Poem Analysis

guys this is example poem analysis including: situation, layout, sound pattern, symbol,and massage.

 XL

By A.E. Housman

"New Mexico Skies"

 
Into my heart an air that kills
   From yon far country blows.
What are those blue remembered hills,
   What spires, what farms are those

That is the land of lost content,
   I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
   And cannot come again.

SITUATION

The title is a simple Roman numeral suggesting that the poem belongs to a collection. Since this poem is not narrative, it contains no setting and no events occur, rather the first person speaker is reflecting on the past.

LAYOUT

The poem is read horizontally. The words are arranged into two stanzas of four lines each (regular quatrains). The lines are of eight and six syllables alternately. Those of eight syllables are aligned; those of six syllables are indented. All lines begin with a capital letter and there is no unusual capitalization, punctuation, parentheses, spacing or word division. The layout does not give prominence to words in isolation.

SOUND PATTERN

The rhyme scheme is regular (a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d) and the rhymes are perfect.

SYMBOLS, THEMES AND MOTIVES

nature - hills, plain: hills are only ‘remembered’ and plain is a play on two meanings   of ‘plain’ (‘clear’ and ‘plateau’) / built by man - farms, spires, highways: farms allow people to live in contact with nature, spires suggest churches and highways are a means of communication between people / nations - far country, land of lost content: changes are so great that the speaker feels he is in a completely different nation.

MESSAGE

We all feel nostalgia for our childhood or the past in general when life was lived nearer to nature and religion with their therapeutic values and without neglecting the benefits of human communication. Perhaps we should enjoy to the full the pleasures of the moment because there is no permanence in our ever-changing world.