Winter – Edwin Morgan

Winter – Edwin Morgan The poem is full of nihilism*: things keep dying, decaying and disappearing. First colour, then sounds fade away The poem is full of monstrous and disturbing images ‘Winter’ = a nature poem about death (like ‘Hyena’!) * The idea that life has no meaning

Winter – Themes Nihilism (world / life has no meaning) Despair Humanity’s lack of importance in the world Nature

Winter – Form Free verse First person narrator Present tense (sense of immediacy?)

Lines 1-3 The year goes, the woods decay, and after, Many a summer dies. The swan on Bingham’s pond, a ghost, comes and goes. Poem feels negative from start first three verbs: ‘goes’ (repeated), ‘decay’ and ‘dies’ All link to loss and sadness The swan – rather than representing the beauty of nature, represents death / haunting Losing more than we had Alliteration

Lines 4-7 Ice survives and holds on when other warmer, livelier things like woods, summer and the swan do not Gulls confused by the ice – slightly ridiculous Oxymoron – strange quality of winter light Alliteration – boys are first humans in poem Inanimate (not alive) skates emphasised, not boys It goes, and ice appears, it holds, bears gulls that stand around surprised, blinking in the heavy light, bears boys when skates take over swan-tracks gone.

Lines 8-10 Contradiction: first white, then beyond white. Morgan creates first, positive colour, then pulls back from it Irony - cannot see things as a poet normally sees them despite being a poet himself Contributes to bleak mood After many summer dyes, the swan-white ice glints only crystal beyond white. Even dearest blue’s not there, though poets would find it.

Lines 11-14 word choice: scene is barren, bleak and desolate First person narrator only introduced now! Humanity is unimportant Poem begins with visual information. Now: sounds. word choice: ‘cut’ suggests violence 'warring air’ again suggests violence and conflict Fades = negative – recalls ‘goes’ and ‘decay’ I find one stark scene cut by evening cries, by warring air. The muffled hiss of blades escapes into breath, hangs with it a moment, fades off.

Recalls first line – repetition of decay Lines 15-16 Two more uses of ‘fades’ – three in total! We are losing something – analogy between winter and death Recalls first line – repetition of decay Fades off, goes, the scene, the voices fade, the line of trees, the woods that fall, decay

Lines 17-18 humanity leaves the poem. First the ‘voices fade’ (15) as the boys skate away. Then ‘shouts’ ‘disappear’. The darkness = more powerful than the children. boys become not people but just noises, ‘shouts’, who disappear into it. swan / gulls/ skating boys all now gone Only living thing left = ‘woods’ which are decaying / falling / breaking (hardly full of life) and break, the dark comes down, the shouts run off into it and disappear.

Lines 19 - 21 Fog personified – actively threatening Word choice suggests something evil lying in wait Even nature is left behind – ugly / artificial motorway End of the world / frontier? Meaning is ambiguous At last the lamps go too, when fog drives monstrous down the dual carriageway out to the west…

Ambiguity - does ‘not know’ about ice - contradicts earlier lines very small space, ‘in my room/ and on this paper’. narrator feels vulnerable and helpless. Ambiguity - does ‘not know’ about ice - contradicts earlier lines The ending = very nihilistic: nothingness Repetition …and even in my room and on this paper I do not know about that grey dead pane of ice that sees nothing and that nothing sees.

Tithonus - Tennyson The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream The ever-silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn. Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man— So glorious in his beauty and thy choice, Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem'd To his great heart none other than a God!