A Wider View

• A Wider View

  1. Last line of second stanza: claustrophobic, oppressive environment in industrial Leeds 
  2. Evokes contemporary perspective: speaker can have 'a wider view' of hindsight/peer into the past
• 'my great-great-grandad searched for spaces / in the smoke-filled sky to stack his dreams'


  'great-great-grandad' - Implied 1st generation immigrant, sibilance

  'smoke-filled sky' - Industrial pollution / occluded; couldn't achieve dreams / pathetic fallacy
• 'In eighteen sixty-nine, eyes dry with dust / from twelve hours combing flax..'


  'eyes dry with dust' implies industrial workplace/effect of pollution

  Suggests endurance and arduousness of working life
• 'he craved the comfort of a wider view.'

  Desperate to see more of life than what he is limited to in Leeds, highlights claustrophobic atmosphere
• 'drew his sights beyond the limits of his working life / drowned the din of engines, looms and shuttles'


  Architecture provides him with something to connect to and find peace from overwhelming industry.

  'engines, looms and shuttles' - Cacophony of sound and machinery
• 'the red-brick vaults / being to moan as time, collapsing in the River Aire'


  Ancestry is not bound by time, architecture/heritage sites helps them to connect

  Personification to allow audience understand the connection to objects
• 'We stand now, timeless in the flux of time'


  Change of pronouns: Brings them together to unity

  Metaphysics: Not bound by time, ancestry is powerful
• 'while the curve of past and future generations / arcs between us'


  Timeless imagery and metaphor, no matter how far apart they will always be connected as they view and admire the same heritage sites/architecture that brings them together
• Each stanza with five lines except fourth stanza: Temporal axis, shift in time (past - present - outside time) and connection

  Unrhymed free verse: Not bounded by rules (of time)
• Themes:

  Nature, connection, heritage, metaphysics, oppression, industrialisation, metaphysics