The DoveClass X English Poem

Summary• The poet had a dove. He loved it immensely. It died. He thinks

it died of grief.

• The poet is shocked by the bird’s death. He had tied the dove’s feet with a thread he had woven. He had given it his company and love.

• The bird had lived alone but ‘sweetly’ in the forest.

• The poet had given the dove kisses and white peas to express his love.

• He cannot understand why the dove did not like living with him. He cannot understand its grief.

What Is The Poem About?Love and loss

• It is a poem about love and loss.

• The poet loves the dove but it dies.

Understanding and freedom

• The poem is also about understanding and freedom.

• The poet did not understand the dove’s yearning to live on a tree. He tied its feet and kept it captive.

• He gave the bird kisses and peas, but that is not what the bird wanted.

The Dove: Free and Captive

Figures of Speech UsedAlliteration• Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the

table - from The Death of the Hired Man by Robert Frost

• For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky - from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, S.T. Coleridge

Synecdoche• Friends, Romans, countrymen: lend me your

ears.• Give us this day our daily bread.

Irony• Keats lavishes attention on the dove but his

possessiveness destroys the dove. Instead of thriving, it dies

• Alliteration occurs when a series of words in a row (or close to a row) have the same first consonant sound.

• Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a term for a part of something is used to refer to the whole of something, or vice-versa.

• Irony is when one outcome is expected, but the opposite occurs, usually with a coincidental twist of events.

Structure of the Poem

• The poem is presented as a single, unbroken stanza. Keats employs an alternate rhyme scheme for the first eight lines of the poem, and then ends with a heroic couplet.

• The rhyme scheme, A-B-A-B-C-C-D-D-E-E is like that of a sonnet.

• The first four lines are addressed to the reader.

• The remaining six lines comprise four questions addressed to the dove.Form and Content

Preliminary activity• What imagery does the poet use in the poem?.

• What colors does the poet employ? What do they symbolize?.

• What did the dove want?.

• What does the poet want from the dove?

• Plot the rhyme scheme in the poem.

Points to Ponder• According to Keats, the bird died of

grief. It mourned the freedom it had lost.

• The poet thinks he had looked after the bird well. He lavished kisses on it, and gave it peas to eat. It also had his company.

• The poet was sad at the death of the dove because he had loved it. He could not understand why the dove did not appreciate the advantages of the life it gave him. He cannot understand why it missed its former life.

• The bird was tied with a single thread, and that too, woven by the poet. He expected the dove to see the thread as an expression of his love. He thinks that compensates for its lack of freedom.

• The dove may not have lived alone in the forest. Birds live in flocks.