This poem begins with the whine of a bird and gathers a flock of birds. We know that some birds are invited (the eagle is the king of birds, the swan is the priest, and the crow is the visual symbol of anything that is happening), while some birds are not invited (except the eagle, all raptors and songbirds owls are omens of death). In Shakespeare's time, birds were symbolic, and with the passage of time, we obviously lost some meaning.
Crows live three times as long as humans. Swan is a symbol of loyalty and true love, but their beautiful songs also indicate death (hence the name "farewell song"). In ancient Greece and Rome, the long-tailed owl was a symbol of hades, and its cry was related to death.
This poem begins with a description of a funeral, and we can see that it is the death of a beautiful and precious thing. The poem itself is just like that described in "Farewell".
The next section describes the funeral held in their honor. A phoenix and a turtledove fall in love, and nature even thinks that they are one. The poet reflects on how love goes against reason, and describes the paradox that two people are one person at the same time, and how they belong to each other when they burn together.
At this time, there was a break in the poem, and three elegies, or funeral elegies, began. The narrator praised the perfect, beautiful and pure love between the two men. This is a pure relationship.
The narrator explained that when these two people died, this love died with them. At last, he asked all good people to pray for these two people for a moment.
This poem is quite different from Shakespeare's typical choice in rhythm, rhythm and rhyme. The whole poem is a four-step cadence, and the tail foot is cadence. The first syllable and the last syllable of each line should be stressed, and the other syllables between each line should also be stressed. There are seven syllables in each line.
This brings a melancholy and hymn-like effect to the poem (see the white people in Macbeth, who use the same pattern in the poem). Although iambic pentameter has an uninterrupted heartbeat, the rhythm of this poem has a pause at the end of each line. Every line of it is added with funeral drums, which slows down the rhythm of poetry.
In order to further strengthen this effect, the first part of the poem is ABBA's CDDC rhyme mode, and the second part is AAA's BBB rhyme mode, which are almost never used by Shakespeare.
Unlike his favorite style, these two choices broke the poem. They inserted pauses in the stanzas, forcing readers to read closer and more slowly. This creates a melancholy tone and gives poetry more funeral elegy elements.
In all his works, Shakespeare is good at giving his characters unique voices-every speaker in his works has his own unique wording, grammar and vocal rhythm. The rhyming change at the beginning of threnos may symbolize a new narrator, or just a change in theme. Some people think that the voice of reason gives threnos, but I don't see any strong evidence.
Generally speaking, this poem is definitely about the death of ideal love. When this perfect combination disappears, truth, beauty, rarity and simplicity disappear. Obviously, this kind of love is pure and important.
It is also important to portray this perfect love. Turtle dove is loyal and gentle, and she is in awe of the beauty of the phoenix, which is particularly magnificent in her flame. There are many explanations about gender dynamics here, but I think this is semantic and I won't talk about it for the time being.
We also see that perfect love is both unified and binary, and it is a happy life in a flame-like death. A religious metaphor can be found here. At that time, many Christian texts expressed that Jesus was a complete god and a complete man, or expressed the relationship between God and the church/individual, using this paradox and the description of' chastity combination'.
Last but not least, although this is a funeral, it mourns the loss of these virtues, not the death of birds. The death of birds is a beautiful and inevitable tragedy.
Many people think that these birds represent different couples, but I didn't see a clear answer in the article. If you are curious, these are easy to find, but I don't think any particular person can finally be associated with this poem.
This poem is long, dense and very abstract. I must have missed a lot of meaning, and maybe some parts were misunderstood. But I hope this will help you.