The Speaker

The speaker in "All Hallows" mediates the landscape and ritual exchange that takes place. While not identified as a particular person, the disembodied voice imbues the poem with an ethereal, unearthly quality. The reader is invited to fill in missing details. For example, the speaker does not explicitly state what or who the "little one" is. This detachment enhances the poem's ambiguity. Overall, the speaker embraces a liminal presence that moves between the physical and symbolic, the internal and the external, and life and death.

The Oxen

In the first stanza, the speaker describes oxen sleeping "in their blue yoke" in a scene of harvest (3). While this detail may appear harmless for readers unfamiliar with agricultural work, in reality it creates a puzzling tension because animals are yoked for the purpose of work, not sleep. A yoke is a wooden frame that joins two animals at the...