Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Literary Elements

The speaker writes from a third-person perspective. They are characterized by their focus on the everyday over the mythic, and their slightly wry sense of humor.

The poem consists of seven tercets that contain no punctuation. It has no rhyme scheme.

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Alliteration is present in the S sounds of the line "sweating in the sun" and the W sounds of the line "the wings' wax."

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Nature poetry, ekphrastic poetry

The poem is set at a seaside field in springtime, at the same time that Icarus falls to earth and drowns.

Lighthearted and wry

The protagonist of the poem is the farmer, the antagonist is Icarus

The major conflict of the poem is a slightly abstract, artistic one. The poem is about the farmer's story taking dominance over the myth of Icarus. The main tension is generated from the poem's repression of the famous Icarus story and the focus on the farmer's daily work.

The poem's climax is actually something of an anti-climax. It occurs when Icarus drowns, but the speaker renders it as an unimportant, unnoticed "splash."

The poem foreshadows its conclusion when it mentions Icarus's fall in its opening lines.

The poem uses understatement when it describes Icarus's death in the ocean as "a splash quite unnoticed."

The "Brueghel" mentioned in the first line of the poem is an allusion to the famous Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The reference to "Icarus" in the second line is an allusion to the Greek myth of Icarus.

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The word "splash" is onomatopoeic.