Almond tree
...m when the baby is born and he is in complete distress and says: ‘never to come ashore into my kingdom’. This line is using the word kingdom which combines with the image we obtain in the first stanza except it is in different context. It’s as if he feels that the baby is no longer good enough to come into his life his kingdom of happiness and it will never be able to speak his language. This line makes is realize exactly how the poet feels at that precise moment about his new Mongol child. The poet’s skills are used very well through this poem as he uses several techniques to explain how he feels. The use of personification is used in stanza two when the poet is trying to describe his wishes and what he feels inside: ‘The tower held up its hands: the college bells shook their blessing on his head.’ These lines are as if the poet is saying the tower held up its hands which is impossible but by giving tower human qualities gives a repeated fairytale image. By using a tower a holding up its hands this is as if to salute him and wish him luck. Personification is used again in stanza three using the same kind of image that was used in stanza two: ‘For the tree was waving, waving me upstairs with a Childs hands.’ This gives of the same image but uses the symbolic almond tree to wave at him; the image of the tree waving at him has a direct contrast with stanza six when he knows that the child is a Mongol he says ‘the almond tree waving me down’. This is just like the way in which his emotions changed from before the child was born to after he knows it is a Mongol, first the tree is waving up as if to a better life and then once he knows it is as if his life is worthless now his poor child is a Mongol. This contrast really conveys the significance of the two emotions that the poet is facing. At this point in the poem near the final stanzas I felt very confused as to how he could be so devastated over this after all he has a new born child that needs his love more than ever. It seems as if the father is cruel and not very caring about his new child but the poet soon corrects this image in the last few stanzas of the poem. His emotions change fairly quickly and its as if his feelings to the child have changed and it was just the initial shock of finding out that what he had dreamed of being so perfect could have disability. He eventually realise...