Cold in the Earth - Emily Bronte

Cold in the Earth - Emily Bronte

1. Form and structure

   • Tightly structured ABAB rhyming scheme
     • Causes poem to feel like a lament, a mourning song
   • Little enjambment, most lines end with some punctuation that creates a pause (a caesura)
     • Suggests ordered, controlled exploration of narrator's state of mind
     • Supports idea she is justifying her emotions to her dead lover
   • Only few occasions does emotion spill over from one line to the next
     • Exclamative in third stanza ('Faithful indeed is the spirit that remembers/ After such years of change and suffering!'
     • Penultimate line where she talks about suicidal thoughts in exclamative - 'Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten/Down to the tomb already more than mine!'
   • Structured around the progress of her emotions
   • Fifth stanza represents climax of poem
     • Anaphora - 'No other.. No other... All my life's bliss... All my life's bliss'
     • Intensity of mood
     • She proves her fidelity: she is the 'faithful...spirit' of stanza 3 but now has to let herself live this new life and cherish 'existence'
   • Ends with rhetorical question
     • 'dare not let it languish/Dare not indulge' -repetition conveys her determination
     • Question doesn't reflect doubt: though the world is 'empty' it's where she has to live

2. Themes

   • Death
   • Grief
   • Time
   • Relationships

3. Voice and tone

   • Voice is strong but full of emotion
   • Questions herself in opening two stanzas acknowledging that time has brought healing, but feeling guilty.
   • Conflicted- guilty for not grieving but acknowledges that she could still become overwhelmed with grief if she allows herself.
   • Self-justificatory (stanza 4); passionate (stanza 5); rational (stanza 6); self-aware (stanza 7) and resolved (stanza 8)

4. Language

   • Repeated references to 'Cold' build heavy/chilly/sombre atmosphere - 'deep snow piled', 'cold in the dreary grave', 'fifteen wild Decembers' etc.
     • Cold is sterile and numbing.
     • 'wild' has connotations of savage, untamed and unrestrained
     • Snow piled on grave reflects how time has distanced narrator from her lover's death
   • Imagery sharply contrasted to 'days of golden dreams', the Sun which 'lightened up my heaven' and the Star that 'shone for me' -imagery of intense light and positivity associated with lover.
     • Sun symbolic of warmth and life
     • Stars symbolise guiding force
     • These life forces have been extinguished
   • Time
     • Capitalised to indicate importance
     • Described in two metaphors: 'all-wearing wave' and 'World's tide' Metaphors introduce idea of natural flow, that emotions change over time. World's tide 'bearing [her] along' suggests things are happening beyond her control, she passively rides them out supported by time.
   • Youth
     • Two references in poem: 'Sweet love of youth' and later her own 'young soul'. Suggests a process of maturation.
     • Uses oxymorons to describe new life: 'sterner desires' and 'darker hopes'. It's more serious, she's grown up.
   • Narrator refers to Memory's 'rapturous pain' and the 'divinest anguish'. Captures bittersweet moment of recalling a loved one.