Introduction
Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) was a renaissance dramatist who is popular for his dramas written in collaboration with John Fletcher. His poem ‘On the tombs in Westminster abbey’ focuses on power and immutability of time and temporary nature of worldly things.
Central Idea
This poem is a typical renaissance poem which talks about power and immutability of time and transitory nature of wealth, power and other worldly things. Poet using the tombs of kings and high society people (whose graves exist in Westminster abbey) who lived a godly life on earth shows that their wealth and power all reduced to soil with time. Similarly displaying power of time he gives a beautiful example of Adam and Eve whose status of god at the starting of the world was snatched from them and they ended up as human and died. This was power of time and fate.
Themes
a) Transitory nature of worldly riches – Poet’s main focus in the poem is on ephemeral nature of riches of physical world. He explains it by stating that royal people used to have ‘realms and land’ but now they have died and buried in graves and couldn’t even ‘stir their hand’. It shows how time has snatched everything from the powerful people even Adam and Eve ‘Though gods they were, as men they died’ could not stop their fate. They were also turned into normal human beings on committing the sin. Hence time was proved powerful on Godly figures too.
b) Immutability of Time – Poem shows that time does change everything. It is the greatest leveller and certainly the most powerful element in the universe. It can eliminate everything in due course. Change is the rule of the nature and time is its executive who brings the change. The most powerful persons of a period were brought to soil after death by the time.
c) Biblical – Poem has biblical theme as it makes story of Adam and Eve and their sin as base to make the reader understand that God were also turned into human and died as time approached.
Figure of speech
- Alliteration – ‘Richest, royall’st’, ‘bones of birth’, ‘dust, once dead’ have repetition of consonant sounds /r/, /b/ and /d/ respectively at the starting of a world hence it is the case of alliteration.
- Assonance – In the sixth line of the poem ‘strength to stir’ has repetition of vowel sound /e/ in strength and stir. Hence it’s assonance.
- Synecdoche – ‘Change of flesh’ and ‘royal bones’ have synecdoche as flesh and bones are representing the whole people i.e. kings here.
- Personification – ‘Mortality’ in the first line is personified as it is shown as a person horrendous to look at. ‘Earth’ in the eleventh line has also been personified as it is shown sucking people inside it. ‘royal bones sleep’ has personification as bones are now non living thing after death of persons and they have been shown as a person is sleeping. Hence human attribute is being infused in bones too.
- Hyperbole – In the line ‘Since the first man died for sin’ has hyperbole as it is written in context of how old this abbey is and since when human are being buried here.
- Understatement – ‘Think how many royal bones / Sleep within this heap of stones’ has understatement as poet has reduced the intensity of death and presented it as sleep.
Imagery
Poem has an excellent example of imagery too when poet creates an image of field shown with seed and an acre land of abbey is seeded with graves. It seems like graves are seeds of this abbey and implicitly painted picture which shows that when the Day of Judgment would come these seeds would sprout in the form of soul and come out like crops.
Question of Greatness
In the line eight ‘In greatness is not trust’ poet meant to say that greatness of power or wealth i.e. value of power and wealth can’t be trusted for ever. They get vanished as the person dies. It doesn’t mean that greatness achieved by deeds is also lost or can’t be trusted as such greatness always exists in human society.
Structure and Rhyme scheme – Poem is written in couplets. It has eighteen lines and rhyme scheme is AABBCC.
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