The Cyclist Poem

The Cyclist poetry commentary The Cyclist is a verse form by Louis MacNeice which romanticizes the speed joys of clawhood. These joys atomic number 18 emphasised through imagery of summer be it activities, intellectual nourishment, the beach, a oscillation ride, various techniques such as juxtaposition and enjambment be employ to evoke fond memories from the reader. MacNeices poem is set in the souwest of England, on a pitcher with a chalk horse carven into it. It is during the height of summer, when the grasshoppers be buzzing and the peasantren are playing outside. The character is a son or a group of boys, and they are riding bicycles put through a hill near to the chalk horse.The structure of the poem is sooner disjointed, with only(prenominal) five decrys throughout three stanzas. Enjambment is used extensively to further reinforce the idea of a out of breath child, as by not ending each line with a copious stop the poet is enticing the reader to continue an d hear what this breathless child has to say. The use of time in The Cyclist is used to reinforce the imagination that the plea certain(a)s of summer are temporary. In the low gear stanza, for example, on line 7, just now these five minutes is a reference to both the comparatively mulct time of childhood and the rapid rush eat up the hill during summer. in like manner read How to be Old Swenson AnalysisTime is again mentioned in line 24 (For ten indorses more than) to remind the reader that time is ever-present, and that ageing is infeasible to avoid for a child as adulthood draws every proximate (emphasised in the decrease of time from five minutes to ten seconds). In general, the speaker in The Cyclist appears to be speaking as a child he overuses and accident all toldy mixes up actors line. For instance, on line 4 the speaker says In the warming of the handlebars he grasps the summer. This is plainly a childs error, and it makes no sense as it is it should be heat of the summer he grasps the handlebars.Another example of this is during the last stanza, where the speaker is describing various ship dejectional to enjoy the summer, he states chase it with butterfly nets or strike myopic red ball or gulp cream /Or boozing (lines 18-20). This overuse of or again shows the flustered excitement when a child is overloaded with activities they cant possibly even speak flying enough to experience them all over the course of one pithy summer. The experiences which are breathlessly listed are all typical summertime activities, such as catching butterflies, playing cricket, eating summer fruits with cream or enjoying a ool drink in the shade. All of these activities are typically not long-lasting butterflies slip out of nets, breath cannot be held underwater for long, and food and drink generally do not last long with hungry(p) children around. Therefore, MacNeice is reinforcing the idea that childhood and summertime are fleeting joys which can onl y be carelessly enjoyed for a so long, and they should be savoured. There is elicit juxtaposition and repetition in the last four lines repetition of sedately and juxtaposition between calm/ lullness and movement.The last four lines overly describe the feeling of peace speckle you coast along on a bike with no need to pedal after having sped down a hill. For ten seconds more can move as the horse in the chalk means he can be still while still galloping (as the horse carved into the hill is galloping, and yet cannot move). calmly regardless of tenses and final clauses again grammar is mentioned which refers to the forgotten article of faith of inculcate. The final line, sedately unendingly moves. , is a reference to the horse carved into the hillside.This idea is modify in the first line, with unpassing horse. unpassing gives the idea that while the horse is invariably moving, it never actually moves. The fact that the poem both begins and ends with reference to this horse s hows that it is one of main ideas of the poem. And so the horse remains there, seemingly for all eternity, fixed in its graceful stride, calmly, unendingly moving. Further juxtaposition can also be found in the opposites of Left-right-left, which seeds in as the poem approaches its end.It shows the child slowing down and needing to pedal to keep moving, as Left-right-left is the gesture needed to turn the pedals one full circle. And reaching the valley the boy must pedal again (line 22) shows that the joys of summer are brief, and they only come once the hill (seasons) has done a full cycle and the wind horse has returned himself to the crest of the hill. Water is a symbol which is heavily used in the second stanza and the beginning of the third stanza. It is used to show the innocence of childhood the purity before the child becomes polluted by reality and is labored to pedal back up the hill of life.The second stanza begins with imagery of a meadow which quickly transforms i nto an ocean The grass boils with grasshoppers, a pebble /Scutters from under the wheel. The wonderfully poetic language assists in the seamless transition from meadow to ocean the rolling grass hills are likened the boiling waves (heated by the sun), and the pebbles are compared with channelise, scuttering away to escape the bikes wheel. The boys riding their heat-wave creates a designate of a surfer, feet on a narrow plank and hair propel back.The narrow plank creates ambiguity, as the reader is not sure if the poet it referring to a surfboard or the pedals on a bike. The spattered egg whiten countryside spoken about on the previous line draws parallels between white caps on the ocean, the boys (whose skin colour would stand out against the green or blue) and the white chalk horses carved into the hills. The heat-wave is a play on words by MacNeice, as the real meaning is a period of exceptionally hot weather which usually occurs in summer. In this context though, it has a do uble meaning of figuratively surfing on the wave while riding the wave on a bicycle.This water imagery past flows over into the next stanza, pulling the reader forward in the period of the poem, as it depicts the cyclist with a surf of dust (line 17) beneath him, more like a wave than a cloud of dust. The continuation of the sentence into the next stanza is another way MacNeice draws the reader onwards. The animals referred to throughout the poem are all typical summer creatures grasshoppers chirping on a hot summers day, dragonflies hang in the haze, horses running free over the hills, butterflies floating back and forth, crabs scuttling along a beach.These symbols reinforce MacNeices image of a meliorate summertime. The poem as a whole but especially the first stanza likens life to a text or piece of writing, combined with the fleeting exhilaration of childhood Between the horizons brackets, with the main sentence of adult life to be picked up later. The use of grammatic ter ms such as brackets, parenthesis and tenses and final clauses reminds the reader that school and education is always in the back of a childs mind, not wanting for the summer to end.Through the use of poetic techniques such as juxtaposition and enjambment, MacNeice has created parallels between the joys of childhood and the fun of whizzing down a hill on a bicycle. Water imagery, the majority of which is found in the second paragraph, is used to show that summer enjoyment is not only particular(a) to the meadows of southwest England, but can be enjoyed by the beach or surfing in the ocean. In The Cyclist Louis MacNeice seeks to make an initially light-hearted narration about the fun in being a child which late shifts into a more contemplative, melodramatic declaration of the inevitability of ageing and the personation of time.