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The fifth of Morgan’s poems that we are going to investigate is the poem ‘Winter’.

In ‘Winter’, Edwin Morgan writes about death and the relentless passing of time. Winter borrows words and ideas from Tennyson’s poem Tithonus. In Tithonus, the title character, a Trojan, is granted immortality but does not ask for eternal youth. As a consequence, he is doomed to age and wither, but never die.

In this poem, the speaker uses the past tense to reflect on time and mortality. Although there is only one stanza, a natural break occurs between lines ten and eleven. In the first ten lines, the speaker establishes the setting and sorrowful mood of the poem. He considers the passing of the seasons on the pond and, through his word choice and imagery, reveals death as the central concern of the poem

In the latter section of the poem, he focuses on one particularly vivid memory to reflect on the contradiction that although death is the one certainty in life, it remains an impossible thing for us to understand. The word choice and imagery are powerful and create a bleak sombre mood, while repetition and enjambment emphasise the cyclical nature of the passing of time.

In the latter section of the poem, he focuses on one particularly vivid memory to reflect on the contradiction that although death is the one certainty in life, it remains an impossible thing for us to understand. The word choice and imagery are powerful and create a bleak sombre mood, while repetition and enjambment emphasise the cyclical nature of the passing of time.

A key element of the poem is understanding winter and its place in the passing of the seasons.

Each of the seasons can be seen as a symbol of a stage of life.

Spring: Childhood and adolescenceSummer: Adulthood (your prime)Autumn: The beginning of the ageing processWinter: The final years and death.

We will now read through the poem together before considering its meaning.

If you spot any techniques then feel free to annotate them on your poem.

Consider the following•Word Choice•Imagery•Tone•Alliteration•Repetition•Rhyme

The year goes, the woods decay, and after, many a summer dies. The swan on Bingham’s pond, a ghost, comes and goes.

The poem opens with a direct reference to the passage of time. The suggestion that the year ‘goes’ highlights how quickly time can slip past us.

The poet refers to the end of summer and the beginning of winter. The use of the word ‘dies’ is important as it emphasises the suddenness and the shock of winter as it destroys the warmth of summer. The idea of death can also be seen in the word ‘decay’.

It goes, and ice appears, it holds, bears gulls that stand around surprised, blinking in the heavy light, bears boys when skates take over swan-tracks gone.

The appearance of the ice on the lake marks the arrival of winter. The use of the word ‘appears’ once again emphasises how quickly the season of winter can take hold. This is also seen in the word ‘surprised’

The reference to the ‘heavy light’ may be a reference to the lowering of the sun in the winter and the bright light that comes with it. It is a light that illuminates but brings no warmth. The writer states that the swans have had to make way for skaters on the now frozen lake.

After many summer dyes, the swan-white ice glints only crystal beyond white. Even dearest blue’s not there, though poets would find it.

Here Morgan uses beautiful imagery to compare the scene of the lake to that of a bright and colourful picture that has been drained of all colour by the arrival of winter. The luscious greens and blues of the sunny seasons have been replaced only by white and crystal. It has been drained of life

The poet notices that the colour has been drained from the scene to such an extent that even blue is now absent, although he does admit that the beauty of the scene could be found by poets. This suggests that even in the bleakest of days, the beauty of nature can be found if we let our minds find it.

I find one stark scene cut by evening cries, by warring air. The muffled hiss of blades escapes into breath, hangs with it a moment, fades off.

Morgan’s word choice here indicates quite a strong change of tone. ‘Stark’ and ‘warring’ indicate a harshness to the scene that the blank white canvas appears to have concealed.

The word ‘hiss’ also conceals somewhat sinister undertones, while the description of the breath hanging in the air is one that is often associated with winter. Words such as fades indicate once again that things naturally decay and wither over time.

Fades off, goes, the scene, the voices fade, the line of trees, the woods that fall, decay and break, the dark comes down, the shouts run off into it and disappear.

Morgan repeats the word ‘fades’ and uses the word ‘decay’ to indicate that at the end of our lives we begin to fade and fail.

The observation of the dark falling symbolise death and the disappearance from one world into the next. There is a sense that our voices are lost in the darkness. Death appears to silence us. It is in many ways a very gloomy view of death.

At last the lamps go too, when fog drives monstrous down the dual carriageway out to the west, and even in my room

With the boys, the swan and the gulls gone, there is now no life left in the poem. The fact that the lights go out too suggests that even human might cannot match the winter…meaning we will never overcome death.

Light, which is generally a metaphor for something positive and full of life has been replaced by a ‘monstrous’ fog which is sucking out all life and light.

The poet seems alone and isolated here in his room, unable to understand the things that he is witnessing.

and on this paper I do not know about that grey dead pane of ice that sees nothing and that nothing sees.

The poet feels a failure as he should be able express himself on paper. He more than anyone should have the words to explain the nature of death…but he cannot.

This suggests the loneliness of death. Nobody can see the suffering, nobody can see the fear. There is a sense of the nothingness of death as seen in the repetition of that word. Morgan makes no grand claims of an afterlife or of another world. The poem is bleak. The language is grey and empty. The winter of our lives is a lonely and isolated place.

ThemesThe main themes of the poem are the passage of time and death. Through the description of the progress of a day, Morgan’s speaker shows how vitality fades and, as a conclusion, disappears completely. Though the language he employs is engaging, the dark nature of this message sticks in the reader’s mind.Tennyson’s poem was a tale of suffering and lamentation and with such close links to his work, Morgan’s poem possesses a similarly despairing, bleak and nihilistic quality. As time passes, a person becomes more aware of his or her distance from youthful promise and possibility.

What we also understand is the speaker’s recognition of the inevitability of death. The metaphor of the pond as life is particularly effective as we see that, with the passing seasons, all things change and are part of a natural process.If spring represents fertility and vitality, winter comes as the natural conclusion to the cycle. Though Morgan’s language provides an eloquent examination of a dark idea, his skill also leaves a haunting image in the reader’s mind.