"Poplar Field" by William Cowper

 'The Poplar-Field' by William Cowper

 Form This poem is composed of five quatrains with a simple, repeated rhyme scheme of AABB. These pairs of lines are called rhyming couplets. The simple regularity of the form is comforting and easy to read. The repetition of the rhyme scheme is dependable and stable, with no surprises, except for one, the first couplet rhymes with the eighth couplet, but it is a poor, half rhyme. This creates both a turning point in the poem and a feeling of frustration or sadness. A steady rhythm with ten, eleven or twelve syllables to each line also creates regularity and a song-like sound. It is anapestic tetrameter, four feet with many examples of two weak beats and one strong one (an anapest : uu/) , with iambs to set off the melodic line or vary the rhythm a little. This creates a melodious, cheerful sound, a running or dancing rhythm. The subject of the poem, the description of a memory of a field full of poplars which the poet now sees reduced to stumps, could be rather depressing. The nostalgia for the way things used to be and the memory of a beautiful place make us wonder if the field was planted with trees like crops, which were intended to be cut down for wood, or whether it was a natural stand or forest of trees that was knocked down to make way for something else. The idea of a "field" makes us accept that the trees have been cut down more easily as a crop, or helps us to envision a new natural setting empty of trees now. The word, "colonnade" in line two helps us imagine the visual image of rows of trees like an architectural series of columns, a man-made forest. In stanza two, we discover in line 7 that the trees are still lying there, "in the grass behold they are laid", and in line 8, "the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade". This idea that the "felled"(l. 1) trees were once tall and are now lying like dead bodies on the ground, creates a sense of unfinished business or decay, rather than industry. The poet's persona uses the tree as a seat, suggesting both the usefulness of wood as a material and the dreamy kind of person that a nature poet would be, sitting down on a tree on the ground to look at the "massacre" and musing about the past and the future. This is lyric poetry, the thoughts of a person alone in a natural setting in the first person. 

Personification creates a cheerful, friendly environment. The poet alone is surrounded by all kinds of characters in the natural world around him, so he does not seem so lonely. In the past, the poplars "whispered" l. 2, and "lent" the poet shade, (l. 8), the winds "play" and "sing" (l.3). The Ouse river is personified as a person lying down, the water flowing is "his bosom". This creates a feeling of affection, as it makes it seem as if the river has a heart in his bosom, and the visual image of the water as a mirror 'receiving' the image of the trees on his chest, makes us think the Ouse loved the trees just as much as the poet did, even as if the Ouse was wearing a locket with a picture of the trees on his chest. "The blackbird has fled to another retreat" makes it seem as if the bird has decided to take shelter, but used to sing "his melody" to "charm" the poet(l. 11), "his sweet-flowing ditty"(l. 12) is a song that the bird composed just like the poet who composed the poem we are reading. The metaphor, "sweet-flowing" song, creates a sound and taste image of the river flowing nearby and the birdsong running like water in the air. 'The hazels", a kind of tree with fruit, (another image of taste) l. 10 are personified as "affording" or offering a "screen" to the blackbird. Thus, all of these natural creatures are perceived to be as thoughtful, imaginative and caring as humans.

Parallels As the Ouse holds a mirror image of the trees on its surface, the poet sees parallels between himself and the creatures around him. The blackbird is a reflecting image which resembles the poet. As the blackbird "fled", the poet's "fugitive years are all hasting away"(l. 13). The felled poplar trees are perceived as a parallel or a kind of mirror image of the poet's own death in the future. "I must ere long lie as lowly as they, with a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head." (l. 15-16)

Mortality The inevitability of death and the unstoppable passage of time, the brevity of one man's life, these are all considerations of what it is to be a mortal human. The poet says that before "another such grove shall arise", the poet will die. It takes too long to grow a grove of poplar trees for the poet to be able to see what was destroyed here replaced. This gives us a feeling of waste, sadness and desolation. All of these trees cut down took at least a generation or fifty to a hundred years to grow up. Also, the poet will end up in the ground, too, as part of a natural landscape of 'turf' and 'stone'. The poet's life time is personified as a "fugitive" running away (l.13). 

Man's power 

The poet's conclusion is "to muse", to imagine and think. The alliteration of "p" in "perishing pleasures" shows the poet taking pleasure in his own thoughts and ideas. "His life" is "a dream", full of "enjoyments". The poet's power is one of observation. We note that "his sight" is "engaged", he "last took a view" twelve years before l. 5 and at the present time can still say, "I see". The mighty poplar trees, so full of pleasures and shade, with a capacity to live for centuries, were surprisingly "less durable"l. 20 than the poet was. The poet is able to generalize from his own experience and come to a conclusion about man in general, human life and its abilities. Perhaps a storm felled the poplar trees, but a man can say "farewell" in line 1, and affirm that he is still alive at the end of the poem. 

All of these natural phenomena, his old friends, are captured in his memory. Using the third person in stanza five, the poet sets himself at a distance and looks on the situation with an omniscient view. He reasons with himself about this distressing situation and comes to a philosophical conclusion about life.