Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
Speaker (Longfellow)
Form and Meter
ABCB; trimeter
Metaphors and Similes
Similes:
-"A feeling of sadness and longing, / That is not akin to pain / And resembles sorrow only / As the mist resembles the rain"
-"The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of Night, / As a feather is wafted downward / From an eagle in his flight"
Metaphor:
-Longfellow uses the metaphor of desert Arabs quietly packing up their tents to suggest the soft way in which his cares will melt away after hearing the poem
-A corridor is a metaphor for time, and footsteps are a metaphor for the work poets produce as they navigate time.
Alliteration and Assonance
Alliteration:
-"strains of martial music"
-"silently steal away"
-"the day is done"
Irony
n/a
Genre
Poetry
Setting
19th century New England; private home
Tone
Weary, melancholy, quiet
Protagonist and Antagonist
None
Major Conflict
Whether the narrator will be able to alleviate his daily cares through the recitation of a simple poem.
Climax
n/a
Foreshadowing
-The evocation of night and rain and mist foreshadows the melancholy of the poet, which he explains not long after setting the stage
Understatement
n/a
Allusions
n/a
Metonymy and Synecdoche
n/a
Personification
-"the darkness / Falls from the wings of Night"
Hyperbole
-"songs gushed from his heart"
Onomatopoeia
"wafted"
