The Poplar Field Analysis

It has been said that Cowpers life was tormented by a set of symptoms, habits, and fears which his rime in many places reflectswe consider that Cowper turned to poetry for reasons intimately connected with the torment of his life at times became for him. (Feing obsolescent Para. ) William Cowper utilizes bumdrop in his poem The Poplar Field to re re put forward his reflections on the enactment of time we go on a journey with Cowper to visit the chivalric, present, and in store(predicate) of the verbaliser and the journey is warped around different land makes in speakers life and represented by the effects of aging, not just presently of the speaker, alone on the poplar tree field as well. In lines 5-6, we passing game with the speaker as he reminisces twelve years in the past, where he first had the opportunity to gather a glimpse of the poplar field.We ar able to see the consideration come to life, where the trees and the young speaker grew together on the bank. The p ast represents a time for the speaker that was precious to him- his youth, a time of little responsibility where he lacked accountability for his actions. Cowper utilizes a move between the past and present to show a reflection of the transit of time as one of the first significant underlying themes for the speaker. From this consider with his past, we be able to see his childhood and what the speaker is overtoping from the past to the present.The poplar field brings many memories of trace and comfort for the speaker but it is short-lived as we begin to see Cowper bring the speaker back to honesty in lines 7-12, and the speaker begins to see the remains from the poplar trees that at a time shaded him from the blazing sun, straight off lying leafless and lifeless on the underfur (line 7). We are now able to see as Cowper ties us to the mankind of what the speaker is seeing in his present moment and the brutal setting that is laid before him.The speaker is brought back to a harsh reality where the blackbirds have fled to a new retreat (line 9) and because the trees are no long-dated on that point to shade them, the only part of the tree that remains is a stump for the speaker to sit on (line 12) as he stares into the begin of the trees having been chopped dget and lying in the grass (line 7). This setting represents maturing, passing through mid-life, and the beginning of the aging process for the speaker.The trees having been cut down represents a cruel reality for the speaker, his childhood is now over and instead of having others to care for him, he now has to become the one taking care of others. The present day is barren of splendor, and just as the speaker is sitting at the top of the devastation of his once favorite field of trees, he sits on top of all of the devastation of what is know as his life the little decisions, the what-ifs, and all of the neglected opportunities in the past, present, and future tense that he pass on miss beca use of the immoral judgments he made in the past.This juxtaposition shows the speaker is now in the dominant position, he can no longstanding sleep with the dominancy of the trees protection and shade (line 8), but he is now responsible for all of the mistakes he made in life, and this is where Cowper begins to fast ship us to the future in lines 13-20, where the speaker go forth presently impertinence not only old age but also his own inevitable death. Cowper begins to show us that the speaker is aging and his life will soon be over, he will die, and just like the trees, his uttermost and final setting will be in the ground.The speaker says, My ephemeral years are all hasting away (line 13) he is no longer a young sprout, he is getting old, and his younger days of lively freely are quickly disappearing. Ere another such grove shall near in its stead. (Line 16) We can see the new trees will be put to replace the old trees that he once loved, in a interchangeable sense, n ew people will rise up and replace the speaker, and he is trying to figure out how he will leave his mark on the world after he is long gone.The speaker soon begins to realize that once he is dying and after his death, he will no longer be in control of his surroundings and he will be at mercy of the generation after him. near as his last breath is taken out of the world, somewhere there will be someone elses first breath universe taken in, and the circle of life and death will continue. William Cowper exploited three major settings to represent the speakers reflections on the passage of time. We embarked on a voyage through the recollections of the speakers past, in to experiencing his present day pain and skipped on to his worries of the future.We see as Cowper takes us on each journey the past with beautiful bold trees full of leaves and shade for a young juvenile who was full of life, to the present day where the trees are felled, cut down to a stump upon which an aging man pillow upon and reminisces of the golden days, and finally we are able to fast forward to the future and see a impending field full of new poplar trees, and a new generation rising up to replace the old which have died out. We walk with Cowper step to step and explore what comes to be known as the circle of existence and extinction.Works Cited Cowper, William. The Poplar Field. Literature An Introduction to recitation and Writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Robert Zweig. 10th ed. New York Pearson Longman, 2012. 722. Print. Feingold, Richard. William Cowper State, Society, and Countryside. Nature and Society Later Eighteenth-Century Uses of the Pastoral and Georgic. Rutgers University Press, 1978. 121-153. Rpt. inPoetry Criticism. Ed. David M. Galens. Vol. 40. Detroit Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.