NPPF: Notes C.1-4 - C.42

[Terrance]

> 
> Don't you have to understand the literal meaning of the words to understand
> the other thing they are pointing to? Surely there is a reason the literal
> event is placed in a canto which locates the event in his childhood in his
> bedroom.




Canto One opens with a reflection on the poet's childhood. 

Canto Two opens with a reflection on youth. 

Canto Three with a reflection on marriage and family. 

Canto Four with a reflection on artistic production. 

But of course they overflow and flow over one another. 


One reason that comes to mind is that poet wants to say that he has
always been a poet. 
He's got a romantic poet's sight, insight, view, a child's view. 

 Canto One is quite visual and reflective in a childish romantic sort of
way. no? 

He was not merely the  shadow of the wax wing
he was the smudge of ashen  fluff
and he flew in a reflected sky. 

And the use he makes of the glass is quite imaginative

from inside the glass he'd duplicate himself
he'd uncurtain the night 
and with his imaginative view of things 
hang the furniture above the grass
and when the snow covered his view of the lawn
stand the chair and bed out on the snow in a crystal land. 

Next, he talks about retaking the falling flakes of snow
retake, in the photographic sense I presume, but also in the romantic
sense of recapture ... and his sense that the night unites the viewer
and the view sounds an awful lot like Yeat's dancer and the the dance. 

shadow, azure, window, ashen, reflected, .... all eyes and visions ....