THE LABURNUM TOP -- TED HUGHES

 The poet is trying to convey the message that life is a process of exchange and transformation. People are alive because they undergo exchange of energy. The laburnum top symbolizes the pattern of our life in general, which is dull and inanimate. The goldfinch breaks her usual pattern and make it lively. The goldfinch transforms the tree and make it alive, without the goldfinch and the chicks the laburnum is just another tree.

The Laburnum Top

The laburnum top is silent, quite still

In the afternoon yellow September sunlight,

A few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen.

Till the goldfinch comes, with a twitching chirrup

A suddenness, a startlement, at a branch end.

Then sleek as a lizard, and alert, and abrupt,

She enters the thickness, and a machine starts up

Of chitterings, and a tremor of wings, and trillings--

The whole tree trembles and thrills.

It is the engine of her family.

She stokes it full, then flirts out to a branch-end

Showing her barred face identity mask

Then with eerie delicate whistle-chirrup whisperings

She launches away, towards the infinite

And the laburnum subsides to empty.

Stanza 1 (Lines 1-3)

It is the afternoon of a day in September. The sun is shining brightly. The poet sees a laburnum tree bathed in the yellow sunlight. The top of the tree is all silent. It is quite still. A few of the laburnum leaves are turning yellow. All its seeds have fallen to the ground. The poet here draws a lovely picture of a laburnum tree as it appears on an autumn afternoon. The poet uses 'yellow' to describe both, the leaves' colour and the sunlight. Over here, yellow represents silence, death and beauty. Thus, he uses this colour and describes the whole setting perfectly.

Stanza 2 (Lines 4-12)

The tree lies in silent state till a goldfinch comes there with a twitching chirrup. She suddenly and startingly perches at the end of a branch. Then very swiftly, abruptly and alertly, like a lizard, she enters the thickness of the tree. At once, the whole of her brood starts chittering. There is tremor of wings, trillings of the neslings. The whole tree comes to life and starts trembling with a thrill of pleasure. It is the young ones in the goldfinch's family who had woken up the tree alive. The mother feeds the chicks fully. Then she comes out to the end of a branch. Her face is partially covered with the stringed clusters of laburnum flowers hanging from the branches. This serves as her identity mask as she has become a part of the laburnum tree.

Stanza 3 (Lines 13-15)

After feeding the nestlings, the goldfinch comes out of the tree and flies away into the infinite sky. It makes sad, delicate, whistling chirps as it flies away. The laburnum once again comes to its previous state all silent and still. It seems as if it has become empty. 

In conclusion we can say that both the tree and the bird play an important role of nurturing in each other's life. In other words, it is the attitude of a person towards life that makes life meaningful and worth living.

Poetic Devices

1. Simile: Where one thing is compared to another by using the words 'like' or 'as'.

for e.g. 'Sleek as a lizard'.

2. Metaphor: Where a word/phrase represents something else.

for e.g. 'engine of her family'

Here engine represents the mother goldfinch, and machine represents the nest with its brood of bird chicks.

3. Alliteration: Where a number of words having the same first consonant sound occur close together in a series.

for e.g. 'September sunlight', 'A suddenness, a startlement' and 'tree trembles and thrills'

4. Assonance: Where a number of words having the same first vowel sound occur close together in a series.

for e.g. 'and alert and abrupt'.

5. Onomatopoeia: Where a word is formed from a sound similar to it.

for e.g. 'twitching chirrup', 'chitterings', 'trillings', 'whistle-chirrup'.

6. Transferred Epithet: Where a word is transferred from its place.

for e.g. 'her barred face identity mask'.

Symbolism: The bird 'Goldfinch' may stand for the soul and the 'tree' for the body. It is the entry of the soul in the body that brings the body to movement and when the soul departs, again there is lifelessness.