Question:
Poem analysis?
I am absolutely terrible at analyzing and interpreting poems so please help if you know the answer.
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover's tallness off to war.
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won't be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate – and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes."
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
In this poem, how come mother is not with a capital M?
Why is "of a sort" written in brackets?
Are there any examples of assonance, consonance or dissonance in this poem?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
sounds like a soldier dying in Algiers kinda stuff!
but there is hope, "Some day the war will end,"
some kind of despair in times of chaos, death, suffering!!
"He won't be coming back here any more" but I wonder what 'empty heart-cup' means.
sort of = kind of. added as an after thought or for that effect.
mother is not capitalized because it is not a proper noun, any common mother is suggested.
i think these you can identify yourself:
Consonance:
The repetition of consonant sounds with differing vowel sounds in words near each other in a line or lines of poetry. Consider the following example from Theodore Roethke's Night Journey"
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
The repetition of the 'r' sound in 'rush', 'rain', and 'rattles', occurring so close to each other in these two lines, would be considered consonance.
Assonance:
The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work, especially in a poem. Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells" contains numerous examples:
Hear the mellow wedding bells . . . and From the molten-golden notes. The repetition of the short 'e' and long 'o' sounds denotes a heavier, more serious bell than the bell encountered in the first stanza where the assonance included the 'i' sound in examples such as tinkle, sprinkle, and twinkle.