The Yellowhammer's Nest Literary Elements

First-person plural speaker. The speaker narrates the experience and invites a companion to share in it.

Iambic pentameter (five pairs of one unstressed and one stressed syllable). Many lines rhyme, but there is no fixed rhyme scheme.

In line 13, Clare uses metaphor to compare the wiggling lines on the eggs to pen scribbles.
In line 18-19, Clare uses simile to compare the bank to Castalay, a spring from Greek mythology, and an old molehill to Parnassus, the mountain that was the mythical home of the Greek muses.
In line 27, Clare compares the snake's raid of the nest to a house ravaged by plague.

Line 8, alliteration of /b/, "beneath the bunch of grass"
Line 11, alliteration of /l/, "last year's harvest left upon the land"
Line 15, alliteration of /p/, "nature's poesy and pastoral spells"
Line 22, alliteration of /h/, "a happy home"
Line 28, alliteration of /h/, "a houseless home"

Ironically, the speaker emphasizes that the stream is "harmless" by stating that it could "scarcely drown a bee," a statement that actually casts the brook as potentially harmful to small creatures.

Pastoral poetry

The bank of a shallow stream

Bittersweet

The protagonist is the yellowhammer. The end of the poem introduces the snake as an antagonist.

The major conflict is between the paradise of the yellowhammer's abode and the harsh realities of the world.

The climax comes in line 23, where Clare reveals that even the perfect sweetness of the yellowhammer's home suffers beneath the cruel realities of the world.

The opening lines depict the yellowhammer's fear at the cowboy scrambling through the briars, which reveals that it has to know how to flee danger, danger that reappears at the end of the poem in the form of the snake.

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In the middle of the poem, Clare alludes to Greek mythology by referencing Castalay, a spring where water nymphs were said to dwell, and Parnassus, the mountain where the muses were said to dwell.

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Clare personifies the yellowhammer throughout the poem, describing it as having a "partner" as though she and its mate are married, and instilling her with human emotions like joy and woe.

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