Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The perspective is that of a first-person speaker. She is a person struggling with her unbalanced relationship with hope.
Form and Meter
The poem is written in five quatrains with an ABAB rhyme scheme.
Metaphors and Similes
The speaker uses simile to compare hope to a "false guard."
Alliteration and Assonance
There is alliteration in the D, S, and W sounds of the lines "Through the bars one dreary day," "Even Sorrow saw, repenting" and "Hope, whose whisper would have given."
Irony
N/A
Genre
Victorian poetry
Setting
Unspecified location; suggestions of a cage
Tone
Somber
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist of the poem is the speaker. The antagonist is despair.
Major Conflict
The central conflict of the poem is the speaker being unable to rely on hope.
Climax
The climax of the poem occurs when the speaker is at her lowest moment and hope abandons her.
Foreshadowing
N/A
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
The speaker personifies "hope" as a "timid friend." She also personifies Sorrow in the fourth stanza, describing how it "saw" her.
Hyperbole
The line "When my last joys strewed the ground" is a hyperbolic description of hopelessness.
Onomatopoeia
N/A
