Major Ideas in Poetry - Essay Example

Three techniques that this poem uses are alliteration (bare branch, rook roosts), imagery (bare branch, autumn dusk), and meter (4-3-3 syllables).

Alliteration gives the poem hard stops in the first line and rolling expectation in the second line. Imagery helps to bring these ideas out further since they suggest a lifeless landscape except for the bird of death. This includes the season which is just as night starts in autumn, which is when the season of death, winter, starts. The short lines also make it seem as if there is not much left to wait. The longest line is the first one, but it's broken by the hard ‘b’ sounds. The other lines are very short, only three syllables each, and the last line is only two words.  This makes it look like it’s coming to an end.

I think the meaning of the poem is that death waits for us all. A bird that usually symbolizes death is seen on a bare branch at the end of the living seasons and the end of the day. I think this is how most people would interpret the poem.

The meaning of this poem is brought out through the poet’s use of literary devices such as alliteration, imagery, and meter. Alliteration conveys the idea that something is about to stop and something else is about to happen. In the first line, the alliteration works on the repeated sound of the letter ‘b’ as in “bare branch.” This sound makes us come to a hard stop at the beginning of each word and makes us think of endings. This is reinforced by the imagery of the bare branch itself, which indicates life has stopped because all the leaves are gone. It is also reinforced by the meter of the poem because the line is so short. Alliteration is used in the second line to indicate that motion is about to start again with its rolling ‘r’ sounds as in “rook roosts.” Although the imagery includes a small bird finding a place to rest for the night, it also introduces a living animal into the scene which introduces motion, even if it is just the motion of breathing. This works with the meter to suggest the type of motion to be expected. The line is a full word and a syllable shorter than the first line, suggesting things slowing down. The bird roosts, which is to say that he is doing something.