Poetic Structure and Tone
The poem consists of eight lines, in two quatrains.
The metre is largely one of anapaestic trimeter with an admix of initial iambs and trochees to break up the rather monotonous rhythm that the anapaestic line confers. Thus Blake is able to show the cyclical monotony that the protagonists are suffering, while at the same time giving a forward note of impetus and hope to the movement of the lines.
The rhyme scheme is ABAB, CDCD, with two "feminine" endings at lines five and seven, perhaps suggestive of weak outlook or expectation.
The ambiguous use of the word "Ah," and the repetition of the word "where" are noteworthy - these are discussed by Grant; the disturbance of the anapaestic rhythm in line three by Edwards.
"The speaker begins with a sigh that suggests the same weariness that he attributes to the Sunflower (a suggestion emphasized by the heavy stresses in the song). The wistful tone and the implied sympathy for the time-bound victims are disarming. But, as many critics have noted, the poem is not without irony...the sense of timeless rest is soon complicated by the ambiguous syntax."Indeed, Bloom goes so far as to say that "the lyric's tone can be characterized as a kind of apocalyptic sardonicism."
Read more about this topic: Ah! Sunflower
Famous quotes containing the words poetic, structure and/or tone:
“And since the average lifetime—the relative longevity—is far greater for memories of poetic sensations than for those of heartbreaks, since the very long time that the grief I felt then because of Gilbert, it has been outlived by the pleasure I feel, whenever I wish to read, as in a sort of sundial, the minutes between twelve fifteen and one o’clock, in the month of May, upon remembering myself chatting ... with Madame Swann under the reflection of a cradle of wisteria.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows—it must grow; nothing can prevent it.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)