Two April Mornings, The Analysis

We walked along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said,
"The will of God be done!"

A village schoolmaster was he,
With hair of glittering grey;
As blithe a man as yon could see
On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass,
And by the steaming rills,
We travelled merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.

"Our work," said I, "was well begun,
Then, from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,
So sad a sigh has brought?"

A second time did Matthew stop;
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:

"Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this which I have left
Full thirty years behind.

"And just above yon slope of corn
Such colours, and no other,
Were in the sky, that April morn,
Of this the very brother.

"With rod and line I sued the sport
Which that sweet season gave,
And, to the church-yard come, stopped short
Beside my daughter's grave.

"Nine summers had she scarcely seen,
The pride of all the vale;
And then she sang;--she would have been
A very nightingale.

"Six feet in earth my Emma lay;
And yet I loved her more,
For so it seemed, than till that day
I e'er had loved before.

"And, turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the church-yard yew,
A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.

"A basket on her head she bare;
Her brow was smooth and white:
To see a child so very fair,
It was a pure delight!

"No fountain from its rocky cave
E'er tripped with foot so free;
She seemed as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.

"There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;
I looked at her, and looked again:
And did not wish her mine!"

Matthew is in his grave, yet now,
Methinks, I see him stand,
As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand.

.: The Two april mornings :.

One of Wordsworth’s simple but beautiful poems is “The Two April Mornings”. In the poem the loss of a child is expressed through pain and sorrow (Eisha 1). The speaker of the poem goes on a walk with schoolmaster, Mathew. One can tell that he is an older man because of his “hair of glittering grey”. Mathew suddenly fixes his eyes on a mountain top and has a sigh of pain. When asked what is the matter, he replies the memory of similar April morning thirty years ago, “Yon cloud with that long purple cleft/ brings fresh into my mind/ a day like this, which I have left full thirty years behind.” He remembers stopping by the grave where his daughter lies. There he met a girl who seems just like his dead daughter (1). This girl was young and beautiful and gave him “love and pain in his heart” (1). But in the end he does not wish for her to be his daughter.

| Posted on 2008-05-28 | by a guest