In the poem “It was Long Ago”, the poet, Eleanor Farjeon, describes a seemingly trivial memory of her childhood. The oldest memory she could remember.
She describes how she was walking down a dusty road in summer, but catches the eyes of an old woman who beckons to her and offers her some berries with cream, which the poet accepts. She also notices that the old woman seems to know how it felt to be her age. Then she goes to say how the memory may not mean much to us but how it means a lot to her.
At the very start of the poem, the poet asks us the question “I’ll tell you, shall I, something I remember?”. This is an example of a rhetoric question. This line instantly creates a connection with the reader and creates a conversational tone as if the speaker is talking directly to the reader throughout the rest of the poem.
This connection is further bolstered through the use of the anaphora/repetition, “you know”, which urges the feeling of sympathetic understanding and recognition from the reader and makes the reader feel like they also play a part in reminiscing of the memory. It makes the reader feel that they know the poet personally.
This repetition of the phrase “you know” also conveys how trivial the memory the poet is describing is, yet how important it is to the poet as the repetition empathises this.…show more content… The rhyme of this of this poem is also very simple as the rhyme is between stanzas and on each poem’s second line. The rhyme is free verse which expresses the innocence and mindset of a child. It can also represent the triviality of the memory as if it was something that was very normal. The vocabulary in this poem is uncomplicated and there is a lot of repetition of words and sounds in words such as ‘ee’ and ‘oh’. This simple structure is expected as the poem is a children’s poem but all this can be emphasis on how the speaker’s simplistic mindset as the speaker was only three at the
