The Trees Are Down Flashcards
The Trees Are Down
Charlotte Mew
Genre
The poem begins with an epigraph from the Book of Revelation. This announces the natural, ecological focus of the poem. It is a lyrical elegy, mourning the passing of the trees, as well as narrative in its recounting of the events
Form
The form is very loose and sometimes there is a prose-like informality
However there are distinctive, jaunty rhythms in much of the poem, possibly of a child-like nature
There is a chopping of line lengths as the poem progresses and these are clearly linked to the fate of the trees
“Great plane trees”
‘Great’ conveys their size and confirms their age, mirrored in the assonance which picks out the phrase ‘great plane’, the monosyllabic words slows the pace of the line down, as if reflecting the stateliness of the trees and the enormity of the action of cutting them down
“They are cutting”
The speaker uses the third person pronoun to separate herself from the men cutting down the trees
Very accusatory tone
“The grate of the saw, the swish of the branches”
‘grates’ and ‘swish’ contrast
Very hard sounds, emphasis on hard consonants, whereas the onomatopoeic swish of the branches still lively as they fall and elegant and soft
“Rustle of trodden leaves”
Clumsy and uncaring actions, lack of care conveyed through the dental consonants (t) (d)
This is furthered by the “‘whoops’ and ‘whoas’”
“Loud common laughs”
Vulgar childlike snobbery of the speaker
grammar of stanza 1
Activities between line 2 & 6 form a single sentence built of repeated asyndetic clauses, which suggests a flurry of actions
“I remember one evening, of a long past Spring”
Timeframe shifts as the speaker moves now to recall a memory. The recollections begins in a pleasantly pastoral-seeming tone
“A large Dead rat in the mud of the drive”
Turning point in the poem, this is emphasised by the monosyllabic nature of the line, slowing it down to highlight its importance, while the dental consonants highlight the harsh nature of the image
“But at least in May, that even a rat should be alive”
Sense that life force of spring/ renewal shouldn’t be denied to anyone one, not even a rat
“Fine grey rain”
Suggests the idea of a sombre/ elegiac novel, perhaps a pathetic fallacy with ‘fine grey rain’ as a symbol of tears (lachrymal imagery) mourning the destruction of the tree
“But for” “If” “Did once” “For a moment” “Unmake” “I might”
Series of tentative expression; also fragmentation of the verse sentence into short lines, suggest the speaker is either struggling with powerful emotions or else the frequent pauses emphasise the tentative tone
“It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day”
Develops the ideas in the previous stanza although the sense of loss is much greater and not simply “for a moment”