Textual analysis of a poem: The Faithful Swallow.

The title “The Faithful Swallow” might suggest many ideas to the attentive reader's mind: the swallow represents peace, luck, happiness, it is an Easter's symbol and announces the incoming Spring.

But also the word Faithful might have many interpretations: faithful is an adjective that can be used to describe a relationship between people, animals, fidelity to somebody or to something. The reader might wonder which one of these topics the poem might talk about.

Analysing the structure of the poem, it is easy to notice that it is divided in two stanzas, of eight lines each; these lines are short, made up by a maximum of four words, so that the poem may be fast to read, easy and enjoyable.

Te use of past verb tenses in both the first and the second stanza makes the reader think that the events narrated in the poem are related to a far (in time) past, something happened a several time ago, even if, in the very last line of the poem, the speaking voice uses a present tense, that explains the narration has come to the real-time life.

The speaking voice is talking to someone who they're having a direct speech with, it is suggested by the use of vocative propositions (ah, me!), contractions ('Twas) and of course the use of the present (introduced by “now”).

The decision to divide the poem in two stanzas is explained by their connotative meanings: the first stanza, set in August, is the time of the decision, while the second, the one set in December, represent the regret of the choice made; summer is “the good season”, meaning that it is the time when we feel good, while winter, just like for the migrant birds, is the “bad time”, because of the coldness, lack of sun and warmth.

The swallow, a symbol of loyalty, is a famous because every year, when Winter passes away, it always returns to the same place; in this poem the swallow could be a metaphor for a person who exceeded in fidelity and got betrayed. Time changed just like people do, and being faithful to a person who is changing isn't always a good choice.

In the poem, it is loudly noticeable the consonance of the letter “s”, used most frequently in the first stanza, it creates an effect on the reader that suggest a memory from the past, but also of the sea (mentioned in the poem “shore”). Furthermore to this consonance there is an auditory parallelism during the whole poem, caused by the sound of “they”, very similar to the one found in the word “same” and “came”.

The syntactic choices made by the poet are all meant to give more emphasis to the surprise felt by the speaking voice, this may be noticed by the choice of letting the word fidelity alone in a whole line (it is the main reason of the speaking voice's choice, so it must have an appropriate relevance in the poem), the list of what the subject fet during winter and the exclamation marks.

The semantic choices of the poet remind mostly to the topics of summer (August, sweetest, shore) and winter (December, frost, snow).