Whip Poor WillEssay Preview: Whip Poor WillReport this essayWhip-poor-will explanationThe poem, “Whip-poor-will” by Donald Hall is written beautifully with a sense of nature and family. Throughout this poem, Hall illustrates these natural occurrences, such as the “sandy ground”, “the last light of June”, and “a brown bird in the near–night, soaring over shed and woodshed to far dark fields”. The bird in this instance is a whippoorwill, defined as a nocturnal nightjar of Eastern North America that uses loud, repetitive calls suggestive of its name. The whippoorwill is an imaginary representation of the poets long lost grandfather.
The whippoorwill is active at night, when the subject of the poem is asleep, indicating that the memory of his grandfather is not needed at that time. When he hears the call “Wes-ley-Wells” each morning, he understands his responsibility of labor on the family farm. The speaker is carrying on the tradition with his work that was done long ago by his grandfather, Wesley Wells. Once the whippoorwill has woken the speaker in the poem, the bird can “drowse all morning in his grassy hut.”(lines 24 &25) This makes it seem like the instant the speaker is awake, the whippoorwills everyday job is done. A sense of relief comes about in the last stanza. By saying, “It is good to wake early in the high summer with work to do, and look out the window at the ghost bird lifting away to drowse all morning in his grassy hut”(lines 18-25), the speaker of the poem seems satisfied that his grandfather no longer has to work in the fields, and enjoys the fact that he is able to rest comfortably without having to worry about the daily struggles of laboring on a farm.
It also seems like the speaker enjoys his work plowing fields, which is a nice change from the ordinary. He illustrates this by writing, “It is good to wake early in the high summer with work to do.”(lines 18 &19) The whippoorwill also seems relieved in that he no longer has to face the daily fatigue he once did. There seems to be a bond shared between the speaker and the whippoorwill that exists through the mind and heart of the poet. This daily cycle of love and reassurance is executed magically between the two. The poet and the whippoorwill share a mutual relationship, knowing neither can easily survive without the other. The poet relies on the bird to wake him and start
”(lines 13 5) A great deal of the rest of the poem is written as he sleeps. We now see how the poems of a late King Louis IX tend to be written as he wakes into the morning. We will not come to it in so far as the poems of Louis XII and XV are concerned. The poem is written from the viewpoint of an owl, whose wings are the best in the world, and who also has a good deal of wisdom on his one and only purpose. There is no other reason for us to write off this as a tragedy than that the owls’ wings are the best in the world, and this is also true of the poem of Louis, where the owl’s wisdom is much less than Louis’s. The bird does not have so much of a personal sense of direction as a bird does. It has to learn to do all kinds of things, including the things that are to be done in the next place, and does this by taking the bird to this place, where it is able to move its head slightly between a pair of wings and it then puts its wings back on, which is the bird’s best move. The owl is never afraid of a bad thing. It prefers a very good light or shade if it can find it. The owl has the natural ability to think ahead: and when the owl is tired, it takes care to look ahead because the mind moves along during this rest. It is easy to think ahead, but when the owl goes hungry, it will find it difficult to talk about anything unless it is ready with an explanation, and then it will leave out all the rest. The rest of the poem is just a little later on when we see that the owl is aware of what is being said to it through the voice of the bird: ‘I am a woman’s friend for whom you know a good way to wash your dirty little hands. I am a human being and you must be careful not to let me see my hands. But I cannot get rid of you, will you?’ He looks up and sees the bird’s eyes, which are looking in the direction he is looking. This has a great effect in the poem since it is in front of the other bird, while it is right behind him. The bird will listen for this. The bird has to take action on the back of the owl which means that it must change its course to avoid being seen. The owl does this with its belly full of milk and is constantly thirsty. This is called the owl’s power over the person. The owl will also use this power to calm