Languid Annotated

Due to the fact that the narrator could not actually know what the piano player is thinking, the reader can say that the narrator is actually describing his own actions after hearing the musician sing. Based on the lack of emotion given from the narrator and the blending of the narrator and the musician’s actions at the end of the poem, the speaker, has a common voice with the piano player, both of whom are

The poem contains two stanzas with two different settings. One might not know much about the first stanza; however, in the second one the speaker is next to an ocean, perhaps, at a beach. So, while the first stanza symbolizes the mindset of the speaker, the inner dream, the second stanza symbolizes the outer dream which is what we see; life. The poem

         As the poem closes, McKay’s speaker reflects on the fact that they are a shell, for they are not

Glendon, always on the lookout for strange objects, found the letter by accident. Someone years ago had placed it in a crack in one of the rafters of the old house, and climbing around one day he had stumbled upon it. Obviously old and yet seemingly untouched by time, the letter was a song, beautiful, yet plain with a message to convey (Metaphor). Glendon carefully opened it and began to read. Through the scrawled handwriting he read of a harpist, skilled but poor, and of her valuable harp, passed down from musician to musician. He read of a cart-wreck and the destruction of the harp; of a marriage, thirty years of happiness, and then of death and pain. And then, for nearly a whole page there was nothing but a description of a harp, the Harp. At the bottom was the signature, “Gwilan of the Song.”

In the fourth line, Longfellow states that it’s “A voice” from the “silence of the deep”. Here, the reader once

The first stanza depicts two main elements: metaphors and synecdoche’s. The first two lines of the poem set the stage for what this poem is about, “When my heart is not in my mouth, it’s in your hands” (line 1-2). This allows the reader to understand that this man’s heart lies with this woman and that she has complete control over it. This line also describes a synecdoche in which the woman is not actually holding a live organ in her hands as the reader would

The next stanza gives the reader a value statement as H.D. says “more precious, than a wet rose, single on a stem—you are caught in the drift” (stanza 2). In doing so she gives the reader a sense of how she perceives this battered and sparse rose, not as something that has lost

The poem begins with two lines which are repeated throughout the poem which convey what the narrator is thinking, they represent the voice in

stanza, there is a reference to a nicety that the Shepherd offers the girl in

In the third stanza there is heavy personification of the objects in her room and the moon. The room ‘it seemed, had missed her’ (10), by bringing inanimate objects to life the author draws parallels to the child missing her parent silently, silent like the items in her room. The moon has also begun to become characterized and has been framed as inconsiderate, ‘she pretended an interest in the bookcase’. This metaphor conveys how the child feels: overlooked, as if items in her room are more fascinating.

For the beginning lines of the stanzas five and six, it starts off with “He is not hers...” and it gives

Since it does, when reading each line, there is a resilient connection that allows the reader to put together and feel for what the narrator is speaking of. As each line is metrically linked, the words are further recited in a durable voice and the poem is virtually put together, musically. In the first and second lines of the third stanza, an apostrophe, a figure of speech that directly addresses an absent person or entity, is presented, “We smile, but O great Christ, our cries to thee from tortured souls arise.”

In the fourth stanza, the speaker begins to explain more items that have been lost and it apparent that the

In the third stanza a box is introduced. It can be assumed that this box is a coffin. The box is being lifted into the ground and the "Boots of Lead" "creaking" across the poets soul symbolize the mourners walking on the fresh grave. The "tolling" of space mimics the church bell that is introduced in the following stanza.

Rhythm and rhyme is evident in river otters at play for example, “bubbling desire, emerge au pair sucking night air,” ("MR. Bauld"). Tone expressed throughout this poem is fun, effervescent, loving, and exciting, which helps the narrator communicate how he is feeling towards his observation of the otters. Alliteration is evident in the first stanza “Overhand under they sink,” ("MR. Bauld"). This assists to communicate the movements of the otters to the reader. In the first stanza “the male a helpless sailor holding hard to the capsizing keel of the female,” ("MR. Bauld"). This line demonstrates personification. Imagery is used in this poem to exhibit love and connections between two living creatures. Scripted by “dive and surface together, anxious to spy the other’s face –okay, they say, and dive again weaving their submarine passions” ("MR. Bauld"). This an example of a metaphor used to provide the reader with sensations of the otters and how their movements are being observed. Diction is conveyed through words such as bank and back in the third stanza, this serves the flow. “Opening its dark doors” and “white ribbons of their songs” ("MR. Bauld") is a type of word grouping titled allegory, which serves to illustrate a non-literal meaning using literal concepts.