Introduction (I) - Language, tone and structure

Language and tone in Introduction (I)

Valleys wild – This reference establishes the context as rural/rustic. This suggests the poem will be pastoral, evoking an idealised world of simplicity and innocence.

stain'd the water clear - Critics have argued over the implications of this:

• Read at a literal level, it would merely refer to the colouring of the water to make ink
• Some, however, have seen negative connotations in ‘stain'd'; the piper is destroying the clear purity of the water in making ink to write
• They see this as the poet corrupting the purity of the poet's vision by the act of writing, i.e. that any attempt at poetic communication is a distortion of reality. The reader should therefore approach the poems with this awareness in mind.

The vocabulary is restricted and simple – ‘piping', ‘happy', ‘merry', ‘pleasant', ‘glee', ‘laughing', ‘joy'. This simplicity is heightened by repetition of a few words – ‘pipe', ‘piper', ‘piping', ‘chear', ‘happy'. This all suggests an experience of simple, unalloyed happiness. Nothing negative is allowed to darken the atmosphere. It establishes the voice of the poem as that of a child

Structure and versification

• The metre is trochaic (stressed, unstressed) and ends with a stressed syllable. This gives it a positive-sounding tone
• The pattern of repeated ‘So' and then ‘And' suggests the child-like simplicity of the piper:
  • The repetition of ‘So' suggests his obedience - he is asked to act, so he does so
  • The repetition of ‘and' in connecting sentences is characteristic of a young child's way of writing and emphasises the absence of any complexity
• It enhances the impression that the voice of the poem as that of a child.

• Tweet