1. The Dove
Class X English Poem

2. Summary
The poet had a dove. He loved it immensely. It died. He thinks it died of grief.
The poet is shocked by the bird’s death. He had tied the dove’s feet with a thread he had woven. He had given it his company and love.
The bird had lived alone but ‘sweetly’ in the forest.
The poet had given the dove kisses and white peas to express his love.
He cannot understand why the dove did not like living with him. He cannot understand its grief.

3. What Is The Poem About? Love and loss Understanding and freedom
It is a poem about love and loss.
The poet loves the dove but it dies.
The poem is also about understanding and freedom.
The poet did not understand the dove’s yearning to live on a tree. He tied its feet and kept it captive.
He gave the bird kisses and peas, but that is not what the bird wanted.

4. The Dove: Free and Captive

5. Figures of Speech Used
Alliteration
Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table - from The Death of the Hired Man by Robert Frost
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky - from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, S.T. Coleridge
Synecdoche
Friends, Romans, countrymen: lend me your ears.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Irony
Keats lavishes attention on the dove but his possessiveness destroys the dove. Instead of thriving, it dies
Alliteration occurs when a series of words in a row (or close to a row) have the same first consonant sound.
Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a term for a part of something is used to refer to the whole of something, or vice-versa.
Irony is when one outcome is expected, but the opposite occurs, usually with a coincidental twist of events.

6. The rhyme scheme, A-B-A-B-C-C-D-D-E-E is like that of a sonnet.
The poem is presented as a single, unbroken stanza. Keats employs an alternate rhyme scheme for the first eight lines of the poem, and then ends with a heroic couplet.
The rhyme scheme, A-B-A-B-C-C-D-D-E-E is like that of a sonnet.
The first four lines are addressed to the reader.
The remaining six lines comprise four questions addressed to the dove.
Structure of the Poem
Form and Content

7. Preliminary activity What imagery does the poet use in the poem?.
What colors does the poet employ? What do they symbolize?.
What did the dove want?.
What does the poet want from the dove?
Plot the rhyme scheme in the poem.

8. Points to Ponder
According to Keats, the bird died of grief. It mourned the freedom it had lost.
The poet thinks he had looked after the bird well. He lavished kisses on it, and gave it peas to eat. It also had his company.
The poet was sad at the death of the dove because he had loved it. He could not understand why the dove did not appreciate the advantages of the life it gave him. He cannot understand why it missed its former life.
The bird was tied with a single thread, and that too, woven by the poet. He expected the dove to see the thread as an expression of his love. He thinks that compensates for its lack of freedom.
The dove may not have lived alone in the forest. Birds live in flocks.