ED-Something Quieter

Question 1

‘There’s something quieter than sleep’ + ‘And will not tell its name.’

Implicit metaphor
Pronoun / high modal verb
Slant rhyme

Answer 1

reader assumes it’s death w/in ‘inner room’ but implicit metaphor →ED’s characteristic view death’s unknowability
pronouns = impersonality of corpse + modal ‘will’ = death concealing its mystery
∴ Strong slant rhyme ‘room’ + ‘name’ reinforces speaker’s (+ perhaps ED’s) = cognitively + emotionally at odds w. death’s inscrutability

Question 2

‘Some touch it, and some kiss it - /some chafe its idle hand’

Anaphoric spondees
Verb connotations

Answer 2

Aggressive interrup. iambic rhythm →speaker. crit. mourner’s actions as sonically intruding upon quietude corpse
‘chafe’ = unwelcome + abrasive nature mourner’s attentions

Question 3

‘It has a simply gravity/I do not understand!’

Paradox
Simple syntax + full rhyme

Answer 3

Paradox = uncomplicated profundity of death
Full rhyme + simple syntax →tone childlike astonishment, exhorts readers to acknow. unadorned mystery of death, rather than overlaying it w. noisy mourning rituals

Question 4

‘I would not weep if I were they’ + ‘How rude in one to sob!’

Subjunctive mood
Exclamative sentence

Answer 4

Subj mood = judgement mourner’s grating sobs, combines w. excl. sentence to reprimand them for debasing + distracting from death’s quiet dignity

Question 5

‘Might scare the quiet fairy / Back to her native wood!’

Contrasting adjectives + metaphors
Enjambment + plosive

Answer 5

Contrasting adjectives →noisy mourners scare ‘fairy’ (soul) back into ‘native wood’ (body)
Enjamb+ plosive ‘back’ accentuates sense of soul’s disturbance ∴performative sobs PGD not just distracting + demeaning, they may also interrupt ↑profound spiritual processes (transmigration of soul)

Question 6

‘We –prone to periphrasis’ + ‘chat’+ “early dead” +‘remark’+ ‘birds have fled’

Inclusive ‘we’
Verb contrast
Condescending tone+ metaphor

Answer 6

Incl ‘we’ →Sp(and perhaps D ) identifies themselves with the poets ‘prone to periphrasis’
Verb contrast (vacuity of ‘chat’ comp to insightfulness of ‘remark’) estab. condesc. tone in which poetic speaker = superior pedestrian intellects + imaginations of mourners which fixate on youth of speaker (“early dead”) rather than more profound truth: ‘bird’ soul has ‘fled’ to heaven, and/or will be reborn in the cycles of nature (transcend. view)

Question 7

‘prone to periphrasis’

Latinate diction

Answer 7

H/W apparent confidence speaker’s vate-like capacity discern broader truths = undercut by latinate pomposity ‘Periphrasis’: perhaps speaker fears poetic rendering of truth = evasive, talking around mystery of death rather than illuminating it (in this sense they are no better than the mourners)