Dave Macniece's Spring Poem Analysis

By 4:14 in the afternoon it just hadn’t made a single sound. Despite my gentle coaxing and attention, I knew with futility that it would only listen when someone other than I called it’s name. It had been teeming with life this morning – I remember distinctly holding it in my hand and hearing it sing with life at the very crack of dawn – but, as expected, it was starting to die down. With it’s demure size one would think that it wouldn’t be such a hungry little thing, but with all it chirped and chattered it wasn’t too surprising. Often it would blink and show off it’s colored feathers, so to speak, but it only did so when it heard another one of it’s kind calling its name.

Gently curved at its edges, almost cradled in the palm of my hand,

Dave Smith’s “Spring Poem” paints an interesting version of a spring day but does not feel entirely conclusive. It meanders, and like the heat it tries to capture, flares out quickly in its tedium. “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” does come to close to completing it’s message, but begs for some sort of expansion. The language is grandiose and heavenly – “Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,/ Enwrought with golden and silver light,/ The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light,/” (1-4) – but limits itself and it’s potential for expression by ending a mere 4 lines later. In this sense, MacNiece’s, “The Brandy Glass” most accurately captures what it sets out to do – to capture a man’s regrets and give a simple glimpse at his

It wasn’t a simple, silent grumble or occasional rude comment – it was the sporadic, caustic murmur of disapproval that became ever more a nuisance as time went by. While the library itself was fairly new, stocked with all manner of texts, his particular poison - the angry and rather depressive McCarthies, and a certain bent toward the nihilist writers of the 21st century – were surprisingly and annoyingly, missing.

It hadn’t been the first time he’d found himself disappointed in the world around him. How often had his expectations, his dreams and aspirations, been shut down by the realities of a living world? It’s why he preferred to read those who admitted the world was a meaningless place than to placate himself with uplifting falsehoods and half-truths.

Well, ultimately it didn’t matter. He could whine and groan as much as he wanted, but doubted anything good would come from it. The library would not suddenly find itself stocked with his favorites, nor would any of the librarians give his grumble any more than a moment’s