameter - reinforces strength and forbearance
• Repetition - disappointment and recognition that things are going to continue in the same way without her - acceptance of her own lack of importance
• "Wag on" - colloquial - softens whilst also presenting issues - drawing attention to it

"Not so much as a grain of dust"

• Insignificance of the individual
• Sense of selflessness - looking beyond ego

3. Remember


"Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad"

• Metrical variation  - iambic pentameter to interrupted, complex, unconventional

"Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:"

• Feminist angle - pronoun use, repetition
• Highlighting constraints
• Emphasises disaffection with gender relationships and patriarchal control
• Complex attitudes towards it

4. Echo

• Return of a dead lover

"Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet"

• Iambic pentameter
• Sense of progression of thoughts
• Realises that the sweetness is overwhelming and tinged with sadness
• Nostalgia - sadness associated
• Repetition, listing

"Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:"

• Tetrameter - reinforces the breathing and the life it has
• A living dream - a living memory

5. Shut out

• A poem of loss - feeling when unable to return to a lost state
• Garden is an analogy/symbol for a state of mind
• Ambiguous

"And good they are, but not the best;
And dear they are, but not so dear."

• Nostalgia - the past was wonderful when looking back
• Parallelism highlights it
• Tetrameter
• Sense of longing and acceptance
• Longing to change but recognises it's impossible
• Melancholy - sense of quiet, enduring sadness

"The spirit was silent; but he took
Mortar and stone to build a wall;"

• Personification - symbolic
• Symbolises restrictions that Victorian women faced

6. In The Round Tower at Jhansi

• Narrative poem
• Third person narrator
• Lots of dialogue

""Is the time come?" - "The time is come!"

• Resignation, strength, bravery
• Not panicked or emotional - attitude of stoicism - stoic
• Facing set-backs with calm and inner strength
• Rossetti praising them - moral lesson to us
• Seems to look to husband for reassurance
• Parallelism - support/together in speech - supporting each other

"'I wish I could bear the pang alone:"

• Selfless

7. A Birthday


"My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit"

• Simile - joy, celebration
• Emphasis on ripeness - readiness, opportunity - this is my moment
• Influence of Romantic poets - using natural imagery to illustrate human emotions

8. Maude Clare

• Narrative poem
• First person but an observer
• Lots of dialogue

"Here's my half of the golden chain
You wore about your neck,
That day we waded ankle-deep
For lilies in the beck:"

• Maude Clare - adventurous, unconventional
• Shouldn't be together without a chaperone
• Accepting and seeking sensuous experience
• Symbolic of their adventurous seeking of sensuous pleasures
• He is above her and male
• Against sense of constraint - says in front of whole congregation
• Strong

9. Up-hill

• Question and answer, question and answer
• Interrogative

"Does the road wind up hill all the way?"

• Analogy - Journey = life - common analogy
• Life as something to be endured

"Yes to the very end"

• Doesn't hide from the truth but offers hope and reassurance
• Rossetti found stoicism in belief - found ability to continue in a difficult life through religion
• Religion not trying to hide - it is a struggle

10. No, Thank You John


"Let us strike hands as hearty friends;"

• First person narrator
• Strong - trying to teach a man endurance and strength in the face of disappointment
• Seen through imperative
• Unconventional