The Vantage Point
The Vantage Point - form Summary
A Sonnet of Observation
The poem is a sonnet that fixes on a single vantage point in the rural landscape and stages a shift in perception. From a secluded hilltop the speaker alternates between looking out at distant human life and graves and turning inward to immediate, sensory details — sun, scent, and the tiny world of an ant. The sonnet’s concise shape concentrates this move from broad contemplation to intimate, embodied awareness, suggesting how perspective can change without leaving the same physical place.
Read Complete AnalysesIf tires of trees I seek again mankind, Well I know where to hie me–in the dawn, To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn. There amid loggin juniper reclined, Myself unseen, I see in white defined Far off the homes of men, and farther still, The graves of men on an opposing hill, Living or dead, whichever are to mind. And if by noon I have too much of these, I have but to turn on my arm, and lo, The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow, My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze, I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant, I look into the crater of the ant.
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