WINTER

Winter is a poem by Walter de la Mare.

From the title I think the poem may be about the coldest season of all, when the snow falls from the sky and everybody wears warm clothes.

There are 3 stanzas with 5 lines each and free verses, without a rhyme scheme.

The language used is sought with unusual words as ebbing, unearthly and rayless and all the words sound as the notes of a delicate melody, with a shade of melancholy as if the poet wants to give to his poem the same mood of the winter, a frozen and insensitive season.

There are some enjambments: one between the last two lines of the first stanza, another one on the last three lines of the second one and the last one on the three final lines of the last stanza.

The poem tells about a landscape, without specify the place, as if it is describing a general view of a cold place, that could be everywhere, in every part of the world.

In the first stanza the poet talks about the cloudy sky and the cold wind that blows and froze everything and everybody, while the snow falls gentle on the world and on a bough that had lost all its leaves there is a robin which sings alone.

In the second stanza, the subject of the lines is the light, weak and faded, that illuminates the short days and makes fascinating light effects with the snow.

In the last stanza, the poet wants to talk about the winter nights, where the fires turned on to protect from the cold, one after the other light up the black sky, over the landscape made unrecognisable by the snow, which looks like a sea made of ice and the white moon floats over it, as a silent spectator.