Analysis Rising Five By Norman Nicholson

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George Ingram                                                                                              22/12/04                                                                                                                  

Analysis Rising Five By Norman Nicholson

Rising Five by Norman Nicholson starts as a simple poem which becomes a lot deeper and more complicated. It begins with the innocent remark of a four year old to the poet. This comment about the boy’s age makes the poet think about how everyone contemplates their future.

The first verse describes an emphatic four year old boy who is indignant because someone called him four. He sees things differently, “I’m rising five’, he said, ‘not four”. He has a chubby face with fat ‘toffee-buckled cheeks’ and ‘little coils of hair un-clicked themselves upon his head’ giving the impression of him stamping his foot and tossing his head. He is cross because he has been called four when he believes he can sound more important by being called ‘rising five’. This is where the word ‘rising’ from the title begins to repeat at the end of every verse. This theme carries on through the poem although it becomes more complicated. The comment is an innocent one typical of all young children but it makes the poet think about how it is not only young children who jump ahead but also older people in all stages of their lives that do this. The boy is in the earliest stage of his life which is the bud of his life.

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Verse two describes where the man and boy are standing in a field during late spring. It is an imaginative verse about the energetic speed of the vegetation’s growth crammed into a couple of months as ‘the cells of spring bubbled and doubled’. Around them, everything is bursting with fresh vigorous life, buds spread open their leaves and petals, crinkly and immature as each ‘shoot and stem shook out the creases from their frills’. Everything is lush. Every tree is ‘swilled with green’ as they swirl and move around in the wind. This is like sea weed swaying under the ...

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