The Desolate Field
The Desolate Field - form Summary
Repetition Frames a Bleak Gaze
The poem, in free verse, repeats the phrase "vast and grey" to frame both the external landscape and the speaker’s inner life. That recurring line binds sky, lived days, and a muted feeling of love, while the goat’s small movement and the speaker’s question "who am I... ?" register a hesitant self-awareness. The repetition creates a circular, enclosing mood in which desolation and yearning blur together.
Read Complete AnalysesVast and grey, the sky is a simulacrum to all but him whose days are vast and grey and -- In the tall, dried grasses a goat stirs with nozzle searching the ground. My head is in the air but who am I . . . ? -- and my heart stops amazed at the thought of love vast and grey yearning silently over me.
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