The 2nd verse tells us that something appals the speaker. He says that it isn’t the darkness around him, which seems to fill his mouth and that it isn’t the tree that the rain drips off. I think the tree is symbolism, because the speaker says, “of rain like blood form that one tree, weather tortured.” I think he is really describing Evans appearance.
The speaker says that it’s the veins of Evans. He sees darkness in them, and that it is “silting” them. Silt is the thick sandy substance at the bottom of rivers. I think it means that the darkness is trapped in Evans’ veins and that it is slowly killing him. The writer says, “I left stranded upon the vast and lonely shore of his bleak bed.” The writer believes that he has failed is his job, which is to comfort the sick if they are going to die. The writer feels that he is inadequate and that he hasn’t done what he wanted to. Again we see another dreary adjective attached to one of Evans possessions, his bleak bed. The word lonely is used again here. The writer wants to get the point across that Evans has no one, no family or friends to comfort him, that is why the writer feels so bad that he cant do this for him.
This poem is about the bad way to die, all on your own and no one to comfort you. The next poem, Death in Leamington, is about the other way to pass on.
Death in Leamington was written by Sir John Betjeman. Poets of his day liked to write poems making fun of the middle class people.
The first verse tells us that someone has died, and that it is a woman. It has happened in the late evening. She has died in her bedroom. The room has a plate glass window, which means this place wherever she was staying must has been pretty well off.
The second verse gives us a little more insight to the woman. She owned a crochet, which means she must have been quite old. It lay beside her bed, which means she can’t have been too old because she was still able to walk. Again the writer tells us that she is dead.
Next the nurse has come in with tea for the woman. This tells us that she was in some kind of old peoples home. The writer says, “But nurse was alone with her own little soul, and the things were alone with theirs.” This means that she wasn’t really paying that much attention to the woman, she was in her own little world, probably only worried about doing her job properly, not caring about how the woman is.
The nurse closes the window, and unrolls the blinds, lights the mantle and puts coal on the fire, still having not looked at the woman yet.
The nurse says to the woman that tea is ready, and tells her to wake up. The writer says, “Oh chintzy, chintzy cheeriness, half dead and half alive.” She said those things in a halfhearted manner, not really meaning them at all, just doing her job like she usually does. We find out that it is nearly five o’clock. The old lady probably has not been checked up on since lunch time, shows how much this nurse cares.
In the next verse, we find out more about how done up this home is. It has yellow Italianate arches; these are an expensive piece of a house. The old woman’s children have probably paid for her to stay here because they know that she will die some time soon.
The nurse now actually checks to see if the woman is all right. The writer says, “At the grey, decaying face,” he is exaggerating a bit in how dead she looks, he is trying to emphasise the fact that she has been dead a while, and that the nurses are uncaring.
The nurse then moves the bottles, probably from medicine, and leaves the room. She shows some bit of respect by tiptoeing over the hall. She turns down the heat. She doesn’t seem to have shouted to anyone that the woman is dead; this nurse doesn’t really care at all.
This poem is about dying in comfort, which the woman did. Except that none of her family were there for her. This is the same as in Evans except he was dying in really bad surroundings. They both died with no one there for them. The other people in each poem are very different, because in Evans the clergyman actually cares a lot about this man, we know this when we find out he feels inadequate, but the nurse the Death in Leamington does not care one bit about the old lady, she is just there to do her job. But then again, this could be seen as a comparison as well, because both people are trying to do their job.
