In Romney Marsh — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
In Romney Marsh
The poems
What you need to know
In Romney Marsh by John Davidson (1857–1909): a walk down to the sea wall at Dymchurch and back as day turns to night, and how Davidson uses ballad-like quatrains, colour and sound.
Key quotations and how to analyse them, and the poems in the collection it compares well with, and on which themes.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'As I went down to Dymchurch Wall', 'I heard the South sing o’er the land', 'On knolls where Norman churches stand', 'The wire from Romney town to Hythe', 'A veil of purple vapour flowed', 'The upper air like sapphire glowed', 'The saffron beach, all diamond drops', 'The crimson brands of sunset fall', 'Night sank: like flakes of silver fire', 'Shrill blew the wind; and shrill the wire'.
Form and structure: seven quatrains in regular rhyme and rhythm like a ballad, a journey down to the sea wall and back, and repeated lines and phrases ('prolonged the roar') that echo the waves.
Language: colours and precious stones (purple, sapphire, saffron, crimson, silver), sounds of wind, wire and surf, and the landscape as a cathedral with its 'organ stops' and 'Heaven's central gates'.
Context: Davidson (1857–1909), a Scottish poet best known for his ballads, who moved to London in 1889; and Romney Marsh, the flat coastal marshland of Kent and East Sussex, with Dymchurch's sea wall, its old churches and the old ports of Romney and Hythe.
Compares well with: Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 (light on a place at one time of day), To Autumn (the senses and the close of day), I started Early – Took my Dog (the sea) and Adlestrop (sounds and English place names).
