Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
"Oft Do I Dream"
The poem is narrated by a first-person narrator who reveals his inner thoughts.
Form and Meter
"It Shall Be, Then, Upon A Summer's Day": The poem consists of 3 stanzas, with 4 lines each and follows the consistent rhyme scheme of ABBA.
Metaphors and Similes
Metaphor:
"Oft Do I Dream":
l. 8: "her tears' gentle stream"
The flow of her tears is likened to a river.
Similes:
"Oft Do I Dream":
l. 5: "My heart, clear as a crystal beam"
l. 12: "Her eyes are like the statues'"
"It Shall Be, Then, Upon A Summer's Day":
l. 5: "The heavens, like a sumptuous canopy,"
Alliteration and Assonance
Alliteration:
"Oft Do I Dream":
l. 5: "clear as a crystal"
"It Shall Be, Then, Upon A Summer's Day":
l. 3: "your silk and satin fine"
Irony
There are no instances of irony.
Genre
"It Shall Be, Then, Upon A Summer's Day": The poem is an epithalamion, celebrating the narrator's wedding to his beloved.
Setting
"Sleep, Darksome, Deep": The poem takes place at night. The narrator is lying in bed and the poem captures the moments right before he falls asleep.
Tone
"Oft Do I Dream": The tone of the poem is nostalgic and sad. The narrator is clearly missing his loved ones and, in order to deal with the grief, has begun to dream of a mysterious woman (who is the combination of all lost loved ones).
Protagonist and Antagonist
"Oft Do I Dream": The protagonist is the narrator, who has recently lost a number of people close to him and who is dealing with this loss. The metaphorical antagonist might be his grief that impacts even his sleep, up to the point of where his subconsiousness creates a woman in his dreams who is the combination of all lost loved ones.
Major Conflict
There is no major conflict.
Climax
"It Shall Be, Then, Upon A Summer's Day":
The climax of the poem is in stanza two. The narrator is describing their summer wedding to his fiancee and in the second stanza, he is describing the ecstatic moment of when they are being wed.
Foreshadowing
"Oft Do I Dream":
In the first stanza, when describing the mysterious woman in his dreams, the narrator reveals that the woman is never quite the same in his frequent dreams, though he cannot determine what exactly changes about her.
This foreshadows that the woman is a result of the narrator's imagination and not real.
Understatement
There are no instances of understatement.
Allusions
There are no instances of allusions.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Metonymy:
"Oft Do I Dream"
l. 5: "My heart"
The narrator's soul and personality
Synecdoche:
"It Shall Be, Then, Upon A Summer's Day":
l. 3: "your silk and satin fine"
the wedding dress
l. 7: "our happy brows"
the happy faces
Personification
"It Shall Be, Then, Upon A Summer's Day":
l. 11-12: "with soft-smiling eyes the stars shall gaze
Benignantly"
The stars are personified to give the wedded couple their blessings.
Hyperbole
"Oft Do I Dream"
There are several hyperboles in the second stanza. The narrator claims that the mysterious woman knows all of him like no one has ever before and is the only one to calm his grief.
This exaggeration emphasizes the loneliness the narrator feels, after the deaths of his loved ones.
Onomatopoeia
There are no notable instances of onomatopoeia.
