Vulture
By beginning this poem with the past progressive 'I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside' sets the scene both temporally and positionally. The observation of the vulture 'through half-shut eyelids,' creates an almost movie-like scene, in which the speaker gradually perceives what he is looking at and then what it means. He reveals his understanding in 'I understood then/That I was under inspection,' allowing the reader to understand with the speaker what the vulture is doing.
The description of the vulture's movement in the present participle 'wheeling,' emphasized by the alliteration 'high up in heaven, / And presently it passed again,' and the metaphor 'its orbit narrowing,' gives the vulture an other-worldly, sweeping quality.
The pun 'I lay death-still,' plays on the idea that vultures often prey on dead animals, whilst the speaker is still alive. The speaker's unrequited dialogue with the vulture 'we are wasting time here. These old bones will still work ; they are not or you,' is slightly humorous and plays on the vulture's expectation of death and a meal. The familiarization of the vulture as 'My dear bird,' and the repeated positive description 'beautiful,' are not common descriptions attributed to an animal like a vulture.
The poet sentamentalizes a death at the hands of a vulture, by saying 'to be eaten by that beak / and / become part of him, [...] What a sublime end of one's body,' and describing such a death in the noun 'enskyment.' This 'life after death,' is idealized at the end of the poem, giving a positive tone where an ominous or fearful tone is expected.
To Helen About Her Hair
This poem uses a lot of alliteration in the first two stanzas in order to describe the length and quality of the hair, for example the adjectives, 'long, lovely, liquid, glorious / Is your hair, and lustrous,' are emphasized by assonance and flow like the hair they describe.
The sibilance of 'scented with summertime,' gives a sensory description of the hair that goes beyond the visual. The first lines of the next two stanzas give a more forceful, commanding tone to the relationship between Helen and the poet. However, the final lines, relaying the metaphor 'my soul is caught there, Wound in the web of it,' show the deep, relational connection to one another, rather than a controlling aspect on one person's part.
