Mariana’s Literature

Archibald Lampman was a famous poet which wrote not only about colors but also about movements, feelings, tasty… He was a poet of the five senses. He really felt the nature and everything that surrounded him. Every little noise or every little space was observed by him. Archibald Lampman was a great, a huge poet that can not be forgotten.
In his poem, “A Thunderstom”, we can notice some of the five senses. In the first three lines of the poem we can notice this.

“A moment the wild swallows like a flight
Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.”
This scene is seen as a moment before the thunderstorm. Many people maybe can think as a dangerous or even an ugly scene, but it is not. The poet describes this scene as a ‘flight’, ‘serenely high’. So, we can realize that this previous moment is not ugly, it is really beautiful and it is almost an announcement. The announcement of something is about to emerge.
It can also be noticed that the poet want to describe this moment and make the reader feel the breeze that is announcing the storm. It is a pleasant moment, at least.

“The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,
The hurrying centres of the storm unite”
In these next two lines of the poem it is being describe the training of the storm. The leaves are still in the same place they were. They are not stirring; they are in the same place. The movement is almost null, unless the breeze passing through.
The poet also describes the forming clouds over the trees. The thunderstorm is coming.

“And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,
Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,
Tower darkening on.”

These next lines of the poem, the poet describes de dark colors, the movement of ‘rolling’ and the sound of hinge. In this moment the color is dark because the thunderstorm is coming and the sky is becoming darker and darker like we can notice in ‘darkening on’. It is also possible to be noticed the movement of the trunk rolling and we can listen because we can imagine the big noise of this trunk can cause when the thunderstorm is starting. The poet want to show the hugeness using word like ‘tremendous’.

“And now from heaven’s height,
With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,
And pelted waters, on the vanished plain
Plunges the blast.”
I think this is the best part of the poem – when ‘plunges the blast’. We can notice almost a religious scene (‘from heaven’s height’) when the poet says that the view is from the ‘heaven’. He puts the reader in a position over the trees and in a high of the thunderstorm. When we are reading the poem we can imagine like we are flying over the scene. We can see this picture in our minds as something under us.
The poet also shows us the sound of the nature like ‘long roar’ which represents the sound that can be noticed from a long distance. The reader has the opportunity to picture the scene in his/her mind. He/she can imagine the thunderstorm stirring and exploding in a current of water which devastate the plain and the places in which it passes.

“Behind the wild white flash
That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,
Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed,
Column on column comes the drenching rain”
These last four lines of the poem are a little bit different. It is the moment in which the rain finally drops. We can notice a different color in this part. The ‘white’ of the lightning in the sky makes everything, for seconds, clearer. The garden and the floor are not appearing so well seen. This is the moment where the water definitively falls down from the sky and the thunderstorm starts.

Analyze this poem, thinking of the five senses that are referred to, thinking of the movement that occurs. Write an analysis that is line by line.

We were a people taut for war; the hills
Were no harder, the thin grass
Clothed them more warmly than the coarse
Shirts our small bones.

 These four previous lines make mention to the past landscape of Wales and how their people were educated. They were raised to fight for their rights and nation, for their way of living and religion. The poet shows that, in the past (because the verbs are used in the past), Welsh people thought that fighting was easier than today. The ‘thin grass’ is used as a metaphor to represent the war and show that in the past even the THIN grass ‘was more warmly than the coarse’, which means that even the grass, the landscape was favourable and/or helping their war.

We fought, and were always in retreat,
Like snow thawing upon the slopes
Of Mynydd Mawr; and yet the stranger
Never found our ultimate stand
In the thick woods, declaiming verse
To the sharp prompting of the harp.

On this part of the poem the poetic voice makes a mention of the scene where the Welsh had fights and the slopes. We can also notice that the poet mentions the Mynydd Mawr. It is a mount located in Gwynedd , Wales. This mount has a form of an elephant lying down and it appears on the poem to makes the reader visualize the landscape and image where the Welsh people had their fights.

Our kings died, or they were slain
By the old treachery at the ford.
Our bards perished, driven from the halls
Of nobles by the thorn and bramble.

On these lines the poet makes mention to a sad part of Welsh people’s past. He talks about the kings that were dead or died during the war. The ‘thorn’ is a metaphor used to represent the swords and the tools used during the war and the times in the past that Welsh people had.

We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past.
The great were ashamed of our loose rags
Clinging stubbornly to the proud tree
Of blood and birth, our lean bellies
And mud houses were a proof
Of our ineptitude for life.

On this part of the poem the poet show the point of view of the present. He shows how the Welsh people were educated, trusting in glories of the past and war. We can see this clearly when the poet writes “warning our hands at the red past”. This ‘red past’ is used to makes mention of the blood spread by the wars and the represent the way they fought. The poet also shows that people thought in some moments that they ashamed the gentility and this way he uses the words ‘rags,’ to represent their clothes, and ‘mud houses’, ‘ineptitude for life’ to represent how they were after war, which means, their present.

We were a people wasting ourselves
In fruitless battles for our masters,
In lands to which we had no claim,
With men for whom we felt no hatred.
We were a people, and are so yet.
In this part of the poem we can see clearly that Welsh people see their past in an ashamed way when the poet mentions ‘We were people wasting ourselves’. The poetic voice makes a mention to their past and saying that they were spending their time in nothing while they were fighting for Wales, mainly to the gentility. We can also notice that Welsh people fought with men that they had ‘no hatred’ and they didn’t see reason for that.

When we have finished quarrelling for crumbs
Under the table, or gnawing the bones
Of a dead culture, we will arise
And greet each other in a new dawn
Armed, but not in the old way

The poetic voice backs saying again about the wasting of time and the ‘no reason’ for fighting. The Welsh people’s point of view is that they wasted a lot of time for nothing but at the same time we can see in this part of the poem that Welsh people have hope in the future. The sentence “And greet each other in a new dawn” represents and show this hope clearly. Welsh people have hope in the future and they will fight but not as the same way they did and not as the old same way. They will fight with arguments and they won’t let their language, religion and customs go away.

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