1

S Structure

M Meaning

I Imagery

L Language

E Effect

Structure

The structure refers to the physical and grammatical composition of the poem. For this element, students should
consider the following for their poetry analysis:

 number of verses/stanzas
 comparative length of verses/stanzas (regular or irregular)
 line length
 rhyme scheme
 repetition, including refrains
 enjambment
 sentence structure and grammar
 punctuation or lack thereof

Meaning
In identifying the meaning, students should be able to articulate the basic subject of a poem along with its
deeper significance. To truly capture meaning, a reader must also be able to accurately identify a poem's
message or theme. Often this requires working out a poem’s figurative meaning. In Robert Frost’s “The Road
Not Taken”, for example, the basic subject conveys a man walking in the woods who has difficulty deciding
which path to take. To fully understand the poem, however, readers must recognize that the forest paths
represent the journey of life, and the poem’s message reminds us that each choice in life has irrevocable
consequences. It is often useful to establish a poem’s basic meaning and then revisit step M for a poem’s deeper
significance following further analysis of other elements (steps ILE).

Imagery

Imagery refers to language that appeals to one of the five senses - touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight. Imagery
helps strengthen a writer's description by providing physical details that enable the reader to better imagine the
scene or understand the speaker's feelings. Imagery can contain figurative language, but does not have to, as in
the examples below, taken from “City Autumn” by Joseph Moncure March.

No figurative language: A thin wind beats/ Old dust and papers down gray streets

Figurative language: A snowflake falls like an errant feather

Both examples of imagery in “City Autumn” give us a visual picture of the autumn weather. One does so with a
literal description and the other with an effective simile.

By adding imagery to a particular object, person, or scene, the writer heightens the importance of that detail and
helps add negative or positive value to it.
2

Language

Language refers to a writer's diction, or word choice. Use of figurative language should be noted here and
interpreted, along with sound devices, repetition, the speaker' dialect, and particularly significant words.
Students may find the questions below useful when analyzing poetic language.

 Does the poem contain metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole or other figurative language?
 Does the poem play with sound using alliteration, assonance, repetition, or rhyme?
 Are there any words that are particularly sophisticated or especially basic? Does the rhyme, for
example, depend on words like “hog” and “dog” or “absolution” and “circumlocution”?
 Does the poem contain formal or informal dialect? Does the speaker seem to come from a particular
region, country, or cultural background?

Effect
In determining a poem's effect, readers can include their initial reactions. How do they feel after reading it?
What is the mood of the poem? The readers should also review this element after studying the other four
(SMIL). In this way, students can consider the effect of the poem's structure, imagery, language, and message as
they work together.

Unending Love
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,

Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you

The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

One of the elements of Tagore's writing is the playing around with the concept of time. Tagore is
interesting in being able to identify conditions in the present tense and examine how these "moments"
are part of a larger scope, something that reflects the past and the future. In doing so, Tagore
reconfigures time and our perception of it.  The experiences we experience now is a part of something
else, something larger, and in this we are enveloped with who we are now, who we might have been,
and who we might be.  This is where "Unending Love" finds itself.

The love that the speaker is experiencing with his beloved is something that is of the ages.  This
vision of love is one that is experienced right now, in its current form, but was something that is
indelibly imprinted in the consciousness of time.  The idea of "age after age" and the concept of love
3

being "remade" almost brings to life that there is a spiritual connection between the two lovers, or at
least felt by the speaker, that they have stood in their midst of this love "before" in a previous time. 
While the love that is spoken is specific between two people, it is also reflective of a universal
construct that applies to "millions of lovers," bringing out the idea that the love shared is in fact,
"unending."

One of the implications of this is that individuals are not in ownership of the love they share.  Rather,
they are a part of something infinitely more cosmic, an experience that is a small morsel of a larger
feast. It is a very interesting conception of the individual self that is rendered in the poem.  The
speaker articulates a condition of love that is felt towards another, indicating it is a part of something
larger.  However, herein lies a potential paradox in that while it is expressed as something the speaker
feels and something that is experienced, it is not the speaker's, and it does not belong to him.  It is
something that is universal, and something of which he and his love is a small part and has been a
small part for some time.  In this, there is a vision of love that encompasses both the specific and the
universal, the present and all of time.  Tagore's stamp in the poetry of love is to both praise and
demystify the individual at the same time