Macbeth Act 5, Scene 1 Dunsinane. Ante-room in the castle summary and analysis

Act V: Scene 1

Summary

Lady Macbeth has gone mad. Like her husband, she cannot find any rest, but she is suffering more clearly from a psychological disorder that causes her, as she sleepwalks, to recall fragments of the events of the murders of Duncan, Banquo, and Lady Macduff. These incriminating words are overheard by the Doctor and a lady-in-waiting.

Analysis

The staging of this scene is made clear by the first ten lines of the scene. The gentlewoman's description of how Lady Macbeth has sleepwalked in the past acts as a stage direction for the actress playing Lady Macbeth. Her agitated reading of a letter is of course a visual reminder of her reading of the fateful letter in Act I, Scene 5. More than this, Lady Macbeth is seen to rub her hands in a washing action that recalls her line "A little water clears us of this deed" in Act II, Scene 2. If these words are not enough to arouse the Doctor's suspicions, those that follow must suggest to him not only that she is suffering but also the reason for that suffering.

Lady Macbeth's speech has become fragmented and broken by an enormous emotional pressure: the suave hostess and cool, domineering wife has been reduced to a gibbering creature whose speech (almost) signifies nothing. There are no logical connections between her memories or her sentences, and indeed, the devastation of her mind is so complete that she cannot recall events in their correct order. For example, "Out damned spot" is followed by "The Thane of Fife had a wife," referring to Lady Macduff. Later we hear the line "Banquo's buried: he cannot come out on's grave," and finally she believes she hears Macduff knocking at the gate. It is as though all the individual murders have coalesced into one seamless pageant of blood. Perhaps the most ironic line is the one which near-perfectly echoes an earlier line of Macbeth's. When Lady Macbeth cries "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand," we must not forget that she was not on stage to hear her husband's "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?" (Act II, Scene 2).

Lady Macbeth's line "What's done cannot be undone" not only reverses her earlier argument to her husband "what's done is done" (Act III, Scene 2); it also recalls the words of the general confession from the Prayer Book: "We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us." The Doctor agrees: In his opinion, Lady Macbeth needs a "divine," — a priest — more than a doctor, reminding the audience of Macbeth's earliest doubts when he argues with himself before the murder of Duncan, "If it were done when 'tis done . . . we'd jump the life to come" (I:7,1-6).

Now, though, the promise of salvation has been all but abandoned. "Hell is murky," says Lady Macbeth, and that spiritual darkness is echoed by the fact that the scene is played entirely in the dark, with the exception of one candle, which Lady Macbeth insists on having next to her. She may be sleepless, but it is her soul's rest that really concerns her.

Glossary

accompt (37) account

practice (55) medical expertise

 divine (71) priest

mated (75) amazed

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Cat In The Rain Analysis and symbolism By Ernest Hemingway

Cat In The Rain Analysis and symbolism 

By Ernest Hemingway

There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel. They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from their room. Their room was on the second floor facing the sea. It also faced the public garden and war monument. There were big palms and green benches in the public garden. In the good weather there was always an artist with his easel. Artists liked the way the palms grew and the bright colors of the hotels facing the sea. Italians came from a long way off to look up at the war monument. It was made of bronze and glistened in the rain. It was raining. The rain dripped from the palm trees. Water stood in pools on the gravel paths. The sea broke in a long line in the rain. The motor cars were gone from the square by the war monument. Across the square in the doorway of the cafe a waiter stood looking out at the empty square.

The American wife stood at the window looking out. Outside right under their window a cat was crouched under one of the dripping green tables. The cat was trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on.

“I’m going down and get that kitty,” the American wife said.

“I’ll do it,” her husband offered from the bed.

“No, I’ll get it. The poor kitty is out trying to keep dry under the table.”

The husband went on reading, lying propped up with the two pillows at the foot of the bed.

“Don’t get wet,” he said.

The wife went downstairs and the hotel owner stood up and bowed to her as she passed the office. His desk was at the far end of the office. He was an old man and very tall.

“Il piove,” the wife said. She liked the hotelkeeper.

“Si, si, Signora, brutto tempo. It is very bad weather.”

He stood behind his desk in the far end of the dim room. The wife liked him. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands.

