To His Love Poem Analysis

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“To His Love” By: Ivory Gurney In the poem “To His Love,” a soldier writes to notify a woman about the death of her love. The writer is an active soldier in World War I. He faces the challenge of covering up the gruesome death of his friend while attempting to console not only the soldier’s love but also himself. The soldier associates peaceful images with the death of his friend. The Soldier begins by notifying the girlfriend that her love has died and that all their plans have died as well. The Soldier repeats the assonance of the vowel “o” since it resembles a mournful and lamenting sound such as when he writes, “We’ll walk no more.” He attempts to bring himself to peace by describing their walks in “Cotswold,” and he uses the assonance …show more content…
These vulnerable sheep pay no attention to their surrounding because they have no predators or worries to be concerned about. Similarly, the soldier wants the reader to believe that the soldier lived peacefully with no fear of being attacked by the opponent. The description that the soldier uses when writing about nature provides consoling memories, in contrast to the terror that they experienced in war.
The peaceful mindset that the soldier writes in is quickly erased as he returns to describe the death of the soldier. He tries to convince the lover that it is best that she is not able to see the body, as it no longer is “quick” how she remembers it. The use of euphemism suggests that the soldier may have died in an explosion, and the body is no longer full of life, energy, and youth, which is often associated with being “quick.”
Once more, the soldier attempts to maintain a peaceful phase by talking about the Severn River “under the blue/ driving a small boat through.” However, the soldier has a challenging time to maintain serenity since the peaceful images resemble the death of the soldier. He uses the color blue to reference to nature and its coolness and slow movements. Similarly, the dead body that the soldier remembers is cold and has no movement like the water and the