Winter Landscapes (Still bitter-Perhaps a little

 I found this Examination Blue Book inside an old dictionary. The date is 3/17 at 2 p.m. for English 29. So probably sophomore year and I would have been 19. A lot to expect for someone that age to deal with such a crappy poem.

 The poem Winter Landscape intends to convey the author's feeling of intense loneliness as he faces the winter alone, as contrasted with the animals' closeness as they huddle together for warmth and companionship.

The poet's state of mind, his intensity of feeling, is exemplified by the irregularity of the rhyme and line lengths. He uses a tercet consisting of 2 long lines with a short line in the middle, in tetrameter. This short line serves to emphasize the theme of the poem---the wish for a warm kinship such as the animals enjoy, through repetition of key words, such as "fields, evening, alone."  There is a foreshadowing of death in man's desire to find a home. Man is lost on earth; he is alone. The abruptness of key words symbolizes man's loneness. Through the use of the cesura, there is the author's feeling of isolation. "Alone" is separated from the rest of the poem.  It stands alone, as does the author. 

  The assonance of the o's  in "come, home, across, glowing" reflects the mournful outlook of the author. The ideas are drawn together by the rhyme scheme, "Gray" in the first stanza, rhymed with "day" in the second stanza, carries over his unfulfilled longing. The choice of words contrasts the life of man with that of beasts and shows the latter to be more desirable. The birds can hide breast to breast in clefts, the sheep can huddle and press close together, but man must depend on a fire to shut out the cold. The choice of such words as bleak, tombed and the dying souls emphasizes man's lot as a dreary one indeed, whereas the descriptions relating to the animals are words are words having a more intimate sound. The repeated phrase  "breast  to breast" indicates the author's longing for such comfort. But man, for his comfort, must settle for pressing his thin dying soul against Eternity. Perhaps in Eternity will man be able to find the  warmth which the beasts already know, and which holds perhaps the potential comfort of the sea, evening and Daffodil West. 

  The winter landscape is not so much a reference to the season of the year as it is a portrayal of the  loneliness of man. The sound of the poem makes the reader feel the great loneliness and the sense of near futile desperation experienced by the author.