Literary Devices Used Among School Children
Alliteration is the repetition of the same letter in a group of words.
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and history
The /k/ and /s/ are good examples as they appear very casually instead of giving a high pitch to the poetic flow. The “q” in question and “k” in-kind have shared sounds. The /s/ in “cipher”, “sing” and “study” explains the school subjects of the children with great simplicity.
“O” appears in “O chestnut tree”, “O body”, and “O brightening glance” and it brings out the sudden emotions of the poet. The /b/ b/sound in “blossomer”, “Blossom”, “bole”, “body” and “brightening” brings the lyrical qualities of a poem.
More examples could be given such as “sing, study, sew”, “ modern and momentary”, “ sixty and smiling”,” body and bent”, “tale, told, trivial and tragedy”, “Plato’s and “parable”, swan and something “, “ sleep and struggle”, “star and sang” etc..
The allusion is meant to call something to mind indirectly.
“Ledean body” is a mythological character. “Daughters and swans”, “Quattrocento” –mythological characters, “Plato'', “Soldier Aristotle”, “golden thighed Pythagoras”, “careless Muses”, “sticks to scare a bird”.
A metaphor is a figure of speech that is used to make a comparison with its common character.
The poet has used a number of metaphors in this poem to bring out his deeper thoughts.
For example “it seemed that our two natures blent – he shows that both become single in nature.
“Into the yolk and white of the one shell.” Their combination looks like yolk and white.
“And I though never of Ledaean kind had pretty plumage once”- the beauty of his lover is compared to the beauty of Leda
“And show, there is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow” – compared to an old scarecrow as he doesn’t look like the Leadean kind. But he is kind in nature to share and love his fellowmen.
“Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird”- great philosophers each differ in their views. Their philosophies could be heard in heaven by Muses but soon they too become weak and old to scare birds. Comparison to sticks and old clothes.
“O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music,
O brightening glance
How can we know the dancer from the dance?” – Beauty and perfection exist not separately, they are present due to the harmony in nature. Dancing movement cannot be separated from the dancer just as human life could not be completed without the consciousness of sadness and joy, but they exist around the life cycle so as to complete the purpose of harmony.
The simile is a figure of speech used to compare one thing with another thing of different kind.
“Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind” for the poet even at the old age his lover would look amazing like Leda with her hollow cheek.
“Images, but those the candles light are not as those, that animate a mother’s reveries”
The worship of nuns with the candles to the saints and their holy statues is to attain peace and harmony, but for the mothers, the memories of their children would bring peace and perfection.
Rhetorical Questions
A question is formed in order to create a dramatic effect or to make a point rather than to get an answer.
For example “Did Quattrocento finger fashion it?” The speaker wonders and questions himself whether she was the art of Quattrocento the Italian artist.
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind- still he considers her as the prettiest woman even though her appearance changed with hollow of the cheek.
“What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape” – the hardships of the mother are explained with questions. Their pregnancy and birth to a child is a rebirth to the mother. But the speaker questions are their struggle and shriek and pain worth? Mothers forget their pain once they see the child in their hands and then their life goes around their children.
”O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomed
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music,
O brightening glance
How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
The poet wonders whether the chestnut is a part of a leaf or bole or the whole part. They are not separated, they live in harmony and add beauty to nature. The dancing body to the music cannot be separated. How can we separate the dancer from the dance?
Parallelism is a device that expresses several ideas in a series of similar structures
“Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Soldier Aristotle played the taws
Fingered upon a fiddlestick or strings” these lines give various ideas of the great Plato and Aristotle making the readers view the poem in a different way. But the poem is a recollection of his and her memories.
“How can we know the dancer from the dance?” a different idea is presented to relate the thoughts of the poet.
Form – eight-line stanza rhymes ABABABCC. This form originates from early Italian Renaissance pets. It is called ottava rima.
Meter – the poem is written in iambic pentameter. It has five iambs with a DUM rhythm per line.
(A line should have five feet that with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, we know that it's a verse written in iambic pentameter. When the whole poem is written with the same rhythm, we can say that the poem has iambic pentameter)
Setting
A school where the children are taught by the nuns and priests. The atmosphere changes the mood of the poet to recollect his lover and he is excited to think about her.