"The most general thing to be said about John Crowe Ransom is that he is a dualist" (Buffington 1). He believed that man must be content with the duality of all things. A particular topic that ransom felt most comfortable was the duality of life and death. He described it as "the great subject of poetry, the most serious subject" (Brooks 1). In the elegy "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter", John Crowe Ransom deals with vexation resulting from a pre-adolescent girl's vivacity in life in proportion to her vacancy in death. Before being vexed, we are astonished by the child's death.

Because the occasion of the elegy is given by its title, "Bells for John Whiteside's daughter", the first stanza is freely open to give reason to why her death "astonishes us all" (Bradford 1):

"There was such speed in her little body,

And such lightness in her footfall,

It is...