Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
A man on a train
Form and Meter
Eight stanzas of ten lines each
Metaphors and Similes
"The secret like a happy funeral": This simile emphasizes the darkness behind the seemingly happy wedding. Like a funeral, it is a form of ending, an ending of a person's single life.
"Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat": In this simile, the speaker likens the human-made, industrial postal districts of London to rural squares of wheat in a union of urban and rural imagery.
"like an arrow-shower/Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain." In this simile the speaker alludes to the arrows of Cupid, a common symbol of love.
Alliteration and Assonance
"sunlit Saturday," "short-shadowed," "new and nondescript," "broad belts," "olive-ochres"
Irony
Genre
Poetry
Setting
A train during Whitsun
Tone
Satirical, cynical
Protagonist and Antagonist
Major Conflict
Climax
"We slowed again,/And as the tightened brakes took hold," the end of the train ride.
Foreshadowing
Understatement
Allusions
The penultimate line alludes to Cupid's arrows.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Personification
The train "ran" in the first stanza
Hyperbole
"A dozen marriages got under way."
