Song: How sweet I roam'd"

What happens in the poem

• at first the narrator (a young girl) is in a state of freedom & innocence before being seduced by the ‘prince’

• at the beginning everything in the world is ‘sweet’ and ‘fair’ whereas after the speaker becomes ‘caged’ and innocence is stripped

• the lover ‘plays’ with her heart hinting at an element of sadism

“I roam’d”

• verb using long vowel

• sound evokes speaker relishing the freedom in nature

“tasted all the summer’s pride”

• sensory verb

• highlighting the speakers eagerness to experience everything summer can offer

• past tense foreshadowing entrapment of speaker

“Till I the prince of love beheld”

• non-standard syntax foregrounds the speaker

• suggesting they have more importance than the prince

• the use of the lower case diminishes the prince first before he takes control

“He shew’d me lilies for my hair”

• conventionally a symbol of the feminine, purity or fertility

• Roman Brides were often given a garland of lilies to wear in their hair to symbolise the promise of a pure and fertile life

“his silken net … his golden cage”

• characterising the prince as materially powerful and also having the capability to attract and trap the girl

Rhyme - “me … liberty”

• alternative rhyme scheme

• underscores the irony that “me” no longer has “liberty”

“laughing, sports and plays with me”

• only the prince is laughing

• imbalance of power

• they don’t play together - he plays with her

“my loss”

• possessive language

• reminding us the speaker doesn’t have liberty

• analeptic to the freedom in the first line with the verb “roam”

Form of the poem

• a ballad

• using alternative rhyme in each quatrain

• suggesting age old wisdom being shared

• conventionally used to tell a story