Carol Ann Duffy
Descriptive
Use if Imagery
Down by the river, under the trees, love waits for me
to walk from the journeying years of my time and arrive.
I part the leaves and they toss me off a blessing of rain.
Personification
Natural world reacts
Whole life
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Main theme identified in the first line ‘Love’.
Idea of a journey of present, so her life has
been building up to meeting this person.
The leafs give the narrative voice a ‘blessing’
indicating a positive reaction from the natural
world upon discovering their ‘love’.
Personification
The river stirs and turns consoling and fondling itself
With watery hands, its clear limbs parting and closing.
Grey as a secret, the heron bows its head on the bank.
Animals mentioned, natural
world
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Large use of personification during the
stanza, emphasises how a water flows and
moves. Often compared to a journey like life
or a love story in this case.
Mention of the heron suggests the river is a
source of life and things rely on it.
Metaphor
I drop my past on the grass and open my arms, which
ache
Great weight
as though they held up the heavy sky, or had pressed
Against window glass all night as my eyes sieved the
stars;
Hopes/dreams
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Looking from a window suggest hopes of
something else.
They have lifted a weight from them and now
relieved upon seeing their ‘love’.
They ‘drop their past’ perhaps to start a new
future.
open my mouth, wordless at last meeting love at last, dry
Great lengths to seethem
From travelling so long, shy of a prayer. You step from
the shade,
and I feel love come to my arms and cover my mouth, feel
Enjambment
Physical presence
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Finally meets their ‘love’.
Suggests they have gone to great lengths to
get here and meet them.
Talks about the love in an impersonal way
using words like ‘you’ and ’love’ Instead of
names. Suggests lack of knowledge about
them.
Like starting something new
Metaphor
my soul swoop and ease itself into my skin, like a bird
threading a river. Then I can take a look love full in the
face, see
Cesura
who you are I have come this far to find, the love of my
life.
Not know
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Suggests they are comfortable now.
Mentioned a river again like a constant flow
through the poem and their journey there.
‘Who you are’ confirms unkown knowledge of
them.
Breaks in the middle of lines break the flow.