Flower Fed Buffaloes

The poem “Flower Fed Buffaloes” by V. Lindsay is a short text set on the prairies of America in old days. It is about “Flower Fed Buffaloes” where the old days take pass and that the buffaloes did not live there because locomotives has taken over the prairie, where buffaloes were. Three key techniques used by the poet were alliteration, metaphor and repetition. They were effective because they helped me understand the theme. The theme is the buffaloes prairies have been taken over by the modern day technology and have killed them.
Metaphor was one key technique used in this poem which was effective because it created a vivid image of the buffaloes on the prairies. The metaphors also helped me understand the theme of the poem. The metaphor “locomotives sing”, implies the trains make a noise that is more joyful than the buffaloes but really the noise is not. The trains could be seen as a living creature but they are in fact replacing the real living creatures, the buffaloes. “They bellow no more”, the metaphor helps the reader understand that progress has reached the prairies and the once powerful buffalo have been affected by the power of industrialisation. The metaphor “swept away” creates an image in the mind that the buffaloes are swept away and pushed out very quickly by the settlers. The buffaloes are seen as rubbish and getting killed from the settlers with the industrialisation and locomotives.
Alliteration was of another kind of key technique used it the poet drawing the readers in. In the poet on line four the words “lie low” are used to describe the prairie flowers are being cut and removed from the machines. In the last two lines of the poem these words change to “lying low” to describe the Indian tribes either hiding in the remote places. They are suffering from the impact of industrialisation and the new way of lie brought about by progress. Just like the buffalo, the Indian tribes are also “swept away” from the prairies. The nature is powerless because the land, the animals and the people can’t defend themselves against the progress of the machines.
In the poet by V. Lindsay has used repetition to tell the industrialisation in the poet has come. In line seven the repetition “wheels and wheels and wheels spin by”, the wheels describe there are trains lots and lots of them. The wheels are repeated three times. Therefore there is numerous of trains and the mechanisms are developing. The trains in the poet would have a lot of passengers travelling town to town so the prairies are taken over. In that the nature on those prairies is weak so they can’t save themselves from it. The words “long ago” indicates that it was past time a long time ago and that it is repeated twice so that the poem is telling us how long this was set in.
In conclusion this poem of Flower Fed Buffaloes by V. Lindsay has used a variety of techniques such as alliteration, metaphor and repetition to convey the ideas of the poem. These techniques were effective helping me understand the idea of the progress and its impact on nature. The natural world is powerless against the face of modernisation. The poet makes me sympathise with the prairies , the buffalo and the Indians whose way of life has been changed forever and cannot be restored back to before.