As imperceptibly as Grief

• "As imperceptibly as grief"


  Gently reminds the reader that life is fleeting
• The poem suggests

  1. Time gradually brings all life to an end

  2. In a way similar to the turning of summer into autumn
• The subtle shift of the seasons


  Happens incrementally but definitively
• Life often passes by

  With the same "imperceptibility" as the seasons
• People should

  • Take notice of the beauty that is in front of them every day
  • Pay close attention to both the majesty and the grief that every moment contains
• The poem uses the fading of summer


  To illustrate its point that life is fleeting and, in light of inevitable death, already contains a sense of loss
• There are transitions between these seasons just as there are between stages of an individual's life
• Summer is usually associated with

  Sunshine, growth, maturity and warmth
• The certainties of life will fade away too

  Everything that gives an individual's life its meaning is made fleeting by the irreversible passage of time
• The comparison with "grief"


  Makes it clear the poem is principally concerned with the way humans perceive their lives
• The time-based trajectory towards death is subtle - people tend not to think about it
• Everything described in the poem happens gradually

  1. The "quietness" grows purer

  2. The long days of summer get shorter bit by bit

  3. Summer makes "her light escape"
• People, too, draw gradually closer to death

  Everything must pass
• The poem doesn't present death as something to be feared

  But instead emphasizes the beauty contained in the fact that nothing lasts forever
• The speaker doesn't exactly grieve the end of summer

  But rather imagines it escaping "into the beautiful" (as autumn takes over)
• Just as people go from nothingness to existence and back to nothingness again, the summer goes through its natural cycles
• This cycle of life and death happens too slowly

  "to seem like perfidy" - these transitions are just the way of the world, and it's no use projecting an idea of deception or malice onto them
• Stanzas 2 and 3 associate the summer with purity, contemplation and light, while the final stanza links it with freedom and beauty
• Taken as a wider point, life is beautiful because it cannot last

  If it did last forever, people might take it for granted
• The poem gently nudges its reader to appreciate life while it's still there
• "As imperceptibly as grief"


  Presents its reader with a gentle but unflinching perspective on life, and how life's fleeting nature links it with loss from the very beginning
• As Imperceptibly as Grief

  A subtle and sad elegy for the passing of summer
• The poem

  • The poet subverts common light and dark metaphors and instead uses summer as a metaphor for her grief and depression at the passing of time, and by implication the loss of loved ones
• The speaker


  Urges that the transition of the seasons should be seen as natural and part of the essence of life
• The hope is that it will be beautiful, though the happiness and growth of youth have lessened as time has passed
• Time passing is a universal, shared, human experience, and a subtle and gradual process
• Poem structure


  • Made up of four quatrains, that is stanzas of four lines each
  • Regular ABCB rhyme scheme in each stanza
• Punctuation


  • Important with frequent dashes creating a choppy staccato rhythm, suitable for the subject matter
• Metrical rhythm


  • Broadly iambic trimeter, that is three metrical feet or iambs per line, where a iamb is made up of one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable
  • Exception is line three in each stanza which is iambic tetrameter, that is four metrical feet per line
  • Rhythmic regularity is broken up by distinctive three-syllable words like 'imperceptable', 'harrowing' and 'sequestered'
• Poetic style


  • Tight, concise with great impact; the spareness giving greater emphasis to what is said; an example of 'less is more'
• Voice

  Third person narrator, probably the poet
• Tone


  Subdued and thoughtful
• Dominant device


  • Capitalised nouns, describing abstract concepts like Grace, Quietness and Grief
  • Cosmic elements — Summer, Dusk, Morning etc — are also capitalised, and represent the passing of time and of life, and the changing moods, including grief and depression experienced by the speaker