A Winter Visit - Abse

The poem is similar to Larkin's work as it encompasses some of the key themes that he uses such as death, time, love and life decisions. We can closely link this to Larkin poems such as Dockery and Son, Loves Songs in Age and Reference Back. Abse also uses a consistent rhyme scheme throughout this poem through words such as 'park and dark' 'frail and tail' 'die and cry' 'keeps and weep' and 'things and wings'. Larkin also does this to convey certain attitudes in his poems. This poem is also different to some of Larkin's work as it doesn't have a philosophical meaning, which Larkin uses in a lot of his poems. This poem is more concrete and easier to understand. Again like many other Abse poems, this poem feels a lot more personal and intimate. Larkin lacks this as a poet. This poem is told through the eyes of the persona. The persona in this poem talks about the way that the one that they care about is getting old, so the main theme of the poem is about death and we get the impression the persona really cares about this person so this further reinforces this idea that they are a family member.

Death is conveyed through the weather. It is winter, words such as 'cold and dark' in the first stanza act as pathetic fallacy for this idea of death. The whole of the first stanza gives us the impression of something bleak or lacking. We get a sense that all living things have disappeared through the quote 'too cold, the usual peacocks do not screech'. It gives us this idea that this park used to be full of life, however now it is not. The park resembles this ninety year old in a way because she had life, like when life comes out in summer and now she is slowly dying just like winter.

We get the impression in stanza two that the person is using the peacock to describe the person what he is talking about. 'That from one pale dot of peacock's sperm' suggests that all life is created from something very small and it grows and grows until it gets smaller again as if it reverses back. This is also represented to us where the persona describes that she is 'so aged and so frail'. The use of the peacock being born in this stanza represents the cycle of life and how quickly it can pass us by. We learn in stanza three that this is the persona's mum where she comments 'This winter I'm half dead, son.'

In stanza four we get the impression that the son is a doctor. He 'inhabits a white coat' which paints a visual interpretation of a doctor in our minds and he describes that he is 'not qualified to weep', the word qualified gives us a hint that the persona has a career which he is qualified for, something that he worked towards, like a doctor. This gives us an idea that the persona has to remain professional, even though his mother is actually dying. The idea that 'only nothing keeps' suggests that the persona is making a reference that everything will come to an end one day, there is literally 'nothing' the persona can do to prevent his mother from dying. So ultimately death is everyone's fate in life.

So the persona then deters from the imminent impact of death on his mothers life in stanza four. He admires the park and everything around it, suggesting he has more appreciation of life now that his mother is so close to dying. The quote 'so I speak of small approximate things' adds to this idea that he is deterring away from this idea of death. He begins to talk about small, irrelevant things. In a way, he wants to distract his mother from death. So we get positive attributes from the persona and Abse paints him as a rather affectionate and caring person.