1.) The man is lying on a hammock, in the summer, he is watching a butterfly that is sleeping on a bronze trunk, and is blowing back and forth because of the wind. The man can hear the cowbells on the cows down the ravine, and he can smell the horse droppings from last year. The horse droppings are also turning gold because it is extremely hot outside, and then the man sees a chicken hawk fly above him looking for his home, and then he says to himself that he has wasted his life.
2.) The person in that hammock has let time pass him by, he seems to be looking around taking everything around him in, and realizing that everything around him is changing, but he himself is letting life pass him by. There is a suggestion that he is an older man based on the fact that in the end he states that he has wasted his life, if he were young he would still have an opportunity to live his life.
3.)It wasn't until the final line that I actually discovered the regret of this person, when I first read the poem I thought that he was just very relaxed, and pleased with his surroundings, but then when I reread it with the last line i realized that he is watching time pass him by, and realizing that he was wasted his own life.
4.) The farm where he is lying in the hammock does not belong to him. It also tells us where the speaker lives, which is Pine Island, Minnesota.
5.) The speaker uses every sense besides taste to describe his surroundings, and most of his descriptions are dealing with time, and time passing by for example the cowbells following one another into the distance, the last years cow droppings blazing up into golden stones. It all centers around time passing and loneliness, which symbolize the mans live, meaning that he has let time pass him by, and by doing so he has wasted his life and he is most likely very lonely, and example of that is the empty house, and the chicken hawk looking for home.
6.) Some feelings that are conveyed in this poem are loneliness, and regret, I also got a sense of relaxation, and appreciation of this mans surroundings, but the main idea is that time has passed him by and he regrets that he has wasted life. And now all he seems to have left to do is lie in a hammock and watching everything else change around him.
Googie - I'm not sure the man lives on Pine Island or even Minnesota. I think that's the point. If he lived on Pine Island the title might be, "Resting in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm", but the addition of Pine Island, Minnesota is like sending a postcard - I'm here at Pine Island, Minnesota.
ReplyDeleteGood details on the other answers, but watch repetitions.