Childhood Memories

The question of memory is a subject of much meditation for poets, often the central focus of letters, analysis, and rumination. Romantics poet, William Wordsworth wrote in his landmark essay Lyrical Ballads, that, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” Among the many strengths of poetry as an art form is in its tracing the mind’s crest and troughs. In Saphier’s poem, the imagery offered by the simple act of remembering is given center stage. In doing so, Saphier elevates the human act of remembering itself. 

In the poem’s early stanzas, the waters of the Danube River and the nearby forest are depicted as a natural environment of wonder to which the reader is being given access via the speaker’s simple but thorough descriptions. The poem presents imagery of Saphier’s childhood recollections in Romania as mysterious, and rife with symbolism. However, in the poem’s final stanza, the dramatic turn of the poem dramatically switches the tone of its rendering. When the final stanza repeats the initial gesture of remembering, it may be viewed as a sigh of defeat. The driving symbol, the Danube Rvier, switches to that of a