The Portent

The Portent Literary Elements

Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View

The action in the poem is described by a seemingly objective speaker who appears to be a stand-in for Melville himself. He never makes direct reference to himself.

Form and Meter

The poem is made up of two stanzas with parallel structure. Each stanza is a septet, made up of seven lines. The first follows a rough ABABCC rhyme scheme but the second is looser.

Metaphors and Similes

John Brown's beard is compared to a meteor.

Alliteration and Assonance

Alliteration is present in the S sounds of "slowly swaying" and "Stabs shall" and in the C sounds of "cut on the crown."

Irony

Genre

Memorial poetry, war poetry

Setting

The setting of the poem is the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

Tone

Tragic, ominous

Protagonist and Antagonist

The protagonist is John Brown. The antagonist is the institutions of slavery and Southern law.

Major Conflict

The major conflict in the poem is between the Southern attempt to erase John Brown from history and the persistence of his cause and legacy.

Climax

The poem reaches its climax when Brown dies and the speaker reflects on the image of his beard.

Foreshadowing

Understatement

The line "the cut is on the crown" is an understatement of the injuries Brown sustained during his raid on Harper's Ferry. While his greatest injury was sustained on his head, from the blow of a sword hilt, he was also slashed and beaten close to death.

Allusions

The two main allusions the poem makes are historical. The first is to the figure of John Brown himself and the second is to the Shenandoah Valley in the state of Virginia.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

The phrase "Shenandoah" is used to make general reference to the dividing line of where slavery is legal. The "crown" in the fifth line is a metonymy of the fractures in the body politic of the United States right before the Civil War.

Personification

The line "so your future veils its face" personifies the future of the nation in Brown's pained, dying face.

Hyperbole

Onomatopoeia

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