preview

An Unreal Sunset in Winter Evening a poem by Archibald Lampman

Satisfactory Essays

Archibald Lampman’s poem Winter Evening creates a scene of a surreal sun setting and the impending bitter night that waits for the speaker. This poem is among the pastoral poetry meaning that it creates a scene of a landscape and shows the contrast between urban and rural lifestyle, Lampman creates a scene of a town and the interaction of the sun’s rays and the image of the country side as the sun is setting. The figurative meaning behind the poem has a little more room for interpretation from the reader themselves; the poem has strong spiritual and religious references, and also contains has the idea of hope and (despair) throughout the poem. Lampman uses some other tactics to help indicate a change during the poem with a change in the rhyme scheme to show two distinct places or states of mind of the speaker. Overall the poem immerses the reader in this scene with vivid imagery and diction creates figurative meaning to elicit an emotional response.
The literal meaning of the poem is the speaker is watching a surreal sun set; the sun’s last light fills the sky with a “Sea of gold”. The speaker is on a street, with a lot of houses beautiful houses, looking down the street to the West as the sun sets. The speaker reveals that they are not looking forward to the impending night ahead of them, that they think is going to be very cold and unforgiving “With silence and the sharp unpitying stars, Stern creeping frosts, and winds that touch like steel”. Lampman’s poetry consist

Get Access