Anthology - Eden Rock

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:

My father, twenty-five, in the same suit

Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack

Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress

Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,

Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.

Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight

From an old H.P. sauce bottle, a screw

Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out

The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.

My mother shades her eyes and looks my way

Over the drifted stream. My father spins

A stone along the water. Leisurely,

They beckon to me from the other bank.

I hear them call, ‘See where the stream-path is!'

Crossing is not as hard as you might think.’

I had not thought that it would be like this.

THEMES:

  • memory

  • religion

  • filial love

  • distance

  • death

  • childhood

FORM:

  • ballad form

    • makes memory vivid and dreamlike

  • elegy/ode

    • enhances themes of acceptance and consolation

STRUCTURE:

  • chronological/narrative structure

    • brings reader into moment

    • makes memory vivid and dreamlike

  • ABAB consonant rhyme scheme

    • half-rhymes represent incompleteness without parents

  • four regular quatrains

    • represents stability of relationship

    • displays that death is natural

  • single-line stanza

    • represents separation from parents

  • rough iambic pentameter

    • represents heartbeat; love and life

    • represents stability of relationship

LANGUAGE:

  • spiritual imagery/allusion

    • single-line stanza, period - “I had not thought that it would be like this.“

    • simile, colour imagery, celestial imagery - “the sky whitens as if lit by three suns“

    • natural imagery - “over the drifted stream“

    • natural imagery, colour imagery, simile, ‘h’ alliteration - “her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light“

    • sibilance, colour imagery - “spread the stiff white cloth“

    • enjambment, adverb - “leisurely, // they beckon to me“

  • speech, exclamative, juxtaposition - “see where the stream-path is!“

  • colloquialism - “old H.P. sauce bottle“

  • present continuous, proper noun - “they are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock“

CONTEXT:

  • written by Charles Causley

  • father died when he was young (7)

  • poetry contains heavy spiritual allusion and reference to Cornish folklore