Analyse the work of Louis MacNeice, entitled, The sunlight on the garden

In this essay, I shall analyse the work of Louis MacNeice, entitled, The fair weather on the garden. It is a modern verse that offers a self-reflexive commentary on life and its key elements. In similarity to the traditional epic verse, the poem is an expression of the vocalisers particular personalities and motives. I intend to explore these twain subjects in great detail in my essay. According to the Oxford English dictionary, a poetic analysis is the process, or detailed examination of studying a poem o determine its nature, structure, or essential features. This is a common practice used by both reader and critic in the reading of prose and verse and I will adopt this technique in my essay. MacNeices poem from the thirties transcribes the period of great rigourousness in the Western World, as well as the vocalizers self-hardship of love and stopping point. The Wall Street Crash in 1929 started a worldwide economic depression that lasted for much of the decade and indust ries such as steel, ship-building and coal archeological site suffered.More over, unemployment in Britain so ard which left a hollowed and pessimistic outlook on life. This had a strong impact upon poesy of the age, this particular poem illuminating the confusions and irresolvable issues of the common man. at that place are many social and political events that influenced MacNeices work, the graduation exercise World War creation the most significant. Though the event took place decades before the poets publication, there are strong elements of futility, death and decay in his language.The line, we are dying, Egypt, dying in particular, is reflective of the dreary society that both the poet and the people lived through. The poets reference to the Shakespearian tragedy suggests that the speaker or even MacNeice himself suffered from heartache or loss. The line, treated heart expands this idea, revealing a meta-level of vulnerability and self-consciousness of both the poem and i ts writer. Moreover, MacNeices use of the pronoun we rather than, I highlights that this is a communal suffering, a contrast to the typical self-infliction of epic poems.There is great handling as to the traditions of the poem, MacNeices experiments with classic cadence and hoarfrost making the poem difficult to follow. The partial-serpentine rhymes, minute within it for example, are demonstrative of his varying rhyme intrigue and poetic technique. However there are evident poetic qualities which suggest that he is compose in the style of lyric-epic poets. Firstly, the poems occasion is focused on the past rather than the present-self. The line, but glad to confound sat ith you emphasises the speakers preoccupation with past events and his constant struggle with time and death.Furthermore, the narration of events (combined with the speakers emotional and reflective self-expression), creates an personal identity of the lyric self that is not found in the traditional epic. The speakers constant preoccupation of the self and of death is a strong characteristic of elegiac poetry. Moreover, instead of using the typical third person panorama found in Greek epic poetry, MacNeice uses, we and you, typical of the lyric-epics of the time.Perhaps the poet, like other modernist writers, aspired to move apart from the traditional epic layout and create a more modernised work as this was a fashionable movement in the early twentieth century. The poet Wordsworth, for example, experimented with new styles and verse pees to re-invent and modernise the lyric. Having identified the poetic form and tradition, I am now going to analyse the language in MacNeices work. The use of buildry in all forms of poetry is a common technique used to draw the reader into poetic experiences, originally through the senses.This is a characteristic in, The Sunlight on the garden, where the works title immediately evokes a simple image of beauty, nature and hope. The branch line howev er, immediately transposes ones expectations as MacNeices speaker descends into a metaphysical state of suffering, cheer hardens and grows c doddering. Moreover, the imagery of Egypt dying also reveals the somewhat macabre state of his vision absent in love, emotion and feeling, fit(p) in heart.MacNeices vivid poetic imagery such as the line, nets of gold, arouses our senses and evokes the speakers pure and simple vision. Furthermore, the imagery of, birds and flying supplicant to not only our sense of sight but also to the speakers hope for freedom. However, on a meta-level, again our understanding is transposed as the imagery of Cage and net enforces not freedom but a sensation of being trapped and confined in ones self. In addition to imagery, other dominant characteristic of MacNeices poem is rhyme.The riming scheme follows the same pattern (ABCBBA) in each stanza. The partial-serpentine rhyme of the poem acts as an enjambment, the syllabic measuring rod from the previo us line being carried to the next. This is again similar to the continuity of time and death that the poet discusses. The enjambment of the rootage line in the poem follows a rhyming enunciate which then follows another(prenominal) rhyming word (garden hardens cold). In doing so, the unavoidable continuity of time and fate is highlighted.Moreover, the confusion of poetic forms and rhyme scheme add to the futility and the speakers lack of power or control. The use of alliteration cannot cage emphasises the futility of ones attempts to stop time. Again the speakers self-consciousness is undecided by the poet as he ultimately fails in this, the line, we cannot beg emphasising his vulnerability of self. The disjointed and reckless rhyme scheme, as well as the varied pentameter, trochaic and heptameter, sound more fluid when spoken orally to an audience.MacNeice continues this old tradition of verbal poetry and in doing so, the beauty of the poem overcomes the confusion of the poetic form, acting as a work of art for both the eyes and ears. Now that I have analysed rhyme and rhythm, I am going to look at the drive of the poem and the issues the poet raises. One of the fundamentals purposes of the poem that presents itself is that the speaker has a constant preoccupation with love and regret. The line, our freedom advances towards its end is suggestive of a strong nostalgia and pessimism in the speaker.This is a self-consciousness that he readily admits to his audience, perhaps something that he could not have done through another medium. There is also a strong debate upon reading the poem that he could be talk of the town to his lover. The sentiments in the last stanza, glad to have sat with you and, hardened in heart imply that the poems purpose is a written expression of his feelings towards her, a romantic perspective on the traditional lyric-epic. However, the most prominent purpose for MacNeices work is that the poem is the speakers farewell to his loved ones.The line, we shall have no time for dances coupled with the endless discussion of time and indeed death, infers that life, indeed his life is running out and no matter how many a net of gold he uses, one cannot prevent it. Having analysed the purpose of the poem, I am now going to let out the signification of the poem on primarily the reader and the effects on society itself. At first glance, there is little political reference in the poem, something that one would not have expected, particularly at a time of economic turmoil and war. However there is a strong implication on our philosophical understanding of love, life and fate.The phrase we cannot cage the minute, for example, highlights the delicacy and futility of time that not even the speaker can stop or control. This in turn, highlights the vulnerability and weakness of man who has no control over fate, despite the nets of gold. This weakness of man represents a nation under threat with the foreboding threat of another war, and the future economic difficulties in the thirties. There might also be a political implication in the line, We cannot beg for pardon, relating in my mind to the horrors and mistakes made in the first word war.In conclusion, the poem, The sunlight on the garden written by Louis MacNeice, is a typical lyric-epic poem focused around love, loss and time. There are many other themes (the speakers gender for example) and aspects the poems structure that I could have looked at in greater detail, rather than focusing solely on imagery and rhyme. The poem educates us about the importance of time and the growing shift occurring in epic poetry, a movement which MacNeice evidently took part in and which in turn affected the evolution of poetry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.