Analysis of Cold in the earth&quot Essay

The death of a loved one is sometimes traumatizing and shocking and it indeed takes time to enable us to heal, especially if the victim of death was a soul mate. In the poem ‘Cold In The Earth’, Emily Bronte addresses the aspect of death and love. The persona has lost the love of her life and is describing her never ending love for him despite the obvious separation between them. The eight quatrain poem is dominated by the permanence of death and the changes that are brought about by its occurrence. Cold In The Earth being a reference to the dead and buried. The repetition that is used in the poem, â€Å"Far, far† creates emphasis on the distance between the two lovers. The persona addresses him as â€Å"Only Love† in capital letters showing the respect and significance that he was in her life. The rhetorical questions that are asked bring out the personas uncertainty of his absence and devastation by his death as these are questions that generally cannot be answered. The poet was known to have used paracosm in her writing. Angora, a place that she mentions in the second stanza is perhaps a fantasy world that she created as an act to make herself feel better. Her thoughts were like a bird. They no longer fly. They land on the grave where they rested their wings. There is very intense language and imagery used at this point of the poem. Persona is saying that her thoughts always land at the grave. Birds are free and fly wherever they please but they choose to land at the grave. The grave of the man she will always love no matter how far apart the two lovers are. She refers to the deceased man as a noble heart showing us that this was indeed someone who was very precious to her. The love of her life has been gone for fifteen years by the third stanza. She has mourned and suffered immensely since his death. The brown hills being a metaphor to describe her perhaps immediately after the death as being alone and finished completely. Thus her never ending thoughts to commit suicide and end her life which she thought was pointless without her love. The hills have now faded away and look like they do in spring. Beautiful, colorful and alive. This shows that time indeed changes things but she will, despite the immense changes, never forget him. She remains faithful to him. The persona begins to ask for forgiveness. She feels that she has forgotten him due to the other never ending demands of her life. However, she assures him that although these demands can sometimes come in the way of her thoughts of him, they will never make her forget him. However far he is, she will always love and remember him. No other person has ever been so significant and important to her. Whether day or night, â€Å"No other Sun,† â€Å"No other Star†, He was a blessing to her. He is a blessing like no other. Every thought she had was of him. The fifth stanza is a constant reminder of her consistent love for him. It is a declaration that nothing in the universe can overcome her love for him. But the persona continues with a completely different perspective than that from the beginning of the poem. She accepts that life must go on with time. It does not necessarily have to be an ecstatic joyful life, but instead one where she has not given up all hope. The last stanzas are a final declaration of how she feels about the death, her love for him and the intense changes that she has gone through over time. She has grown out of the thoughts of suicide she had had before and realized that it was his death and not hers. She must wait for her turn and quickly refuses the thoughts of her dying. She realizes that this was not her grave. Oxymoron is used in the final stanza. ‘Rapture and pain,’ ‘divinest anguish’ being two entirely feelings, the purpose is perhaps a description to show that the excellence of time and the misery of it have finally come together. Her anguish could only be taken away by divine power. We are able to see love, loss, sadness, time and a declaration that life must go on. The nostalgic mood brought about by the persona deeply yearning for something she cannot have, her lover.