Liking him she opened the door and looked out. It was raining harder. A man in a rubber cape was crossing the empty square to the cafe. The cat would be around to the right. Perhaps she could go along to the eaves. As she stood in the doorway an umbrella opened behind her. It was the maid who looked after their room.

“You must not get wet,” she smiled, speaking Italian. Of course, the hotel-keeper had sent her.

With the maid holding the umbrella over her, she walked along the gravel path until she was under their window. The table was there, washed bright green in the rain, but the cat was gone. She was suddenly disappointed. The maid looked up at her.

“Ha perduto qualque cosa, Signora?” 

“There was a cat,” said the American girl.

“A cat?”

“Si, il gatto.”

“A cat?” the maid laughed. “A cat in the rain?”

“Yes,” she said, “under the table.” Then, “Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty.”

When she talked English the maid’s face tightened.

“Come, Signora,” she said. “We must get back inside. You will be wet.”

“I suppose so,” said the American girl.

They went back along the gravel path and passed in the door. The maid stayed outside to close the umbrella. As the American girl passed the office, the padrone bowed from his desk. Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance. She went on up the stairs. She opened the door of the room. George was on the bed reading.

“Did you get the cat?” he asked, putting the book down.

“It was gone.”

“Wonder where it went to,” he said, resting his eyes from reading. She sat down on the bed.

“I wanted it so much,” she said. “I don’t know why I wanted it so much. I wanted that poor kitty. It isn’t any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain.”

George was reading again.

She went over and sat in front of the mirror of the dressing table looking at herself with the hand glass. She studied her profile, first one side and then the other. Then she studied the back of her head and her neck.

“Don’t you think it would be a good idea if I let my hair grow out?” she asked, looking at her profile again.

George looked up and saw the back of her neck, clipped close like a boy’s.

“I like it the way it is.”

“I get so tired of it,” she said. “I get so tired of looking like a boy.”

George shifted his position in the bed. He hadn’t looked away from her since she started to speak.

“You look pretty darn nice,” he said. 

She laid the mirror down on the dresser and went over to the window and looked out. It was getting dark.

“I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I can feel,” she said. “I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her.”

“Yeah?” George said from the bed.

“And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.”

“Oh, shut up and get something to read,” George said. He was reading again.

His wife was looking out of the window. It was quite dark now and still raining in the palm trees.

“Anyway, I want a cat,” she said, “I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can’t have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat.”

George was not listening. He was reading his book. His wife looked out of the window where the light had come on in the square.

Someone knocked at the door.

“Avanti,” George said. He looked up from his book. In the doorway stood the maid. She held a big tortoise-shell cat pressed tight against her and swung down against her body.

“Excuse me,” she said, “the padrone asked me to bring this for the Signora

Analysis and symbolism

In "Cat In The Rain", the American girl's husband treats her with a lack of affection, apathy and indifference. When she starts telling him all the things she desires, he just tells her to shut up. She wasn't asking much, simple things, little things, and most of the times little things are what count most. He thinks she's acting like a spoiled child, he doesn't understand her, and he makes no efforts to make her feel loved, wanted, to make her feel like a real woman. 

She claims to feel like a boy, because she needs physical and emotional attention, which her husband doesn't provide her. 

The hotel keeper was the man who made her feel important, she admires his will to serve her, he gave her the attention she needed and that she's not getting from her husband. In other words, he made her feel like a lady. 

Just like the cat, the American girl feels lonely and she needs to be "pet". She hides from the rain, she tries to keep safe and dry. So, in my opinion, the girl is the cat, her husband is the rain that makes her feel unsafe and unfulfilled, and the hotel keeper is the table under which she hides. She needs someone to hold her, to love her and take care of her, and those are qualities that her husband doesn't have.

__________________________________________________ ________________________

The Cat in the Rain by Ernest Hemingway is a story of an American couple in Italy. Hemingway portrays this couple as having differences of priorities and also a difference in the amount of attention they give to one another. This story takes place over a short few hours, and even though we only know these characters for a brief period of time, we can predict the type of relationship they have. Most likely if we observed George and his wife a week or so from this day, their conversation would not be about a cat, but the underlying causes would be very similar.

