Sweet Death

Question 1

Sweet Death: What themes does this poem link to?

Answer 1

• Mortality
• Spiritualism/religiosity
• Use of nature

Question 2

SD: Use of statives/declaratives & end stopped stanzas.
1. ‘t s b d’
2. ‘t y b d’
3. ‘A y a b d’

Answer 2

1. ‘The sweetest blossoms die’.
2. ‘The youngest blossoms die.’
3. ‘And youth and beauty die’.

Triadic arrangement of end stopped introductory lines to each new stanza evokes teh sense of ‘death’ as a factual aspect of life. Death is inevitable & inescapable and it is only until we accept this truth that we can truly embrace living. End stopped = allusion to ending and yet teh poem itself continues, emblematic for/metaphor of the key argument proposed through the poem that death is the end of earthly life yet life can still continue even after our physical deaths.

Question 3

SD: Cyclical nature of life & death & the value of the spiritual life
1. ‘g c’
2. ‘T p r u t t s/B i p a’
3. ‘n t r e..l h t b’
4. ‘S l…s d’
5. ‘W s w s f o f h? w P t g w R?’

Answer 3

1. ‘green churchyard’ imagery of vitality depicts a normally ‘gloomy’ and melancholy location of a churchyard as ‘in bloom/flourishing’. - the rather oxymoronic quality of such juxtaposes ideas of vitality and exuberance with the morose idea of death and burial. = Metaphor for how life is preserved/continues on through religion.
2. ‘Their perfume rose up to the sky/Before it passed away’: the metaphorical perfume image evokes the idea of an intangible spirit dissipating into the atmosphere, furthering this notion that via death & the abandonment of a physical form one is able to achieve a state of greater unity with the world.
3. ‘nourish the rich earth…/lately had their birth…’ = rhyming couplet reinforces the circle of life, sweet acceptance of death which will lead to a spiritual ‘rebirth’. Connotations of nursing & development in ‘nourish’ suggests that in order to achieve full personal growth we must experience death in some form.
4. ‘Sweet life…sweeter death’ = comparative adj. gredatio emphasises the almost romanticised longing for the more valuable death.
   AO5: Bowra: love of God released a melancholy desire for death.
5. ‘Why should we shrink from our full harvest? why prefer to glean with Ruth?’: motif of stingy & poor availability in ‘shrink’ & ‘glean’ juxtaposed by the prosperity of ‘full harvest’ suggesting that the most bountiful ‘offering’ is a relationship with God, achievable through death, and rather than settling for a lifetime of unfulfilled potential - as embodied through the biblical allusion to Ruth - we should accept God’s proffering of prosperity.