Point of View

“The Swan,” in its highly imaginative, creative, and even occasionally offbeat imagery causes the poem to take on a lyrical and subjective quality (4-5). For the speaker to use such imitative language suggests the tantalizing existence of a first-person perspective behind the voice of the poem. Yet, this intense implication of a first-person perspective turns out to be a bit of a bait and switch – “I” seems to hover just out of reach in the highly specific and subjective questions that occur one after another throughout the body of the poem.

In fact, the main subject of the questions is almost always the second person pronoun “you." This blurring of selfhood suggests a perception of nature based in community rather than misanthropy. Though the speaker’s enjoyment of the swan takes place within the pastoral calm and solitude of nature, this does not mean that...