Sunday, November 1, 2015

How would you describe the imagery used in the poem

The contrasts drawn between the springtime imagery and the
dark concept of death are powerful. "I have a rendezvous with Death/When Spring brings
back blue days and fair." Here Seeger personalizes both Death and Spring. Two such
dissimilar subjects make for supreme tension. People want to think of death as coming on
only gray, rainy, and dismal days. The narrator, though, will be meeting death when the
days are filled with fair blue skies. It's obvious, too, that the narrator is involved
with war, and he makes that contrast too. "On some scarred slope of battered hill,/When
Spring comes round again this year/And the first meadow flowers appear." The landscape
has been torn apart by battle. Seeger depicts in a few short words a beaten countryside.
Yet it will see a resurrection in the form of meadow flowers. They will cover over the
scars. Spring, though, will not bring life to the narrator. Instead, he will face that
meeting with Death. And even though Death will come in "some flaming town," the narrator
won't miss his date. He will go to meet it, even though he will miss the delights of
Spring. Hopefully, he will be "pillowed in silk and scented
down."

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