A Poem by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) A Study Guide | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Study Guide Prepared by Michael J. Cummings..© 2008 Type of Work and Date of Publication "To
a Waterfowl" is a lyric poem of eight four-line stanzas presenting the
musings of a person observing a soaring waterfowl. Bryant completed the
poem in 1818 and published it in a collection, Poems, in 1821. According
to biographer Parke Godwin, Bryant was traveling from Cummington, Massachusetts,
to Plainfield when he saw a high-flying bird that later inspired him to
write the poem, one of his most popular. Godwin (1816-1904) worked with
Bryant at the New York Evening Post and later married his daughter.
He published a biography of Bryant in 1883. Godwin is not to be confused
with novelist and short-story writer Parke Godwin, born in 1929.
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Theme Just as God guides the waterfowl to its summer home, so too He guides the speaker of the poem through life to his ultimate destination, heaven. In the end, one will be able to say about the speaker what the speaker says about the waterfowl: "the abyss of heaven / Hath swallowed up thy form" (lines 25-26). The poem is, in essence, a profession of faith in God. In each stanza, the poet
uses iambic trimiter in lines 1 and 4
but iambic pentameter in lines 2 and 3.
The second stanza illustrates this format:
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Structure and Rhyme Bryant neatly divides the poem into eight stanzas, each with the same metrical structure and each with the same rhyme pattern: the last syllable of the first line always rhymes with the last syllable of the third, and the last syllable of the second line always rhymes with the last syllable of the fourth. (Lines 14 and 16 have different vowel sounds at the end; consequently, the syllables containing them become a pararhyme.) The use of iambs (metrical feet each consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable) throughout the poem could be a way to suggest the flapping of wings. alliteration: While,
Whither
(lines 1-2); depths, dost (line 3); their,
thou,
thy
(lines 3-4); distant, do, darkly (lines 6-7)
Like many other poets, Bryant occasionally uses anastrophe—inversion of the normal word order—as in While glow the heavens (line 2) and river wide (line 10). Study Questions and Essay Topics 1...What
is the mood of the poem?
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