The objective of the following text is to analyse the poetical text “Peace”.

Just considering the title, it is composed of only one word, which is Peace. The title is very enigmatic because peace creates lots of different imagines in the reader’s mind. For instance, peace can be considered as a post-war peace, when a conflict ends, or as an interior peace, when you are quiet and calm with yourself.  Moreover, the intelligent reader can expect the song to be about an ended war. Nonetheless, this kind of message is very difficult to convey, mostly through a song, and however, it usually results boring or not catchy.

In order to reach the goal, considering the layout, the song has eight stanzas: a Decima, a septet, two quatrains and four tercets. Another element noticeable from the layout is that, in the two biggest stanzas, there are three or four lines which are terribly shorter than the others. Indeed, these stanzas are similar and the septet is the first part of the decimal, with only little differences. Furthermore, besides this refrain, there is another one between the sixth and the seventh stanza. However, in the last line of the stanza, there is a difference: indeed, in the last line, it is specified where God keeps the speaking voice safe, while in the other stanza, in the last line is repeated ‘You always’.

Another element of the two longest stanzas is the curious comparison between the first line and the third: while the first one is Peace and then You give me peace, the third one is always Sweet peace.

Now let’s analyse the meaning of the song.

The text starts with a suffering speaking voice, terrorised by enemies and confusion. In the third stanza, thanks to peace, the speaking voice recovers from the bad things that he or she experienced. In this stanza, the intelligent reader recognizes a possessive pronoun: “your”. This led the reader to think, there is someone who brings peace and helps the speaking voice. Still, in the third stanza, a phonological element easy to notice is a repetition of the sound w of the fifth line, which underlines the smoothness of the song.

Moving to the analysis of the next two stanzas, there is the idea of protection, reinforced with the emphasis of the terror. However, it’s more defined the shape of the someone mentioned above, are quoted indeed wings and angels, so the figure is not acquiring a human aspect.

In brief, in the remaining stanzas, the speaking voice concludes and tells the reader or the listener the identity of someone who helps the reader: he or she is God. Indeed, the speaker repeats the refrain, which before didn’t have a subject (hence, the speaker let the reader imagine the subject), giving an identity no longer enigmatic: everyone has a protective ‘spirit’ he or she can count on, whereas it’s different for each one.

Anyway, the speaking voice conveys and express his or her opinion, indeed he or she recognizes this ‘friend’ in God and finds protection in religion and pray.

The intelligent reader may think this is the main message of the song.