Aleena Islam
IN ROMNEY MARSH – John Davidson
Themes
Praise, wonder, awe, Nature and natural idyll; longing for a lost way of life;
rejection of modern post-industrial world
Contextual overview
This is a celebration of the poet’s love for a place: Romney Marsh is on the East
Sussex/Kent border and this poem reads almost like a love song or a ballad,
dedicated to what is presented as a rural idyll. The landscape is brought to life,
personified almost, through the poet’s evident knowledge of the place and
seems to belong to an outdated mode of poetic expression, in which the only
purpose of the writing to laud Nature and her work.
Key features of language, form and structure
- Much of the poem details what Davidson can see and hear and he is alive
to the natural phenomenon on the marsh as well as the human. In the first
stanza, the speaker states that he ‘hear the South sing o’er the land.’ The
personification of the breeze is a typically Romantic device; the use of
the verb ‘sing’ suggests the joyfulness and a contentment that the poet
finds in this peaceful place.
- He continues to state, ‘I saw the yellow sunlight fall on knolls...’ By
describing the sunlight in this way, a bright, jovial and warm ambience is
created given that the colour yellow has strong connotations of
happiness and serenity. Moreover, a knoll is a small hill or mound. By
suggesting that there are minute hills, rolling over one another, the reader
is given a calming impression of the environment since the rolling hills
give a soothing depiction.
- He ends the first stanza by stating, ‘…where the Norman churches stand.’
The Norman churches suggest the history and antiquity of the area.
Already in the first stanza, Davidson’s senses are heightened and much of
the poem consists of what he hears and sees.
- In the second stanza, Davidson’s heightened senses are supported by the
intense sounds made from the telephone from Romney to Hythe; ‘ringing
shrilly, taut and lithe… within the wind a core of sound’ The tricolon of
constricted adjectives could reinforce the extent to which Davidson’s
senses are heightened from being in such a transcendental location; a
true pastoral idyll.
- However the speaker properly depicts the beauty of Romney Marsh in the
third stanza; ‘a veil of purple vapour flowed and trailed its fringe …’ The
metaphor of a richly coloured layer enhances the clarity of the image
being depicted while the imagery of the colour also symbolises how
transcendental, idyllic and beautiful Romney Marsh is.
- The speaker continues to illustrate Romney’s beauty as he describes in a
simile that ‘the upper air like sapphire glowed.’ This presents the idea
that the sky is lustrously beautiful since a sapphire is a gemstone of
immense delicacy and beauty. The numerical value of a sapphire is quite
substantial and so symbolically, one could interpret Davidson’s
IN ROMNEY MARSH – John Davidson
Themes
Praise, wonder, awe, Nature and natural idyll; longing for a lost way of life;
rejection of modern post-industrial world
Contextual overview
This is a celebration of the poet’s love for a place: Romney Marsh is on the East
Sussex/Kent border and this poem reads almost like a love song or a ballad,
dedicated to what is presented as a rural idyll. The landscape is brought to life,
personified almost, through the poet’s evident knowledge of the place and
seems to belong to an outdated mode of poetic expression, in which the only
purpose of the writing to laud Nature and her work.
Key features of language, form and structure
- Much of the poem details what Davidson can see and hear and he is alive
to the natural phenomenon on the marsh as well as the human. In the first
stanza, the speaker states that he ‘hear the South sing o’er the land.’ The
personification of the breeze is a typically Romantic device; the use of
the verb ‘sing’ suggests the joyfulness and a contentment that the poet
finds in this peaceful place.
- He continues to state, ‘I saw the yellow sunlight fall on knolls...’ By
describing the sunlight in this way, a bright, jovial and warm ambience is
created given that the colour yellow has strong connotations of
happiness and serenity. Moreover, a knoll is a small hill or mound. By
suggesting that there are minute hills, rolling over one another, the reader
is given a calming impression of the environment since the rolling hills
give a soothing depiction.
- He ends the first stanza by stating, ‘…where the Norman churches stand.’
The Norman churches suggest the history and antiquity of the area.
Already in the first stanza, Davidson’s senses are heightened and much of
the poem consists of what he hears and sees.
- In the second stanza, Davidson’s heightened senses are supported by the
intense sounds made from the telephone from Romney to Hythe; ‘ringing
shrilly, taut and lithe… within the wind a core of sound’ The tricolon of
constricted adjectives could reinforce the extent to which Davidson’s
senses are heightened from being in such a transcendental location; a
true pastoral idyll.
- However the speaker properly depicts the beauty of Romney Marsh in the
third stanza; ‘a veil of purple vapour flowed and trailed its fringe …’ The
metaphor of a richly coloured layer enhances the clarity of the image
being depicted while the imagery of the colour also symbolises how
transcendental, idyllic and beautiful Romney Marsh is.
- The speaker continues to illustrate Romney’s beauty as he describes in a
simile that ‘the upper air like sapphire glowed.’ This presents the idea
that the sky is lustrously beautiful since a sapphire is a gemstone of
immense delicacy and beauty. The numerical value of a sapphire is quite
substantial and so symbolically, one could interpret Davidson’s