George and his wife (also known as the American girl) are in their hotel room in Italy. George seems very ******* and comfortable sitting on the bed reading. His wife on the other hand gives us the idea that she is very bored, not only in the hotel room, but with their relationship, and herself, her physical appearance especially. Wanting to be anywhere besides stuck in a hotel room do to the rain, the American girl looks out the ******** Outside there is the sea, a public garden, and a war monument. Out in the garden we are also told that there are palm trees and benches for visitors to sit on. The Italians also liked to come and visit this garden because of 

. . . 

The hotel owner then goes on to have a brief conversation with her about the bad weather they are having. By this we again see the hotel owner giving George’s wife the attention she wishes to have from him. George and his wife have forgotten those things, which had brought them together in the first place. 

They walk back to the hotel doors and the maid takes down the umbrella as George’s wife heads back up to her room. As soon as his wife says it was gone and follows by complaining about the poor kitty, he picks the book back up again. Anyone that crossed her path every so slightly and recognized her was noticed and greatly appreciated. His wife complains about her shout boyish haircut, and for once George has been giving her his undivided attention. ” 

We can see from this conversation that George is used to his wife’s unusualiaty and quite bothersome adventures. George also offers his wife help that he knows she will not take, after all he has not intention of getting off the bed to leave his reading. She goes on talking of having her hair long enough to put up in a bun, while a kitty sits on her lap to stroke. The pardone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. “Excuse me, the padrone asked me to bring this for the Signora,” said the maid. These two need to have time with each. 

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Macbeth Act 4, Scene 1: A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron summary and analysis

Act IV: Scene 1

Summary

Macbeth returns to the Weird Sisters and boldly demands to be shown a series of apparitions that tell his future. The first apparition is the disembodied head of a warrior who seems to warn Macbeth of a bloody revenge at the hands of Macduff. The second is a blood-covered child who comforts Macbeth with the news that he cannot be killed by any man "of woman born." The third is a child wearing a crown, who promises that Macbeth cannot lose in battle until Birnam wood physically moves toward his stronghold at Dunsinane.

Encouraged by the news of such impossibilities, Macbeth asks, "Shall Banquo's issue ever reign in this kingdom?" The Witches present an image of a ghostly procession of future kings, led by Banquo. All this serves only to enrage Macbeth, who, trusting in his own pride, reveals in an aside to the audience his determination to slaughter the family of Macduff.

Analysis

This scene can be roughly divided into three: the Witches' casting of a spell; the supernatural answers to Macbeth's demands; and Macbeth's return to the cold world of political and social reality. The scene's structure deliberately recalls the opening scenes of the play. Once more, Macbeth's destiny is in question. Once more, he receives three prophecies. Once more, he is left on his own to decide how best to interpret those prophecies. And once more he fails to understand that Fate is inevitable, however he chooses to act.

The Witches' charm is fantastic: Its ingredients, thrown into a bubbling cauldron, are all poisonous. Moreover, these ingredients are all the entrails or body parts of loathed animals or human beings, which, taken together, can be interpreted as making a complete monster: tongue, leg, liver, lips, scales, teeth, and so on. The strong implication is that Macbeth himself is no longer a complete human being; he himself has become a half-man, half-monster, a kind of chimera.

Macbeth arrives at the Witches' lair with extraordinary boldness, knocking at the entrance in a way that ironically recalls the entry of Macduff into Macbeth's castle in Act II, Scene 3. When he "conjures" the Witches to answer him, his language is uncompromising: He matches their power with a powerful curse of his own, demanding to have an answer even if it requires the unleashing of all the elements of air, water, and earth; even if all the universe — natural or manmade — "tumble" into ruin. His most defiant act, by far, is to desire to hear the prophecy of his future not from the Witches, who are themselves only "mediums" of the supernatural, but from their "masters," that is, the controlling Fates.

Macbeth's demand is answered by a sequence of apparitions. Unlike the dagger and Banquo's ghost, these supernatural visions cannot be simply the workings of Macbeth's "heat-oppress'd brain." They are definitely summoned by the Witches. Once again, the audience is required to assess the extent to which Macbeth is responsible for his own actions. What is certain is Macbeth's response to each prophetic apparition: He appears to be super-confident, even flippant, in his replies. There is little fear or respect, for example, in his reply to the First Apparition: "Whate'er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks." And his punning reply to the Second Apparition's "Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth" — "Had I three ears, I'd hear thee" — displays a comic arrogance.

