Under the Mountain…
The poem entitled "Under the Mountain…’’ is a meditation on the passage of time. The narrator returns in this poem to a place he once knew extremely well, probably the house where he once grew up. He looks at the lonely house from a distance and notes how no one lives in it anymore.
The house is described as being in a deplorable state, almost collapsing. The rain and wind enters through the broken windows, damaging the house even more. The narrator con do nothing more except sit at a distance and look at the house, thinking about the way it changed in time and how it lost the beauty it once possessed.
The poem could be seen as a meditation on the passing of time and how nothing is permanent. The sisters and the mother are gone from the house, most likely dead from the tone in the poem. The only one who is left is the narrator and he can do nothing more than watch the house from a distance. The poem can also be seen as a symbolic one, analyzing the way the human body loses its vigor in time and becomes just like an empty house, losing its value and utility with each day.
"Thin little leaves of wood fern, ribbed and toothed’’
This poem comes from the Third Series of Sonnets and it is a meditative sonnet. In this poem, the narrator is talking a walk through the forest, describing the trees as their leaves change once with the arrival of autumn.
In this scene, the narrator decides to lay down, looking up towards the sky and thinking about the Creator and also about his childhood. The narrator describes himself as being extremely happy, and compares the happiness he feels with the one he used to experience in his childhood, when he would play with his friends in nature.
The comparison between the happiness created by nature and God in the narrator’s adulthood and the one felt by the narrator as a child shows how in adulthood, a person must learn to find happiness in more profound matters, such as meditating on the purpose of life and the creator.
"Roll on, sad world! not Mercury or Mars’’
The first line of the poem mentions two powerful gods, Mercury and Mars, and then the narrator goes to claim they could never take away the pain an unknown character caused to the narrator. The pain inflicted by the mysterious character is described as being more powerful than anything else in this world and without any type of limit.
The end of the poem is hopeful, the narrator anchoring himself in nature and looking at the way the natural world comes back to life year after year. The narrator uses the image of the undefeatable natural elements to expresses his hope he will be the same and recover from the pain inflicted upon him.
"Yet, even ’mid merry boyhood’s tricks and scapes”
In the first two lines of this sonnet, the narrator starts by describing his childhood, and how he learned a lot of valuable lessons then from nature. The narrator used to walk alone in the woods in Canada, contemplating the nature around him and feeling small and powerless. In those moments, the narrator felt afraid, hearing the sounds made by the insects around him. The narrator feels caged by this manifestation of power and does not understand what is happening around him. The last two stanzas of the poem are told from the perspective of a much more mature narrator, who claims that now he understands the things which made him feel afraid as a child.
This poem presents the difference between adulthood and childhood, namely the difference it exists when it comes to understanding the meaning of life and the world around us. The child in the beginning of the poem can’t grasp the true meaning of life and is instead scared of it. As he grows up, the same environment has a different effect on him, this time by helping him grow and develop as a person.
"Gertrude and Gulielma, sister-twins’’
The sonnet mentioned above is about two sisters who both lived in an idyllic place, a farmhouse, away from the influences of the outside word. Until that point, nothing tragic happened in the life of the two sisters and so they did not experienced pain until that point.
The narrator describes the two sisters, mentioning their most important qualities, both physical and when it comes to their character. Both have qualities which make them suitable partners for every man and because of this, the narrator can’t choose between or another, describing them as being equals instead.
