Below is the first 4 lines of 'A Birthday' by the
nineteenth century pre-Raphaelite poet, Christina Rossetti. You should
work out what makes the lines parallel and what the meaning and effects
associated with it are. Then you can compare your comments with ours before
moving on to the next part of the poem.
The first two lines and the second two lines contain two grammatically
parallel main clauses which repeat 'My heart is' and are completed by
a comparative structure beginning with 'like'. The head of the noun
phrase within this comparative structure refers to a natural object
('bird', 'apple-tree') and is postmodified by a relative clause suggesting
happy conditions (the bird's nest is in a good place, the apple tree
is loaded with fruit) . Given that the poem's title is 'A Birthday'
we can infer that the persona is very happy on her birthday. The ABCB
rhyme scheme helps to tie the parallelistic couplets together, reinforcing
the effects of the grammatical parallelism.
show next two lines
These two lines parallel the first two and the second two. 'My heart
is like' is repeated at the beginning of the clause and the natural
object is again postmodified by a relative clause indicating all is
well with its world ('halcyon' means calm, peaceful). Yet more indications
of birthday happiness, then.
show next two lines
These are the last two lines of the poem. The parallelistic pattern
established in the first six lines of the poem s partly continued but
partly broken here, leading to an effect of internal deviation and so
an interpretative expectation of meaning change. The subject and verb
'My heart is' are repeated and the complement of the verb is also a
comparative structure. But it does not involve 'like' and it only extends
to the end of the first of the two lines. The first of the two lines
tells us that the persona's heart is, in fact, in an even more happy
condition than all three natural things it has been compared with so
far. And the final line of the poem, which is outside the established
parallelistic structure of the first seven lines gives the extra reason
for this: it is not just that it is her birthday - the person she has
loved has come to her as well.
We can also see that the ABCB rhyme scheme of the first four lines
is repeated in the last four lines of the poem. This means that the
introduction of the arrival of the loved one is connected by rhyme parallelism
to the 'halcyon sea' line.
Like the first stanza of Donne 'The Indifferent' this poem is carefully
constructed in terms of its parallelism. But for our money, although
it is not from one of his very best poems, Donne's first stanza of 'The
Indifferent' is much more interesting than Rossetti's poem. Donne's
parallelisms lead to more complex effects and the ideas being explored
are more challenging philosophically. Rossetti's poem, though well-constructed,
merely reinforces commonly-held views in a conventional way. People
are usually happy on their birthday, happiness often conventionally
involves comparisons with 'happy nature' and it is usually the case
that when your loved one turns up you will be even happier than before,
even on your birthday. Because of its sentimentality you can imagine
the Rossetti poem in a birthday card found in a 'For Your Love' subsection
of the 'Birthday Card' section of a card shop. Donne's lines would sell
rather less well, we suspect!
A Note on Evaluation
The comments above clearly indicate that we prefer Donne's lines to
Rossetti's, even though they have a similar 'parallelism + internal
deviation' construction. You need to make up your own mind, of course.
But you also need to be clear about your reasons (as we have tried to
be). Whatever your views on this particular matter, it is worth noting
from the above that you can't conclude that the more foregrounding there
is the better a poem will be or that similar poetic structures lead
to similar evaluations. Value judgements have to occur after complete
understanding of a text, including the relationship between form and
content in it, as well as other matters to do with aesthetic taste.
Stylistic analysis, then, can help us to understand how texts come to
be understood in the ways that they do. But you cannot go straight from
such analysis to evaluation - although the detailed treatment of a text
which stylistic analysis provides can often help you be clearer about
why, and how, you come to a particular judgement.
