Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The poem is written from a first-person point of view. The speaker is a woman mourning the loss of her beloved, fifteen years after his death.
Form and Meter
The poem is written in eight quatrains with an ABAB rhyme scheme.
Metaphors and Similes
The line "No later light has lightened up my heaven" is a metaphor for the happiness the speaker has lost.
Alliteration and Assonance
There is alliteration in the W, L, and D sounds of the lines "Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover," "No later light has lightened up my heaven,"
and "Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish."
Irony
N/A
Genre
Elegy
Setting
An unnamed speaker of the poem standing by the grave of her beloved during winter
Tone
Lamenting and mournful
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is the speaker of the poem. The antagonist is loss.
Major Conflict
An unnamed speaker of the poem stands by the grave of a loved one lost fifteen years before, expressing grief for the loss and remembering the youthful love.
Climax
The speaker of the poem reveals the acceptance of the loss after learning to live without the loved one. After the pain and despair, the simple world is no longer the same.
Foreshadowing
N/A
Understatement
The phrase "Cold in the earth" is an understated expression for death.
Allusions
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
N/A
Hyperbole
The line "All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee" is an exaggerated expression of grief and sadness.
Onomatopoeia
N/A
