Isfahan Carpet

The transition into the third stanza keeps you in a sorrowful mood with each line beginning with “one hundred” where Elizabeth Burge was describing the tragic effect on the physical health of these child laborers in “one hundred beats of a young girl growing” just so in “one hundred hours the space of a foot will crush down” on the carpet. The fourth stanza the poet wonders how this beauty of a carpet and the way it is made. The fifth and last stanza is when the outsider sympathizes with the girl and how she looks back at her with “her large eyes…speaking darkness” of her despairing life.

The length of the five stanzas varies according to the shift in mood and description. The longer the stanzas the more descriptive they are giving the poem a more complex exquisite mood of the woven carpets that are being displayed. The shorter stanzas tend to wrap up the hardships of the young girls sowing.

Initially the poem has a mood of sorrow and desperation.  This does not change throughout the poem as it becomes more evident throughout it of the life these girls are living in and the “the large eyes that look back with a speaking darkness”.

Imagery is filled throughout this poem. In the opening stanza, images such as “blackened pots and jars” and a “flickering fire” can only begin to give the audience the surroundings of the Persian family. This is where they probably live, work and maybe what even gives meaning to their life. As we move on through the poem, more detailed images of the girls working begin to surface, “their unsupported bird-bones, bent like old woman” can then we can only begin to imagine how they are living and the minimal resources they have. However in the end they make such beautiful “colored wool” into indescribable handmade carpet made by their little fingers. The conclusion gives more concise imagery such as “eyes whose whole horizon is the carpet” once again stating that these girls probably do not have a real life outside the world of weaving beautiful carpets. The poem ends with the image of the outsider trying to feel what this girl has been through from the speaking darkness coming from her eyes.

The language used in the poem is supportive of everything written in it. The description of the working conditions of the family is described well with the beginning word “rough”. Words such as “silent”, “sallow” and “dark-eyed” also is well written in imagining the Persian family, especially when around customers or tour guides watching over them.

I believe that the central theme in this passage is related to poverty and child labor not only in Persia but throughout the world. From the poem, one can see the life these children are living and how most of us don’t think about how things are done, but how they can make us happy. It makes you begin to think about very poor countries around the world and the hardships its people, not only children, are going through in order to make a life for them.

The poem Ispahan Carpet by Elizabeth Burge is perfectly detailed in allowing the readers to imagine the hardships going on in Persia and around the world. It makes the audience stop for a minute and think about all those people that are living a tough life whether they are forced too or whether it is the only way. It also makes us thankful for what we have and to be helpful to those who need it.