Rising Five by Norman Nicholson.
Rising Five Norman Nicholson
This poem Rising Five by Norman Nicholson starts with the words of four years old who claims not to be four, but ‘rising five’ This statement is followed with the poet’s vivid description of the child’s face which shouts almost with youth and enthusiasm. We see the baby curls of hair, the huge staring eyes searching all around about smooth dimpled (‘toffee buckled’) cheeks. This image is a wonderful evocation of little smiling boy. The use of toffee additionally suggests sweetness. The poet then gives the child’s age in months and weeks which shows just how brief a time he has been alive. Even though he is still only about four years and eight months old, he is eager to be five.
The next stanza describes the nature around the boy. The poet uses the word ‘cell’ which makes up every living thing. The rhythm ‘bubbled and doubled’ ‘buds unbuttoned’ and ‘creases from their frills’ all describes flower opening by using fabric images. The poet describes the positive emotion towards the flower blossoming then he ends the stanza by stating the facts (‘it was the season after blossoming, before the forming of the fruit’).
In stanza three, the visual image ‘and in the sky the dust dissected tangential light’ shows the change in time before the mood changes. The light is going dimmer. ‘But rising soon’ shows that the change is coming and this builds on serious mood.
On the last stanza, the mood is very negative. It is where we first mention the ‘old’. Before stanzas don’t have plural personal pronoun but in this stanza, we have got it. The line ‘we drop our youth like a boy throwing away his toffee-wrappers’ shows that we don’t look back and only tries to move on. The word ‘toffee’ has been mentioned on stanza one and it was very positive then but on this stanza, the toffee has been thrown away and this show that our sweetness form childhood has gone. 'We never see the flower/But only the fruit in the flower/we never see the fruit/But
This poem Rising Five by Norman Nicholson starts with the words of four years old who claims not to be four, but ‘rising five’ This statement is followed with the poet’s vivid description of the child’s face which shouts almost with youth and enthusiasm. We see the baby curls of hair, the huge staring eyes searching all around about smooth dimpled (‘toffee buckled’) cheeks. This image is a wonderful evocation of little smiling boy. The use of toffee additionally suggests sweetness. The poet then gives the child’s age in months and weeks which shows just how brief a time he has been alive. Even though he is still only about four years and eight months old, he is eager to be five.
The next stanza describes the nature around the boy. The poet uses the word ‘cell’ which makes up every living thing. The rhythm ‘bubbled and doubled’ ‘buds unbuttoned’ and ‘creases from their frills’ all describes flower opening by using fabric images. The poet describes the positive emotion towards the flower blossoming then he ends the stanza by stating the facts (‘it was the season after blossoming, before the forming of the fruit’).
In stanza three, the visual image ‘and in the sky the dust dissected tangential light’ shows the change in time before the mood changes. The light is going dimmer. ‘But rising soon’ shows that the change is coming and this builds on serious mood.
On the last stanza, the mood is very negative. It is where we first mention the ‘old’. Before stanzas don’t have plural personal pronoun but in this stanza, we have got it. The line ‘we drop our youth like a boy throwing away his toffee-wrappers’ shows that we don’t look back and only tries to move on. The word ‘toffee’ has been mentioned on stanza one and it was very positive then but on this stanza, the toffee has been thrown away and this show that our sweetness form childhood has gone. 'We never see the flower/But only the fruit in the flower/we never see the fruit/But