Apart from the first, all the apparitions, including the fourth and final one of a procession of future kings, contain children. The juxtaposition of children (pictures of innocence) and images of death, warfare, and blood, is dramatic and terrifying, but especially so for Macbeth: For a man who has no offspring, the image of children can only fill him with hatred and loathing.

Having rejected as impossible the second two prophecies, Macbeth asks for one last favor. The result appalls him, drawing all strength from him and reducing his earlier courage. The children who appear in this procession are the children of Fleance. The reflected light of their golden crowns "does sear (cut into) mine eye-balls" and causes his eyes to jump from their sockets. The climax to Macbeth's reaction occurs in the line "What! will the line (of inheritance) stretch out to the crack of doom?" in which he finally realizes the possibility of an entirely Macbethless future.

In a scene rich with special effects — thunder, ghosts and (possibly flying) Witches — Shakespeare adds a final visual stroke: The eighth child-king carries a mirror that reflects the faces of many more such kings. The effect of infinite regression can be achieved by looking at a mirror while holding a smaller mirror in your hand in which the reflection is reflected.

The Witches confirm the inevitability of what Macbeth has seen: "Ay sir, all this is so." There can be no equivocation, no argument, with Fate.

Emerging into the cold light of day, Macbeth seems immediately to forget the final prophecy, as he returns to the practicalities of what is increasingly a battle for his own political survival. On being informed that Macduff has fled to England, he announces his intention to wreak a terrible revenge on Macduff's wife and children.

Glossary

brinded (1) streaked

fenny (12) living in the marshes

howlet (17) young owl

yesty (53) frothing

lodg'd (55) beaten down

germens (59) seeds

farrow (65) litter of pigs

harp'd (74) guessed

impress (95) force

mortal custom (100) usual lifespan

crack of doom (117) Day of Judgment

antic round (130) mad dance

this great King (131) possibly a reference to James I (the king in Shakespeare's audience)

flighty . . . with it (145) Unless acted upon immediately intentions may be overtaken by time.

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Types of Meters in Poetry Explanation

A meter in writing is a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables organized into feet, aka patterns.

The most common meters are:

Iambic

A foot which starts with an unaccented and ends with an accented (stressed) syllable. It is the most common meter in the English language and naturally falls into everyday conversation. An example is "To be or not to be" (the accented syllables are italicized) from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Trochaic

The opposite of an iambic meter. It begins with an accented then followed by an unaccented syllable. An example is the line "Doule, doule, toil and trouble." from Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Anapestic

A foot which has two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable. Example: "I arise and unbuild it again" from Shelley's Cloud.

Dactylic

A foot including an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables. Example: openly.

Spondee

A foot consisting of two accented syllables. Example: heartbreak.

Pyrrhic

A foot including two unaccented syllables, generally used to vary rhythm.

As well, meters are named for the number of feet; monometer: one foot, dimeter: two feet, trimeter: three feet, tetrameter: four feet, pentameter: five feet, hexameter: six feet, heptameter: seven feet.

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Alliteration and Assonance in Poetry

If you've only recently started writing poems, it's probable that your main stylistic concern is how they rhyme. But rhyme isn't the only thing that can make a poem sound good - in fact, it's not strictly necessary, and many traditional styles of poetry ignore it. What matters in giving a poem structure is the way you link sounds, and there are other ways of doing that, two of the most significant being alliteration and assonance.

What is Alliteration?

Alliteration is the pairing of identical or similar consonant sounds. You might be most familiar with this from tongue-twisters such as 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers', in which the 'p' sound is repeated. Bear in mind that this sound does not always have to be represented by the same letter - for instance, you might pair sounds made by 'f' and 'ph'. If you can't find an appropriate word beginning with an identical sound, you might settle for a pair like 'f' and 'th'.

Alliteration is commonly used in prose writing, for instance in newspaper headlines that are intended to be memorable. Used too intensively, it can create a comic effect, but you can use that too to your advantage, to amuse the reader. When you use a lot of alliteration, it's important to get a balance between playfulness and seeming to be clever for the sake of it. Try to use devices like this only when you are doing so for a reason.

