ED-Saddest Noise

Question 1

No quote

Perfect common meter

Answer 1

→imbues poem w. sense pleasant fluidity springtime, but (as in Frost) meter belies speaker’s more complex view of N + human life

Question 2

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise, The maddest noise that grows, - ‘birds’ + ‘in the spring’

Anaphoric superlative adjectives
Repetition + diction

Answer 2

→rush intense but paradoxical reactions to ‘noises’ of env. (sweet also threatening.)
→connotes incomprehensible even abrasive sound w/in environ. ∴ surprising to discover beautiful but unnerving ‘noise’ = ‘birds’ ‘in the spring.’

Question 3

At night’s delicious close.

Diction + metaphor
Overall S1 destabilises the riverdi tradition

Answer 3

→sound of birds announces spring at ‘close’ of ‘night’ (ie winter); their sound = unnerving but also ‘delicious’ (sensorially delightful)
Overall, ED’s unnerving portrayal spring subverts riverdi tradition which celebrates regreening of the earth (for ED, spring is both ‘sad’ and ‘sweet’)

Question 4

March and April line + magical frontier + summer hesitates

diction
personification

Answer 4

→delightful seasonal movement from spring to summer evinced by diction of ‘March + April line’ + ‘magical frontier.’
→summer personified ‘hesitating’ beyond ‘magical frontier.’ ∴summer= rapturous (‘heavenly’) but also melancholic, b/c its arrival involves time passing/its own death

Question 5

It makes us think of all the dead

Sharp shift to morbid, mournful tone (continues to subvert riverdi)

Answer 5

→rather than birdsong →full-throated romantic riverdi, awareness N’s sweetness triggers thoughts of death & life’s ephemerality ∴sp grieves ‘all the dead’

Question 6

What we had and what we now deplore

Tone of world-weariness
Past and present tense

Answer 6

→past tense ruefully reflects on sweet times + persons gone (‘what we had’) then present tense 2 lament travails of quotidian (‘what we now deplore’) including prospect of certain death
∴birdsong stimulated contemplation all of life’s sadness + sweetness

Question 7

We almost wish those siren throats would go and sing no more

/o/ assonance
Allusion
qualifier

Answer 7

→mournful assonance reveals sp X longer tolerate birdsong whose beauty must end, ‘almost wish[ing] those siren throats would go and sing no more.’
→birdsong = like Homeric sirens’ song conflates beauty + death
→birdsong like siren song b/c its maddening aural beauty can break the ‘human heart as quickly as a spear’
→H/w the qualifier ‘almost’ means sp. resists temptation to turn away from/deny N’s bittersweet beauty.