Eden Rock

• Eden Rock, written by the poet Charles Causley, describes a vivid memory from the speaker’s childhood. The speaker emotionally describes his parents during a picnic. The poem’s ending suggests a remaining distance between the speaker and their parents.
• They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:”
• The title is significant as it refers to an island off the coast of Cornwall where the speaker spent time with his family on holiday. It also has religious connotations as ‘eden’ means paradise or heavenly place.
• • Causley begins his poem with an ambiguous reference to the distance between him and his parents
  • He creates a detached tone which emphasises the distance implied in “somewhere beyond”
  • He refers to them impersonally as “they”
• “My father, twenty-five, in the same suit

  Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack

  Still two years old and trembling at his feet.”
• • Causley presents a vivid description of the speaker’s father to show the power of the memory
  • The reference to the little dog “trembling at his feet” shows him as protective and perhaps respected
• “My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress

  Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,

  Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.” 
• “Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.”
• • Causley’s speaker seems mesmerised by his vivid memory of his mother
  • The memory of his mother is powerful: she seems virtuous, almost angelic
• “She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight

  From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw

  Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out

  The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.”
• • The detailed observational narration continues as the speaker describes his mother’s actions on the picnic 

  Causley’s intention
• • Causley represents the picnic as familiar, implying it was a normal and habitual part of their lives
  • He mentions the “same three plates” and the prepared milk in the sauce bottle
  • The speaker’s vivid memory is personal and intimate
• “The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.

  My mother shades her eyes and looks my way”
• • Causley uses imagery to present his vision as surreal
  • The supernatural quality of the white sky and “three suns” could present the hallucinatory nature of the memory
  • This could also represent the family (his parents and him as a child)
  • Causley shows the speaker’s powerful memories in close, detailed observation
• “Over the drifted stream. My father spins

  A stone along the water. Leisurely,”
• “They beckon to me from the other bank.

  I hear them call, ‘See where the stream-path is!

  Crossing is not as hard as you might think.’”
• • Here, Causley implies the speaker seems stuck between the past and the present as he needs to ‘cross the stream’ to get to them
  • He refers to them impersonally to imply distance
• “I had not thought that it would be like this.”
• • The speaker’s statement at the end of the poem expresses strong emotion
  • He feels the separation in a way he had not expected
• • Causley’s ending clearly asserts his surprise at the reality of losing his parents
  • However, there is also an ambiguous meaning to these lines as the reader is not told exactly what he feels
• The first-person speaker  remembers, in detail, a day from his past, using present-tense verbs which immerse him in the memory 
• The poet’s speaker refers to his parents in third-person:

  “They are waiting”, “they beckon” and “they call”
• Charles Causley combines a personal memory with a narration to show the frustration the speaker feels due to the separation from his parents with whom he shared a close bond
• The poem mostly follows a regular structure of quatrains as the speaker remembers his parents

  • He is calm when he is with them
  • A regular structure and enjambment represent the speaker’s immersion in his memory
• The regular structure is broken at the end

  • A stanza of three lines depicts the parents calling to the speaker to join them
  • The final line is separate and isolated from the rest of the poem
• Here, the speaker uses sibilance and alliteration within the imagery to highlight the description of the mother as virtuous and pure
• • The poem can be seen as an elegy to his parents
  • The stream he describes could allude to the metaphorical use of rivers to symbolise transitions from life to death
  • He describes them as virtuous and steadfast
• • The natural descriptions of a simple, ordinary picnic presents family as a natural bond 
  • Causely grew up in Cornwall and many of his poems are set in natural landscapes which present his childhood as idyllic
  • He refers to his mother with natural imagery: “Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.”