Of all who died in silence far away
Where sympathy was busy with other things,
Busy with words, inventing how to slay,
Troubled with rights and wrongs and governments and kings.
The little dead who knew so large a love,
Whose lives were sweet unto themselves a shepherding
Of hopes, ambitions, wonders in a drove
Over the hills of time, that now are graves for burying.
Of all the tenderness that flowed to them,
A milky way streaming from out their mother’s breast,
Stars were they to her night, ans she the stem
From which they flowered – now barren and left unblessed.
Of all the sparkling kisses that they gave
Spangling a secret radiance on adoring hands,
Now stifled in the darkness of a grave
With kiss of loneliness and death’s embracing bands.
No more!-And we, the mourners, dare not wear
The black that folds our hearts in secrecy if pain,
But must don purple and bright standards bear,
Vermillion of our honour, a bloody train.
We dare not weep who must be brave in battle-
‘Another death – another day – another inch of land –
The dead are cheering and the ghost drums rattle’....
The deaf are dumb and the dumb cannot understand....
Of all who died in darkness far away
Nothing is left of them but LOVE, who triumphs now,
His arms held crosswise to the budding day,
The passion-red roses clustering his brow.
Iris Tree
The poet uses a strong amount of relative imagery like 'mother's breast' to get a reaction or emotion from the audience . This may be to connect to something familiar to explain the feeling the poet feels.The tone is gentle as the continuous comma's allow the reader to think.The fact it is third person is to connect with the reader and to be an example or to allow the reader to step awya from the meaning , this allows the reader to see what an outsider to the event may feel .
ReplyDeleteThe poem is about mourning the deaths of those who have died in war and remembering as iris is a greek god who is remembered . The poem explains how others may forget the lost,and different ways of moving on as some may treasure them with 'sparkling kisses' .
This technique can be seen as a personification in imagery to portray emotive languague to the viewer and give the mourner the lost life it has lost in mourning the dead perhaps , as when mourning we often forget to live our own life's.