With this blog entry, I begin a series of mini-analyses of attractive poems that remain, nevertheless, rather one-dimensional.
An Excited Heart
Siegfried Sassoon’s “The Heart’s Journey” consists of two quatrains, each with the rime scheme of ABAB.
The speaker has met a person who has aroused him deeply. After touching the person’s face, it seemed to the speaker that “Drifts of blossom flushed and fell.” The face blushed with excitement then quickly dissipated. He admits that he does not know the person well.
In the second stanza, the speaker offers a fascinating description of his deep emotional reaction to this person’s “joy”: the person motivated “Chime on chime from bell on bell / In the cloisters of my heart.” The speaker’s heart was still and quiet until this person aroused it, and it grew excited.
Commentary
Except for the last two lines, the poem remains rather bland, and while those final lines are interesting, the two stanzas taken together do little more than repeat the theme that the speaker became excited by someone he recently met.
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