Just considering the title the intelligent reader expects the main character of the ballad to be the old woman of Usher’s well, while is curios to find out if the ballad’s setting would be a realistic or fantastic one.
The main topic of the poem is the supernatural.
Another important feature of the ballads that can be found in this poem is the use of refrains, in particular in this poem the repetition of the second stanza, that marks an important turning point of the ballad. Indeed, this stanza introduces the narration’s real body, bringing the central topic of the death of the wife’s sons. The refrain was an essential feature of the middle ages’ ballads that were end out orally, indeed it makes the poem easier to memorize.
The ballad is characterised by a general lack of details: there’s an abrupt beginning, indeed the readers is brought in medias res by the narrator, and ending, indeed the narration is interrupted without a real conclusion (there isn’t a reply and a reaction of the woman after her sons return to the heaven). Furthermore, also the characters are only sketched, they aren’t introduced and they don’t have a physical and psychological characterisation, but they are only appointed.
THREE RAVENS
The ballad presents himself with a title that doesn’t reveal much about the content of the poem. The only conjecture the reader can make is that the ravens will be the subjects of the poem.
The test is a ballad and displays a regular layout composed by ten stanzas of two lines.
The ballad starts introducing the characters of three ravens on a tree searching for something to eat.
The attention of the crows slides on a slain knight full of hounds. However, the ravens notice that there are many hawks and dogs defending the cavalier, thus the died knight is impossible to reach because of the protecting animals.
The ravens realize is arriving another shape, coming to the defunct body. It’s a girl who reaches the body and carries him until she buries the knight.
The ravens had not eaten, nonetheless, the ballad ends telling that everyone deserves such lady and such guards. The speaking voice appeals to God because he hopes this for everyone.
THE UNQUIET GRAVE
The object of the present work is to analyse the ballad called “The Unquiet Grave”.
The text is a ballad. The intelligent reader may be curious to find out the reason why the poet refers the adjective “Unquiet” to a grave.
Words “Unquiet” and “Grave” suggest a sense of sadness. So, maybe the ballad is very sad.
I think the title refers to something supernatural that cannot rest in its grave because it is troubled by an insistent agitation or dissatisfaction or suffering.The analysis of the poem is meant to discover the message the speaking voice wants to send.
Considering the layout is arranged into seven stanzas. All stanzas has of four lines, so they are all quatrains. Indeed some stanzas have got lines longer than the other.
The ballad starts with narration, the reader can understand what the text is about: the narrator is a young man that suffers for his love's death. The first stanza presents the setting.
Twelve months later his lover resurrect and asks him why he disturbs her.
In the sixth stanza the lover recalls some sweet memories with colourful images, “yonder garden green”, which soon become nostalgic and melancholic. Indeed the last two lines, “The finest flower that e’re was seen is withered to a stalk” set the atmosphere for the last stanza.
In the last quatrain the speaking voice juxtaposes their lives to dry flowers, “The stalk is withered dry, my love, so will our hearts decay”, that will inevitably come to an end
In the end, the ballad is a tragic love story between two young poeple in a supernatural place.
