Eden Rock
Charles Causley * Track #9 On Past and Present: Poetry Anthology
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Album Past and Present: Poetry Anthology
- #1
When We Two PartedLord Byron
- #2
Love’s PhilosophyPercy Bysshe Shelley
- #3
Porphyria’s LoverRobert Browning
- #4
Neutral TonesThomas Hardy
- #5
The Farmer’s BrideCharlotte Mew
- #6Eden Rock
Charles Causley
- #7
FollowerSeamus Heaney
- #8
Mother, Any Distance Greater than a Single SpanSimon Armitage
- #9
Before You Were MineCarol Ann Duffy
- #10
Winter SwansOwen Sheers
- #11
Climbing My GrandfatherAndrew Waterhouse
- #12Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
- #13
LondonWilliam Blake
- #14
Extract from the PreludeWilliam Wordsworth
- #15My Last Duchess
Robert Browning
- #16
The Charge of the Light BrigadeAlfred Lord Tennyson
- #17
ExposureWilfred Owen
- #18
Storm on the IslandSeamus Heaney
- #19
Bayonet ChargeTed Hughes
- #20Remains
Simon Armitage
- #21
War PhotographerCarol Ann Duffy
- #22
TissueImtiaz Dharker
- #23
ÉmigréeCarol Rumens
- #24
Checking Out Me HistoryJohn Agard
- #25
KamikazeBeatrice Garland
Eden Rock by Charles Causley
Performed by
Charles CausleyAbout
In ‘Eden Rock’, a lyrically moving poem, the poet imagines he is on a family picnic as a child. Though in the present tense — which gives the scene a sense of immediacy — it is clearly an idealised fantasy. His parents, aged twenty-five and twenty-three are too young to have a son who could write po...
Eden Rock Annotated
They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden
Rock:
My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet
My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,
Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.
Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.
She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw
Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.
The sky whitens as if lit by three suns
My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
Over the drifted stream. My father spins
A stone along the water. Leisurely
They beckon to me from the other bank.
I hear them call, 'See where the stream path is!
Crossing is not as hard as you might think.
I had not thought it would be like this.
Eden Rock Q&A
What would be considered this poem's form?
The section in the summary marked ‘Structure’ explains this. It isn’t formally structured like a sonnet or villanelle. Apart from the last two stanzas it comprises quatrains, with loose assonant and consonant rhyme. There is a free-floiwng pace, helped along by the enjambed lines.
What tense is it written in
The present tense. The last line is the past historic.
Are the "three plates" and "three suns" symbolic to the Holy Trinity?
Yes, please see the annotation which enlarges upon this.
Is the poem Lyric or Dramatic monologue?
It is lyrical in the sense that it describes feelings in a gentle and beautiful way. Dramatic monologues usually use the voice of a person who isn’t the poet. We can assume in “Eden Rock” that this is a poem that comes from the poet’s own personal life. Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is an ex...