Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The narrator and the speaker are one and the same person; the narrator is intended to be the mother of one of the poet's friends, and the poem is intended to be a direct address towards the friend from her mother.
Form and Meter
The poem is written in rhyming couplets and has an AA/BB/CC rhyme scheme
Metaphors and Similes
The poem is filled with metaphor; the narrator's use of the starts at night is a metaphor for the way in which she will continue to light the way for her daughter and be an ever-present beacon for her.
Alliteration and Assonance
"Soft stars that shine" is an alliterative phrase and also conveys the gentleness in the narrator's voice.
Irony
The irony of the poem is that whilst the narrator's daughter is mourning her at a graveside she is not there, because she is everywhere that the daughter is, and in everything that she sees.
Genre
Modern poetry; "death" poetry; elegy.
Setting
The setting is not one specific location, but many locations that the narrtor of the poem and her daughter have visited together.
Tone
The tone is melancholy yet hopeful.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is the narrator; the antagonist is her daughter's grief.
Major Conflict
There is no real conflict in the poem. but the narrator is trying to ease the conflict in her daughter and to make sure that she lets go of the guilt she is feeling over not being present at the time of her death.
Climax
The climax comes at the end of the poem when the narrator again repeats her exhortation to her daughter to not mourn her at her graveside but to see her, and celebrate her, in all of the things around her. It is another reaffirmation of the fact she is not just buried in the ground.
Foreshadowing
The phrase, "I am not there, I do not sleep" foreshadows the unfolding of the poem as the narrator tells her daughter where she can be found instead.
Understatement
No specific examples.
Allusions
The narrator alludes to the places that they have known and loved together by telling her daughter to see her and feel her presence in the snow, alluding to time spent in a wintery location.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
No specific examples.
Personification
The wind that blows is personified; the narrator states that she is the wind blowing and it therefore has the human ability to speak to the narrator's daughter.
Hyperbole
The narrator tells her daughter that she is every wind that blows, every star and also in all the snow that she sees falling which could be seen as hyperbolic.
Onomatopoeia
"Rush" is an onomatopoeia as it makes the same sound as the action it is describing, in this case, the almost silent cutting through the air that the birds in flight are making.
