The Poplar Field Analysis

It has been said that Cowpers life was tormented by a set of symptoms, habits, and fears which his poetry in many places reflectswe consider that Cowper move to poetry for reasons intimately connected with the torment of his life at times became for him. (Feingold Para. ) William Cowper utilizes aspect in his rime The poplar Field to re defend his reflections on the passage of time we go on a pilgrimage with Cowper to visit the last(prenominal), present, and future of the speaker and the journey is warped around different landmarks in speakers life and represented by the effects of aging, not only of the speaker, but on the poplar steer battlefield as well. In lines 5-6, we walk with the speaker as he reminisces twelve years in the previous(prenominal), where he first had the opportunity to gather a glimpse of the poplar field.We atomic number 18 fitting to lift up the setting come to life, where the trees and the young speaker grew together on the bank. The past repres ents a time for the speaker that was remarkable to him- his y pop outh, a time of little responsibility where he lacked accountability for his actions. Cowper utilizes a dance between the past and present to show a reflection of the passage of time as one of the first portentous underlying themes for the speaker. From this experience with his past, we are able to see his childhood and what the speaker is missing from the past to the present.The poplar field brings many memories of shade and comfort for the speaker but it is short-lived as we begin to see Cowper bring the speaker back to reality in lines 7-12, and the speaker begins to see the remains from the poplar trees that one time shaded him from the blazing sun, now lying leafless and lifeless on the ground (line 7). We are now able to see as Cowper ties us to the reality of what the speaker is seeing in his present moment and the ferocious setting that is laid before him.The speaker is brought back to a harsh reality wher e the blackbirds render fled to a new retreat (line 9) and because the trees are no longer there 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 dismay of the trees having been cut down and lying in the grass (line 7). This setting represents maturing, going through mid-life, and the beginning of the aging mathematical operation 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 circumspection for him, he now has to become the one taking care of others. The present twenty-four hour period is barren of splendor, and save as the speaker is sitting at the top of the devastation of his at one time favorite field of trees, he sits on top of all of the devastation of what is known as his life the poor decisions, the what-ifs, and all of the miss opportunities in the past, present, and future that he will miss b ecause of the immoral judgments he do in the past.This collocation shows the speaker is now in the dominant position, he can no longer enjoy 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 forward us to the future in lines 13-20, where the speaker will soon grammatical construction 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 homogeneous the trees, his last and final setting will be in the ground.The speaker says, My fugitive years are all hasting away (line 13) he is no longer a young sprout, he is getting old, and his jr. days of living freely are quickly disappearing. Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead. (Line 16) We can see the new trees will be planted to replace the old trees that he once loved, in a similar sense, new people will rise u p and replace the speaker, and he is trying to figure out how he will leave his mark on the world afterwards 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. Just as his last breath is interpreted out of the world, somewhere there will be someone elses first breath being 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 rise 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 rest upon and r eminisces of the golden days, and in the long run 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 Reading 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.