Compare and contrast two poems, one by each poet, taking account of the methods (the situation of the speaker, and the form, structure and language, including imagery and tones) which each poet uses to write about death in their poems.
W.B. Yeats, in “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory” and P. Kavanagh in “In Memory of My Mother” both use language and imagery alongside form and structure in order to write about death in their poems. In his poem, Yeats explores his relationship with the late Robert Gregory – son of his friend and mentor, Lady Gregory – and other key companions, whilst Kavanagh employs the use of memory in order to portray his maternal relationship with his mother.
“In Memory of Major Robert Gregory” is written when Yeats is newly married and “almost settled” in Thoor, Ballylee. In the poem, he recalls for his wife old friends who have died. Yeats structures the poem into a formal set of twelve octets which creates a sense of dignity appropriate to his elegiac poem. The regular AABBCDDC rhyme scheme and the repeated use of decasyllabic lines add to the speakers’ precision in recording the attributes of Robert Gregory. This form allows for Yeats’s philosophical musings concerning death. Yeats employs the use of a structural device through a refrain in the ninth, tenth and eleventh stanzas when he discusses Gregory:
“Soldier, scholar, horseman, he”.
Yeats makes effective use of sibilance and a triad to express the impressive attributes of Gregory which function as a symbol of all Yeats admires. The tone is elegiac as Yeats deliberately inverts the syntax of the line to place emphasis on these attributes and to expose his remorse at the loss of Gregory, effectively writing about death and its impact. In contrast, “In Memory of My Mother” is a poetic apostrophe to his late mother, made evident through his use of the pronoun “you”. Unlike Yeats, who reflects on past acquaintances, Kavanagh writes about familial death. His direct address to his mother illustrates their close relationship and the familial love that extends and endures beyond her death. The poem, like “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory” is an elegy, both poets praising someone who has died and thus they both share an admiring, praising tone. Kavanagh structures the poem into five quatrains which display the series of recollections the speaker has of his mother. The sustained use of enjambement throughout reflects the flow of his memory and the energy of his mind as he commemorates his mother. His thought process is further exposed through the irregular rhythm and rhyme in the poem as he writes about her death. Kavanagh manipulates the structure of the poem, creating a cyclical movement in the opening and closing stanzas through the use of the graveyard image as Kavanagh makes a semantic shift as his language becomes more assertive, altering from:
“I do not think of you lying in the wet clay” to: “O you are not lying in the wet clay”.
Kavanagh’s language becomes emphatic, emphasising the loss the speaker feels and his refusal to believe his mother has died, using language to explore and write about death. The use of the term “O” creates a hymn-like lament for the speaker’s mother, employed by Kavanagh to illustrate the remorse of the speaker as he writes about death. Both Yeats and Kavanagh in the opening stanzas of their poems make it evident they are writing about death and the use of present tense by both authors adds a sense of dramatic immediacy. Yeats writes: “All, all are in my thoughts to-night, being dead.”
Yeats’s repetition of the term “all” emphasises the contemplative quality of the line as Yeats mediates on the nature of life and writing about death he contemplates the inevitability of it. Similarly, the opening line of “In Memory of My Mother” immediately introduces the theme of death: “I do not think of you lying in the wet clay”.
Kavanagh’s language is emphatically negative and mainly monosyllabic, conveying how the speaker, like
