Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Derek Walcott’s "Midsummer: 39" offers a meditation on history, identity, and the haunting presence of England’s ancient past. The poem is a journey through the English countryside, blending the physical landscape with deeper reflections on ancestry and cultural inheritance. Walcott’s use of imagery, particularly the figure of the hare, becomes a symbol for the ways in which the past remains embedded in the present, influencing the speaker’s sense of self and place.

The poem opens with the description of a "grey English road" hissing under the tires, evoking a mood of quiet isolation. The road, wet from the rain in "Berkshire," merges the English landscape with the speaker’s memories of his Caribbean homeland, where the sound of rain on the road was familiar. The merging of the two landscapes suggests that, for the speaker, different places and times overlap, reflecting the complexities of identity and memory. The mention of "island rain" introduces a sense of displacement, as the speaker navigates a foreign landscape while recalling the familiar.

The appearance of the "white hare," which might "startle itself like a tuft / on the road’s bare scalp," introduces the central symbol of the poem. The hare, a creature associated with both nature and mythology, holds a powerful place in English folklore, representing fear, transformation, and mystery. The speaker notes that "wherever it came from, / the old word 'hare' shivered," linking the creature not just to the present moment but to the ancient English past. Words like "weald" (a forest or wooded area) and "croft" (a small enclosed field) further anchor the poem in England’s historical and rural landscape. The speaker’s attention to language highlights the weight of history that lingers in the natural world and in the words that describe it.

The poem’s tension between the mythical and the mundane is captured in the speaker’s admission, "I hated fables." This line reveals a resistance to the mythologizing of the landscape, to the idea that the natural world holds hidden meaning or significance. The "wheezing beeches" and "wild, wet mustard" are described as fables themselves, suggesting that the natural world, with its ancient trees and overgrown fields, carries a weight of stories and histories that the speaker finds burdensome or unsettling. The mist, gathering "from the mulch of black leaves," adds to the eerie, oppressive atmosphere of the countryside, where the hare hides "in clenched concentration," as if praying. The image of the hare, "bead-eyed" and "haunch-deep in nettles," captures its vulnerability and intensity, as it seems both a real creature and a mythical symbol, embodying the tension between nature and legend.

The speaker’s impatience with the hare—"the sooner it disappeared the better"—suggests a desire to escape the oppressive weight of history and myth that the countryside represents. Yet, despite this desire, the landscape continues to exert its influence: "Something branched in that countryside / losing ground to the mist, its old roads brown as blood." The reference to "old roads brown as blood" links the physical landscape to the history of violence and conflict in England, where centuries of war, conquest, and settlement have left their mark on the land. The hare, with its "curled paws," becomes a symbol for the ancient history of England, from "the age of skins and woad" (a plant used by the ancient Britons for body paint) to "Saxon settlements fenced with stakes." The image of the hare brooding over England’s past ties it to the land and its long, complex history.

As the speaker and his companion drive through the mist, turning on the fog lights, the poem shifts to a personal reflection on ancestry. The speaker imagines his "bastard ancestor" walking along the same road, "transfixed by the trembling, trembling thing that stood / its ground." The repetition of "trembling" emphasizes the hare’s vulnerability and the sense of awe or fear it inspires. The ancestor, like the speaker, is confronted by the weight of history and myth, embodied in the figure of the hare. The final image of the ancestor being "nibbled into a hare" suggests a transformation, where the human figure becomes part of the landscape, part of the ancient, mythic world that the hare represents.

In "Midsummer: 39," Walcott uses the English countryside as a canvas for exploring themes of history, ancestry, and identity. The hare, both a real creature and a symbol of England’s ancient past, serves as a bridge between the present and the distant, mythologized history of the land. Through the journey along the "grey English road," the speaker grapples with his own sense of displacement and belonging, as the landscape and its history exert a powerful influence on his sense of self. The poem’s rich imagery and attention to language create a layered meditation on the ways in which the past continues to shape the present, particularly for those navigating complex identities in a world shaped by both myth and history.

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