Digitizing Texts: More on Different Analysis

A Child and Flowers by Mrs. Hemans




Page Image version

"For a day is coming to quell the tone
That rings in thy laughter, thou joyous one!
And to dim thy brow with a touch of care,
Under the gloss of its clustering hair;

And to tame the flash of thy cloudless eyes
Into the stillness of autumn skies;
And to teach thee that grief hath her needful part,
Midst the hidden things of each human heart!"

HTML version

Nature hath mines of such wealth--and thou

Never wilt prize its delights as now!

*For a day is coming to quell the tone

That rings in thy laughter, thou joyous one!

And to dim thy brow with a touch of care.35

Under the gloss of its clustering hair;

And to tame the flash of thy cloudless eyes

Into the stillness of autumn skies;

And to teach thee that grief hath her needful part,

Midst the hidden things of each human heart!*

TEI version


For a day is coming to quell the tone
That rings in thy laughter, thou joyous one!
And to dim thy brow with a touch of care.
Under the gloss of its clustering hair;

And to tame the flash of thy cloudless eyes
Into the stillness of autumn skies;
−

And to teach thee that grief hath her needful part,

Midst the hidden things of each human heart!


In our lines, 33-40, the speaker is talking about the inevitable day when the child will lose his or her innocence. The speaker is fearful for the child to see this, and to learn about grief and reality. It is a kind of superficial way of looking at children and innocence. Overall, this poem suggests that we should enjoy what we can while we can and not dwell in the past. The challenge is that the speaker is addressing a child, who could not read or understand its true meaning. This calls into question who the audience is. To me, the audience seems to be a child, but is meant to remind us of our own childhood, and to not forget our innocence and the little things that used to make us happy. In essence, the speaker is writing to and instructs us to analyze our own inner child. This poem calls us to appreciate the aesthetics in life instead of just going through life and letting the little joys pass us by.

The format of the poem does affect the meaning, but for me it does not necessarily help with processing what is going on and what is significant in the poem. It seems to me that the TEI version of the text does very little to help us understand the poem but it gives us as readers an interesting way of looking at it. Also the use of the different stanzas in the Page Image and HTML versions do help in changing the meaning because they give us different places to pause and focus. However, looking at these different versions is helpful because of both the visual tricks and the compilation of text and image. It allows us as readers to have a new, entirely different experience with the text even if, as frequently happens, we do not fully comprehend it.