Longfellow is good at expressing all kinds of delicate and long emotions in simple language, which is especially reflected in his short poems. Arrow and Song is Longfellow's famous lyric poem praising friendship. It has been selected into many English poetry readers and is almost a household name in the west. However, the success of this poem obviously lies not in its theme, but in its ingenious conception.
First of all, as far as the title of the poem is concerned, we can't see that the poet has any intention. The juxtaposition of the two nouns "Arrow" and "Song" is also very abrupt, and the poet seems to be deliberately setting suspense for the reader. This suspense will not be lifted until we finish reading the first two sections: in the first section, the poet shows people in the image of an arrow, but he can't catch the trace of the arrow with his own eyes, which sets off a potential helplessness; In the second quarter, the poet spat out a song instead of the arrow shot in the first quarter, and the image was obviously further internalized, because the song came from the singer's heart. But Song's embarrassment went beyond his eyes, and his helpless mood was further aggravated. In these two sections, we can easily get a glimpse of the internal relationship, that is, the similarity between arrows and songs, from which we have a preliminary understanding of the topic. However, we still can't understand the poet's intention. Is he just showing his helplessness?
The third section completely subverts our guesses and impressions, and the shot arrow unexpectedly appears in front of the poet and us, stuck in the branches of the oak tree; But what is even more surprising is that the invisible song that has long been lost in the air actually exists intact. It turned out that it found a beautiful home in the hearts of poets and friends. In the end, the poet subverted our imagination, but at the same time completely shook off the helplessness of the first two verses, and the theme of the poem came out.
The poet symbolizes the eternal friendship between me and my friends with songs kept in their hearts. He didn't directly point out his theme, but let the readers experience it carefully, which embodies the implicit characteristics of this poem, and the suspense in the conception of this poem mentioned above is actually this implicit performance. In addition, the implication of the poem is also reflected in its multi-level figurative rhetoric. First of all, "Arrow" is the metaphor of "Song", and the description of "Arrow" in the first section of the poem is only a description of metaphor, aiming to lead to the description of the ontology "Song". Secondly, "Song" is a metaphor of "friendship", and the description of "Song" is a metonymy of the existing state of friendship. Therefore, in this poem, "Song" is both an ontology and a carrier, which shows the richness and complexity of poetic language.
The implicit and meaningful style of this poem complements its clear and brisk rhythm. It belongs to the common four-tone iambic quatrain in English poetry. In aabb form, the last two lines rhyme, such as air, where, sight and flight in the first section, which is a typical single rhyme or male rhyme. Every rhyme is placed on the last syllable of the stressed line, as if the author were telling us and expressing his distress, but all this collapsed. This poem can be said to be extremely simple in theme, meter and language, but the poet's outstanding point is that he wrote the most unforgettable poem with the simplest materials.