To His Love
He's gone, and all our plans
Are useless indeed.
We'll walk no more on Cotswold
Where the sheep feed
Quietly and take no heed.
His body that was so quick
Is not as you
Knew it, on Severn river
Under the blue
Driving our small boat through.
You would not know him now ...
But still he died
Nobly, so cover him over
With violets of pride
Purple from Severn side.
Cover him, cover him soon!
And with thick-set
Masses of memoried flowers—
Hide that red wet
Thing I must somehow forget.
Ivor Gurney's elegy contains the traditional phases seen in an elegy: lament, praise, and consolation. Gurney's initial realization that his love was gone lead him to see his future as changed. The narrator was planning to spend his entire life with his love, but his future was taken from him by death. The first stanza focuses on the grief side of an elegy; the author broken by what he does not have anymore. There is a blatant change in attitude in the second stanza. Gurney praises,gloates even, his love's physique. The author is also proud of his love's courage in the face of death. But the second and third stanzas aren't entirely made up of pride. The author alludes to the Severn river twice, which most likely ties his death to the river. The last stanza detailes the funeral as some sort of a consolation, but the entire stanza is anything but. The "red wet," being blood, is something that will be hard for the poet to get over. He recognizes this, and his consolatory ending gives him a sort of goal for his broken future; to somehow forget.
I also did the same poem to analyze, how cool! I researched the background store a little bit, and found that the narrator is actually a soldier writing to the wife of a fellow soldier who died. I find it interesting how the narrator avoids the gory details to spare the wife's feelings. This poem is definitely an elegy, I agree. In my opinion, the strongest element is lament.
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