Despite the example given above, alliteration doesn't depend on particular sounds being at the start of words, though usually they are in a stressed position (like, for example, the 'c' in 'implication'). Some sounds carry particular cultural associations that you can manipulate to add depth to your poem. If you're familiar with 'The Lord of the Rings', think about how Gollum uses extra 's' sounds, making him seem creepy and untrustworthy.

What is Assonance?

The counterpart of alliteration, assonance is the pairing of vowel sounds. There's an example of assonance in the title of this page - note the 'a' sound at the start of 'alliteration' and of 'assonance'. This has a subtler effect than alliteration, and often operates at a subconscious level. It can be one of those factors that makes us decide that a particular pair of words sound good together.

Vowel sounds can be grouped into high and low sounds, depending on where the tongue is in the mouth when they're produced. For instance, 'i' in 'fish' is high, whilst 'u' in 'tub' is low. Often assonant effects are produced in poetry by grouping a lot of high vowels or a lot of low vowels.

Most English speakers subconsciously associate high vowels with light, elegant or sophisticated things, and low vowels with crude or common things, because of the way they have appeared historically in the language. You can take advantage of this to establish the tone of a poem.

Directing Attention

The primary use of alliteration and assonance in poetry is to direct attention to particular words, making them stand out and making them more memorable. By doing this, you can also lead readers to make associations between words. For instance, in traditional heroic poetry, poets often use a lot of positive words starting with the hero's initial and negative ones starting with the villain's initial.

Being aware of the effects of alliteration and assonance also means that you can avoid using them accidentally, which can distract readers from the intended flow of a poem. Read your poetry aloud after finishing your first draft and think carefully about the different sounds within it. Do they direct attention where you want it to go, or do they misdirect it?

Creating Rhythm

Careful use of alliteration and assonance can help to establish rhythm within a poem (or in prose). Many traditional forms of poetry use this instead of rhyme, and rhyming poems often employ alliterative devices to make their rhythm more complex. This works because of the way the reader's attention is directed to certain sounds, affecting which words are naturally stressed.

One of the most famous alliterative poems in English is 'The Raven' by Edgar Allen Poe, in which paired sounds contribute strongly to the rhythm. Poe uses these sounds onomatopoeically - that is, to mirror the sound he's describing, that of tapping at a door. Try to think about your own poetry in this light. Alliteration and assonance can help you adjust the rhythm to create particular effects.

Alliteration and assonance can seem complicated at first, but they're well worth exploring. They can bring a whole new dimension to your work.

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IN A STATION OF THE METRO by Ezra Pound summary and analysis

IN A STATION OF THE METRO
by
Ezra Pound

"In a Station of the Metro" is an Imagist poem by Ezra Pound published in 1913 in Poetry The poem attempts to describe Pound's experience upon visiting an underground metro station in Paris in 1912, and Pound suggested that the faces of the individuals in the metro were best put into a poem not with a deion but with an "equation". Because of the treatment of the subject's appearance by way of the poem's own visuality , it is considered a quintessential Imagist text. The poem was reprinted in Pound's collection Lustra in 1917, and again in the 1926 anthology Personae: The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound , which compiled his early pre-Hugh Selwyn Mauberley works.
The poem
The poem contains only fourteen words, further exemplifying Imagism's precise economy of language. Pound was influential in the creation of Imagist poetry until he left the movement to embrace Vorticism in 1914. Pound, though briefly, embraced Imagism stating that it was an important step away from the verbose style of Victorian literature and suggested that it "is the sort of American stuff I can show here in Paris without its being ridiculed". "In a Station at the Metro" is an early work of Modernist poetry as it attempts to "break from the pentameter", incorporates the use of visual spacing as a poetic device, and contains not a single verb.
Text
IN A STATION OF THE METRO
The apparition of these faces in the crowd ;
Petals on a wet, black bough.






