Point of View

The poem is written in first person point of view. It makes use of past, present, and future tenses over the course of its length. The first person perspective is the most common in poetry. It presents the poem as being narrated by its speaker, who is also intimately involved in its events. This perspective creates a sense of intimacy and closeness between speaker and reader.

One notable feature of the poem’s use of first person is that it varies between first person singular and first person plural. The former, which is distinguished by the use of the pronouns “I/me/myself,” is by far the more common in poetry, as it presents the perspective of a singular speaker as a character in the poem. However, Philips also makes use of the first person plural, distinguished by the pronoun set “we/our/ourselves.” For...