Amor Mundis Literary Elements

The poem is a combination of description and dialogue. In the parts where description is present, the narrator is a third person omniscient person. During the dialogues, they are presented from a first person subjective point of view.

The poem is written in an iambic meter.

The term uphill is used here as a metaphor for a righteous life while downhill is used to refer to a sinful way of living. The two terms are the main metaphors in the poem.

We find alliteration in the fourth stanza where three different lines begin with the word "Oh."

The author compares the woman’s feet with two pigeons. This is ironic because in the Bible, doves are associated with holly matters and with Godly power and approval. This however is not the case for the woman who instead of saving the other person, brings him to ruin.

Allegorical poem

The action takes place on a road in an unnamed time and place.

The tone is at times tragic and at times cheerful and positive.

There is no protagonist in the poem but the antagonist is presented as being the woman leading the other person downhill.

The major conflict is between good and evil or rather between the desire to follow one’s every whim and the desire to live a life that involves sacrifices for the greater good.

The poem reaches its climax when the second person sees the dead body on the side of the road and realizes the place where the woman led him to.

When the woman tells the other person they will never have to return uphill foreshadows how the person in question will never be able to recover from what he or she has done and that he will be forever dammed.

When the woman claims in the first stanza that the person following her will never want to take the path uphill ever again is an understatement as in the last stanza the person in question tries to do everything he or she can to return to the previous path.

It is alluded that in the fourth stanza, the person who followed the woman either died or is beyond any type of redemption. These ideas are alluded by the presence of a dead body and also other elements suggesting decay and death.

The term path is used here in a general way to suggest different ways of life. By taking the downhill path, the person following the woman gave up on the once righteous life he or she may have had and decided to follow their desires rather than listen to God and His word.

In the third stanza "a message dumb, portentous."

There is an instance of hyperbole in the last stanza, ‘I fear is hell's own track.'

No onomatopoeia is present in the poem.