Childrens Hour Analysis free essay sample

A. Background The Children’s Hour is written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1860 and is a kind of love letter to his three daughters, Alice, Edith, and Anne. It describes how the children get the â€Å"victory† of the hour, and although they were supposed to be going to bed, â€Å"win† the affection of their father. Longfellow, while writing from the point of view of a loving father, creates a persona that he is in a castle or fortress and about to be attacked by his children. He puts up a fight, but it is the children who get the victory. The comparison of his house to that of a castle is actually rather appropriate. Longfellow had spent many happy hours writing on a cluttered desk by the south window of his beloved Craigie House, an imposing mansion still preserved on Cambridges famous Brattle Street. It is in this house that most of the action takes place. It is there that his daughters come creeping down the stairs to attack the gentle poet in his lair. Longfellow was a devoted husband and father. Both of his marriages ended in sadness and tragedy. His first wife Mary Potter, of Portland, died in 1835; his second wife, Fanny Appleton, the great love of his life and the mother of his six children, died of burns from a terrible accident in 1861. B. Content The Childrens Hour Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the days occupation, That is know as the childrens hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. A whisper and then a silence: Yet I know by their merry eyes, They are plotting and planning together, To take me by surprise. A sudden rush from the stairway, A sudden raid from the hall! By three doors left unguarded They enter my castle wall! They climb up into my turret Oer the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape, they surround me, They seem to be everywhere. They almost devour me with kisses, Their arms about me entwine, Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine! Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, Because you have scaled the wall, Such an old mustache as I am Is not a match for you all? I have you fast in my fortress And will not let you depart, But put you down in the dungeon In the round-tower of my heart. And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in dust away! 1. Pronunciation and Meanings: chamber- a room in a palace or official residence turret- a small tower that projects from the wall of a building, a medieval castle Bishop of Bingen- Bingen am Rhein is a town in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The settlement’s original name was Bingium, a Celtic word that may have meant â€Å"hole in the rock†, a description of the shoal behind the Mauseturm, known as the Binger Loch. Bingen was the starting point for the Via Ausonia, a Roman military road that linked the town with Trier. Bingen is well known for, among other things, the story about the Mouse Tower, in which allegedly the Bishop of Mainz Hatto was eaten by mice. The town was in 2008, after Kaiserslautern and Trier, organizer of the third Rhineland-Palatinate State Garden Show. Rhine- The Rhine River is one of the most important waterways in Germany and is linked by canals to other major rivers in Western Europe. banditti- plural of bandit; a robber, especially a member of a gang or marauding band. oulder The British form of molder; to turn to dust by natural decay; crumble; disintegrate; waste away 2. Allusions: The main allusion of the poem is that it takes place in a castle, with a turret and chambers In the first two lines, the allusion is made that the day is coming to an end and it is time for the girls to get ready for bed. In line 5 â€Å"chamber’ refers to the girls’ bedroom s. In line 9, the author makes the reader aware that he has spotted his daughters coming down the stairs. However, the girls are not aware of this Lines 11 and 12 show us how the father views his children. Alice is serious, Allegra wants to play and have fun, and Edith is beautiful and may not care one way or the other about the plan to sneak up on their father In lines 13-15 the children are planning to coerce their father into telling them a bedtime story. In line 18 â€Å"sudden raid† is referring to the attack that the girls are planning on their father Line 19 shows that the girls came in through three different unguarded doors. In line 20 and 21 an allusion is made to the study. It is referred to as the castle wall in line 20 and the turret in line 21. In lines 25-26 a reference is made to the Bishop of Bingen. Just as rats physically devoured the Bishop, the girls â€Å"devour† their father with kisses and â€Å"entwine† him with their arms. These are kisses and hugs. The reader now learns that the girls just wanted to play with their father, and show how much they love him. In line 29 the word banditti is a metaphor for a robber or bandit to help illustrate how his daughters are stealing his heart. Line 31 shows a contrast of age that of the young beautiful girls mentioned in line 29. It mentions an old mustache, to portray a much older and less attractive father. Line 33-40 let the reader know that the father is returning the love that he has just received. He has the girls in his arms and he does not want to let them go. He loves them too much. He is very relaxed and at peace. He feels as though he can stay in his study forever, because the only things that he needs are his daughters. 3. Tone- The tone that I plan to use is light. It’s nighttime and the kids are supposed to go to bed, but instead they want to play. This is not received harshly by the father, but instead he cherishes the moment and spends some extra time with his daughters before bed.