Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus - meaning Summary
Tragedy Amid Daily Life
Williams retells the Icarus myth as an ordinary scene drawn from Brueghel’s painting. The poem compresses the event into plain, everyday details—a farmer ploughing, the year awake—so the mythical fall becomes a minor, unnoticed splash. Its point is the quiet indifference of daily life and nature to individual catastrophe: while Icarus drowns, the world continues engaged with routine and its own concerns.
Read Complete AnalysesAccording to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry of the year was awake tingling near the edge of the sea concerned with itself sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning
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