“Ypres” is a poem by Laurence Binyon(1869-1943), he was a prolific English poet and scholar of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose career spanned 50 years. During this time, he authored numerous poetry collections and plays, two historical biographies, and several art history volumes, including books on the works of Asian artists, English watercolorists, and William Blake’s drawings and engravings. The poem use personification to connect the whole poem, it also used metaphor to make it more a more strong poem. the poem uses ABBA rhyme scheme and gets messed up in the later poem.
The personification in these poem makes the poem more interesting , it said “she was a city of patience; of proud name”, this line make the city into a woman, making the reader feel more emotional and more empathetic when the city is been destroyed.
The third, forth, fifth line works together to describe the suddenness of the attack, “tigerishly pouncing” is a metaphor of the enemies near the city, because, tigers often wait for there chance to attack, and when they found the chance, the suddenly attack and that first one is very strong, so that is what the enemies did, also, the word “acquiescence” describe the relax of the city government to the enemies, just like humans attitudes to swamps and mosses in the countryside, they don’t think the swamps will do any harm, so they just leave it there and didn’t even care about it, but Germany soldiers is different, they attck immediately with no foreshadowing, thats why it’s so sudden to the citizens and the soldiers of Ypres because they don’t even care about the Germany soldiers.(Maybe the only harm the swamp does is bring more mosquitoes?)
In the sixth line, it used words like “showered” “toss” to expresses the huge amount of numbers of canon balls and explosives, and also toss make the weapons more extreme and add them a little evil characteristic.
In the eighth line, it says “she rose, dead, into never dying fame”the fame represents war memories and first gas war of Germany.
“the myriads of brave” in the tenth line symbolize soldiers, the “Desolately glorified” use two opposite word to express a strong conflict the new Ypres is, the ancient buildings are gone forever, and the city is just a none-spirit ruin with some modern buildings decorated, the author want to express the pity and feeling sorry for the old lively and agile city thats been destroyed, it also express the hate and shame of wars.
In the twelfth line it said “she moon like, draws her own far moving tide”this is a dramatic expression of the citizens leaving from the city and back to the city because of war, which could make us see the impact of the war more clear and could better feel the merciless and brutal of war.
if you want to gave this analysis a score, please leave it in the comments!(ignore most of the author description because I copy paste most of them)
When it says “she was a city of patience” my interpretation is that nothing had happened there for a long time. The word “neglecting” seems to support this idea. And as eggman said, “tigerishly” could only mean that what happened was very unexpected.the next bit seems to be talking about the city’s legacy.
The overall meaning of this poem seems to be saying that this old city was damaged, presumably in the war because we’re learning about war poems. Then it says we won’t forget the city basically.
I don’t think this analysis was too great but I can’t think of much else at the moment.
👍 Clear summary of the general meanings, but do you have any technical vocabulary to throw into your analysis so you can suggest how they contribute to your interpretation?
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Here’s the link to the poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57262/ypres
Yeah! Good idea to consolidate what we talked about in class.
A few points:
“this line make the city into a woman, making it more emotional and more empathetic when it is been destroyed” This would be better expressed without ‘it’ as it is the reader who feels more emotionally engaged and empathetic. “this line make the city into a woman, making the reader feel more emotional and more empathetic when it has been destroyed”
This is a bit confusing: ” just like humans attitudes to swamps and mosses in the countryside.”
“toss” also makes it seem almost casual. We usually use ‘toss’ for tossing a coin or tossing rubbish in the bin. Perhaps we’d expect a more formal or serious verb to describe releasing bombs.
Thanks for more points! Edited it!👍👍👍👍👍
Also, notice what is being tossed in the poem: “Her ancient towers”. So here ‘toss’ suggests that there’s a casual attitude to the destruction of the old city on the side of the aggressor.
This reminds me of a Frank Zappa song ‘Dumb All Over’ in which he states that the bombers ‘poof them out of existence while leaving their real estate just where we need it to use again…’ It’s the exact opposite of what is described in ‘Ypres’.