Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The poem “Prayer Before Birth” is told from the perspective of a first person subjective narrator.
Form and Meter
The poem “Snow” is written in an iambic pentameter.
Metaphors and Similes
In the fourth stanza of the poem “Prayer Before Birth” the narrator asks an unseen God to be given a “light bird” to guide him through life. The bird is used here in the poem as a metaphor symbolizing religion and how only religion has the power and capability to guide a person towards the truth.
Alliteration and Assonance
We have an alliteration in the lines “We cannot cage the minute/ Within its nets of gold” in the poem “The Sunlight On The Garden”.
Irony
N/A
Genre
The poem “Prayer Before Birth” is a meditative poem on the nature of pain and life.
Setting
The action described in “The Sunlight On The Garden” takes place at twilight in the narrator’s garden.
Tone
The tone in “Prayer Before Birth” is a pleading one.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist in “The Sunlight On The Garden” is the narrator and the antagonist is the impossibility of escaping death.
Major Conflict
The major conflict in the poem “Prayer Before Birth” is between the truth and the lies told to a person.
Climax
The poem “Snow” reaches its climax when the narrator becomes intoxicated.
Foreshadowing
The feelings of despair at the end of the poem “Snow” is foreshadowed by the melancholic state described in the first stanza of the poem.
Understatement
In the first stanza of “The Sunlight On The Garden” the narrator claims time cannot be caged or stopped, not even for a moment. This is an understatement as the narrator later described various ways through which he feels as if he can stop time.
Allusions
In the second stanza of the poem “Prayer Before Birth” the narrator alludes the idea that humans do not know what the truth really is. According to him, humans are lied to even before they are born and they continue to be lied to until the moment they die, thus never knowing the truth.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The term “snow” in the poem with the same name is used as a general term to make reference to pain and death.
Personification
In the poem “Snow” in the line “the room was suddenly rich” contains a personification.
Hyperbole
We have a hyperbole in the lines “And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world /Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes” in the poem “Snow”.
Onomatopoeia
We have onomatopoeia in the line “sky to sing to me” in the poem “Prayer Before Birth”.
