saddest noise Flashcards
No quote
Perfect common meter
The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,The maddest noise that grows, -‘birds’ + ‘in the spring’
Anaphoric superlative adjectivesRepetition + diction
At night’s delicious close.
Diction + metaphorOverall S1 destabilisesthe *riverditradition
March and April line + magical frontier+summer hesitates
dictionpersonification
→imbues poem w. sense pleasant fluidity springtime, but (as in Frost) meter belies speaker’s more complex view of N + human life
→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.
→sound of birds announces spring at ‘close’ of ‘night’ (iewinter); their sound = unnerving but also ‘delicious’ (sensorially delightful) Overall, ED’s unnerving portrayal spring subverts riverditradition which celebrates regreening of the earth (for ED, spring is both ‘sad’ and ‘sweet’)
→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
It makes us think of all the dead
Sharp shift to morbid, mournful tone (continues to subvert riverdi)
What we had and what we now deplore
Tone of world-wearinessPast and present tense
We almost wish those siren throats would go and sing no more
/o/ assonanceAllusionqualifier
→rather than birdsong →full-throated romantic riverdi, awareness N’s sweetness triggers thoughts of death & life’s ephemerality ∴spgrieves ‘all the dead’
→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
→mournful assonance reveals spX 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.
