Up-hill

Who’s who?

Character 1 → traveller

Character 2 → guide

No names so anyone could relate

Form

• Ballad

• 4 x quatrains

• Simple, conversational language

• ABAB rhyme scheme

Interpretations

• Through life

• To heaven

• Mary and Joseph

• Literal journey

Nativity

“Cannot miss that inn”

John 14.2

‘my father’s house had plenty of room’ relates to “all those who seek”

Everyone welcomed into God’s house

Doctorine of Reserve

If you knock you can enter

“Then must I knock”

Catechism

Questions and answered by yourself in religious sense. Found in the common book of prayer

Mirrored in conversational style of the poem

Soul Sleep

Suspended time of sleep until the 2nd coming of Christ and then will be relocated to heaven, which could be what the traveller seeks

“Those who have gone before”

Doubt

• Questioning

• Struggle along the way

• Importance of faith

• Rossetti experienced religious doubt