Analysis

The poem was first published in 1913 and is considered one of the leading poems of the Imagist tradition. Written in a Japanese haiku style, Pound’s process of deletion from thirty lines to only fourteen words typifies Imagism’s focus on economy of language, precision of imagery and experimenting with non-traditional verse forms. The poem is Pound’s written equivalent for the moment of revelation and intense emotion he felt at the Metro at La Concorde, Paris. Pound explains in his artic value.
The poem is essentially a set of images that have unexpected likeness and convey the rare emotion that Pound was experiencing at that time. Arguably the heart of the poem is not the first line, nor the second, but the mental process that links the two together. "In a poem of this sort," as Pound explained, "one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective." This darting takes place between the first and second lines. The pivotal semi-colon has stirred debate as to whether the first line is in fact subordinate to the second or both lines are of equal, independent importance. Pound contrasts the factual, mundane image that he actually witnessed with a phor from nature and thus infuses this “apparition” with visual beauty. There is a quick transition from the statement of the first line to the second line’s vivid phor; this ‘super-pository’ technique exemplifies the Japanese haiku style. The word “apparition” is considered crucial as it evokes a mystical and supernatural sense of imprecision which is then reinforced by the phor of the second line. The plosive word ‘Petals’ conjures ideas of delicate, feminine beauty which contrasts with the bleakness of the ‘wet, black bough’. What the poem signifies is questionable; many critics argue that it deliberately transcends traditional form and therefore its meaning is solely found in its technique as opposed to in its content. However when Pound had the inspiration to write this poem few of these considerations came into view. He simply wished to translate his perception of beauty in the midst of ugliness into a single, perfect image in written form.
It is also worth noting that the number of words in the poem (fourteen) is the same as the number of lines in a sonnet. The words are distributed with eight in the first line and six in the second, mirroring the octet-sestet form of the Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet.
Another analysis
The short poem “In a Station of the Metro” is an example of Pound's artistic theory of Imagism, which he advocated for a brief while in his career and which had a lasting impact on his writing and modern poetry. During his time in London, just before World War I, Pound developed a theory of poetry, which he termed Imagism, that stripped away the rhetorical excesses and vagueness that he believed obscured so much of contemporary poetry. In their places he advocated precise, careful presentation of specific images accurately rendered. Although Pound would later move beyond this rather limited concept, he retained the essential parts of it, and many of the passages in the Cantos are basically Imagist in their style.
An Imagist poem, by the very definition of the term, was brief. Seldom has the concision been carried so far as Pound's 1913 verse, “In a Station of the Metro,” which consists of only two lines. The poem appears to be a translation of some Japanese haiku, and while Pound was undoubtably influenced by that tradition, his poem was completely original.
He has left a deion of how he composed it. One evening, while coming out of the London subway (the “metro” of the title), Pound was struck by the sight of a beautiful face, then another and yet another. Seeking to express this experience, he began writing a poem which ran to thirty-two lines. After much paring and revision, he finally achieved the image and effect he sought: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ petals on a wet, black bough.”
Although at first reading the poem seems to be about very little (and even that little is mysterious), a second glance shows how well it fits into Pound's theory of imagism and just how Imagism works. To begin with, there is the single image, designed in this case to reproduce an experience not literally but emotionally and psychologically. Further, the image is presented in a specific literary form, the phor, recognized since ancient Greece as one of the most powerful devices of poetry. Aristotle, for example, termed the proper use of phor the supreme test of a writer. This use of phor is worth noting, because Pound is often considered a poet who rejected past conventions and techniques. Actually, he delighted in the poetic devices and scorned only their inferior use.
In keeping with Imagist theory, the words in the poem are, with one significant exception, concrete and specific: “faces,” “crowd,” “petals,” and “bough” are all common English nouns, strung together in conventional English syntax. The two adjectives, “wet” and “black,” are hardly unusual, and are just the sort of precise words to modify a noun such as “bough.” Moreover, the phor is logical: Beautiful faces seen against a rainy London evening are like flower petals on a dark, wet branch. Through a careful selection of relevant images, Pound has re-created for the reader the effect impressed upon him that night.
The one word that is not a concrete noun is “apparition,” and its unusual nature is highlighted by its placement at the beginning of the poem. By using this word, suggestive of ghostly sightings or supernatural experiences, and linking it with a string of commonplace nouns and modifiers, Pound is again re-creating what happened and what he experienced: a seemingly ordinary climb up a flight of subway stairs that turned into a vision.
In only two lines and fourteen words, Pound managed to re-create an entire experience by careful use of a specific image. A brief poem has been made to carry more emotional and psychological weight than Pound's contemporaries would have thought possible. His poetic successors would find the techniques used here essential in writing the poetry of the rest of the twentieth century.

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