Download Free Audio of LINES 9-14 The day is come when I again repose H... - Woord

Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.


Text Content or SSML code:

LINES 9-14 The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses. The speaker complicates and deepens the sense of the natural setting as something unified, interconnected, and whole. In these lines, the speaker also introduces, for the first time, evidence of human presence within this natural landscape. First, the speaker tells the reader that he can “again repose” under a “dark sycamore” tree and look out over the scene. The repetition of “again” connects these lines to the preceding lines and suggests that the speaker is sitting under the same tree and looking out at the same aspects of the landscape that he did five years ago. From his seat under the tree, the speaker can look out over a landscape that is green and wild but that also includes indications of people living within it. The descriptions of “these plots of cottage-ground” and “orchard-tufts” suggest that the speaker is looking down at the scene within a valley. From his high vantage point, the trees of orchards look like small “tufts,” like clumps of cotton or brushes. Interestingly, while the speaker previously described the setting as secluded and wild, the nouns “cottage-ground” and “orchard-tufts” suggest that people live within this landscape—though they seem to do so in a way that is in harmony with nature. Their “cottage[s],” or small houses, are connected to the “ground” around them. And the speaker goes on to describe those cultivated “orchard[s]” as “clad in one green hue” so that they are almost impossible to distinguish from “groves and copses,” or clusters of trees. This imagery builds on and complicate the imagery that opened the poem. The scene is still described as natural, as wild and alive, yet the images of human activity (in which, notably, no people are actually seen!) seem to be in harmony with this landscape. This implicitly suggests that rural life, such as the kind lived by people farming within this setting, is closer to nature and to all of its positive attributes than is urban or city life. These images also introduce an interesting tension between the singular and the plural. In lines 9-10, the speaker is a singular “I” seated beneath a single tree. Looking over the scene, though, he observes the plural “plots” of land and “orchard-tufts” cultivated by multiple human farmers. This shift to the plural suggests that with the introduction of human presence comes a kind of multiplicity that might implicitly be in tension with the unity of the natural world. Yet the poem goes on to resolve this tension, as the orchards are said to be “clad in one green hue.” In other words, within this rural context, the green of nature unifies and brings together the possible multiplicity and even discord of human life. This sense of unity is heightened by the consonance of /k/ sounds in the lines, as the "cottage[s]" are sonically inked to "clad" and the "copses" of trees.