Sunday, August 5, 2018

What are the various things of beauty the speaker has seen?

In this poem, John Masefield enumerates many things he has observed in nature and found to be beautiful. "Dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills" are compared in their "slow, old beauty" to "solemn tunes of Spain". Next, he uses personification to make vivid an image of "the lady April bringing the daffodils...and the soft warm April rain." It is notable that the figure of Nature, and particularly benevolent, springtime Nature, is here imagined in the form of a woman, which sets the scene for the culmination of Masefield's reverie. While he goes on to detail "the song of blossoms and the old chant of the sea," continuing the theme of attributing human traits to elements of nature, these "strange lands" and their features are not the most beautiful things the speaker has ever seen. That particular honor is reserved for a different female creature altogether: "her voice, and her hair, and eyes, and the dear red curve of her lips" are "the loveliest things of beauty God ever showed" to the poet.
The identity of the person possessing these traits is not mentioned, but we can infer that Masefield is speaking of his lover. The personification of "lady April" and her beauty serves as a complement to this unnamed lady.

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