ARTS1031 Early Modern to Modern

Close Reading Exercise Works:

Katherine Philips, On the Death of My First and Dearest Child, Hector Philips Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, (2006), Eds, Julia Reidhead, W.W. Norton & Company: USA

Philips poem consists of four carefully constructed stanzas that adhere to a trochaic pentameter except in lines 15 and 17. Each verse consists of four lines where the alternating lines rhyme. Philips uses various figures including anastrophe and apostrophe as well as tropes such as synecdoche and metaphor. The tone of the poem changes through each stanza as if representing stages of Philips grief. The address is initially aimed at the reader but from the third stanza, addresses Philips son.

Addressing the reader in the first stanza, Philips lets us know that she was married for almost seven years when she gave birth to a lovely boy who died not long after. With additional information about Philips personal life, as according to The Norton Anthology of English Literature (2006), we know Philips married at 17 in 1648, giving birth to her son in April, 1655, in other words eighty months or Twice forty months after her wedding as written in line 1. Philips structure of this line is also of particular interest as she utilises both brachlyogia and anastrophe. She does this, to make apparent, succinctly, how long she had been waiting for this child but also to ensure that the meter of the poem is consistent. Philips also utilised tropes in order to ensure that the alternating rhyme in each stanza would work, i.e. stay/away in lines 1 and 3. Line 2 reveals Philips royalist inclinations (ibid, p. 1690) when she chooses to describe her marriage having been crowned with the birth of her son. There also seems to be a biblical or religious undertone in her use of crowned, as if Philips saw the birth of her son as a blessing. This may be due to her presbyterian upbringing (ibid, p. 1690).

In line 3 it is metaphorically revealed that her son died. Her use of metaphor may not just be a stylistic choice but again to ensure that the poems structure was consistent. It is also possible that Philips herself, at this point in the poem or stage of grieving, wasnt quite ready to accept that her baby had died ten days after being born (ibid, p. 1695). The Norton Anthology, however, believes that changing ten days to forty is clearly for the parallelism (ibid, p. 1695) but I think Philips is also trying to say just how brief the life of her son was. That after Twice forty months of marriage, her long awaited and much loved child dropped away in forty days, not even forty days. For Philips, or for any parent, this is a tragic loss and as described in line 4, a cruel and sudden end to human joy, to motherhood. The second stanza addresses the suddenness of Hectors passing. Philips, as in line 3, is not quite ready to address the death of her baby but instead describes him as having disappeared or as the rosebud which fell away upon her touch (line 6). She uses her repetition of I did but (anaphora) in lines 5 and 6 to indicate just how little contact and time she had with her son. Line 7, suggests that Philips fully expected her baby to live. This makes me wonder whether Hector had been born healthy but died suddenly from sudden infant death syndrome or another similarly inexplicable cause. In line 8 Philips laments, metaphorically, the susceptibility of mortals to their pain, their death. Philips could be talking about her pain but also her sons death. This line, an anastrophe, could suggest the lack of control we have in life while also ensuring the form of the poem. In the first line of the third stanza (line 9), Philips addresses her dead son (apostrophe) uses synecdoche and refers to her trembling heart but meaning her entire person. Lines 9 and 10 form a rhetorical question, where Philips asks her dead son what she can do to fix their lives, to bring him back to life. In line 11, Philips decides to use her grief to drive her creativity. Philips could be referring to this poem but in line 12, I think she also sees her tears, her sorrow and her piercing groans as a form of elegy. In addressing her son, Philips does not feel the need to withhold the physicality of her grief and as such, I think she is being

poetically literal. It is clear that these words are private and just for Philips son and is quite different to the first two stanzas which are addressed to the reader. Philips begins the fourth stanza with synecdoche. In line 13 her use of no eye means no one and when she refers to her moan, she means this both literally, as the physical sounds she makes when crying, and metaphorically, her grieving as a whole which has remained unobserved. In line 14, Philips directly addresses her son (apostrophe), the boy too dear to live, the child too valued, too loved, too precious to have lived. Line 15 also seems to have nine syllables as opposed to the usual ten. However, upon listening to various readings of the poem, I have determined that the tenth syllable may be added to unconcerned with pronounced emphasis on the ed, i.e. unconcerned. Lines 15 and 16, metaphorically, refers to the oblivious world, the people around Philips, who do not care as she does. Philips envisages no reprieve from this grief, even if it were offered. In the final stanza, Philips unhappily accepts that her son is dead. Line 17, like line 1 is an anastrophe, where the words are placed out of order, again this is probably to maintain the form of the poem. However if that were simply the case, I think Philips would also ensure this line also had the same number of syllables. Instead line 17 has eleven, not ten syllables. Perhaps this first line is meant to be an allusion to the first stanza but subtly emphasising the changes in Philips since that initial grief. It also differs from the first stanza and indeed the other stanzas, in that Philips, for the first time addresses the corpse of her child, his sad tomb, where he doesnt drop away, fall or disappear. Like line 17, lines 18 and 19 both have metaphorical reference to Philips sons premature death. Additionally, the gasping numbers in line 19 while referring to the whole poem itself, also refers to the numbers mentioned in the first stanza. The gasping difference in numbers between the Twice forty month wait and forty days in which Philips son dropped away. And finally, line 20 addresses, not as The Norton Anthology suggests, the last of Philips verses or poems in general (ibid, p. 1695) but the last of her unhappy verse on the subject of her son. This last line is a culmination of the

Philips progression through her grief. It begins with Philips being robbed, cheated in the first stanza, the second has a sense of disbelief, the third where the pain of her sons death seems to engulf her and the fourth in which Philips grief is detached from and uncaring of those around her. In comparison, the final stanza seems calmer. Philips ends by addressing him directly describes herself as her sons mother, changing the position of the poem that up until now had been about a mother who lost her child so that in the last line the child, even in death, still has a mother.