The Violets by Gwen Harwood Essay Example

your interest here, making you wonder what has caused this fearful sleep. With that in your mind you feel the panic as ‘I ran to find my mother, calling for breakfast. ’

Thinking it is morning, finding mother laughing and saying ‘it will soon be night, you goose’ confusion hits and you feel slight sympathy for the child ‘as I sobbed, “Where’s morning gone? ’ In the midst of sadness, mother ‘[carries] me downstairs to see spring violets in their loamy bed’, mother being in hopes that the flowers would bring joy was saddened to find that because the child was ‘hungry and cross,…would not hold their sweetness, or be comforted, even when…father, whistling, came from work,’ the child, being out of sorts ‘could not grasp or name that, while I slept, had stolen from me’ as we read on into the fourth stanza we see calming.

The child knew that what she had lost was ‘those hours of unreturning light. With the comfort of the father along with the mother, they entered the house as ‘young parents and their restless child, to light the lamp’ for comfort, to keep things at peace and calm, all ‘while dusk surrendered pink and white to blurring darkness. ’ With this simple knowledge ‘I took my supper and was sent to innocent sleep. ’ Harwood completes the stanza with peaceful thoughts but too leaves you feeling the loss, you can feel just by sleeping through midday.

Finishing this stanza with half a sentence reading ‘Years cannot move’, before you continue reading, if you pause at this you see that yes time moves past and behind

us, but the years themselves never move from the place they are set. Gwen reminds us that ‘nor death’s disorienting scale distort those lamplit presences’ that when you are in darkness, you will have more trouble finding those ‘lamplit presences’ of those around you for help.

Furthering the ending to the poem we are brought to the closing of a child’s day. ‘a child with milk and story-book’ comfort and warmth, ‘my father bending to inhale the gathered flowers’ the appreciation of what the mother and child had done, ‘with tenderness stroking my mother’s goldbrown hair’ the knowing that this is family, comfortable and safe.

With the ‘Stone-curlews call’ it’s symbolised that it is late night, then with the ‘Faint scent of violets [drifting] in the air’ the memory is closed with that which brought the memory on... Violets. Gwen Harwood brings childhood, to the adult in this poem. Making the reader more inclined to be drawn in and feel the emotion behind. With each word written and the style the poem has been written in you can both tell and feel where Harwood has lead you into the memory of past from the present.