Analysis

The poem begins grimly, with the details of a drowned child being pulled from the lake. She is described as metaphorically dressed in the ‘silk’ of green weed from the lake, as if the lake has clothed her in its’ costume, showing that she is meant to be there.

The words ‘she laid for dead’ make it seem as if she looks dead, but isn’t actually.

Clarke’s mother is described as a ‘heroine’ in the second stanza as she gives the child the kiss of life and brings her out of her drowned state.

The description of this event tells us the war-time setting, the fact that she is wearing a ‘wartime cotton frock’ which is soaked as she has pulled the child out of the lake. There is a distancing between herself and the child as it is a ‘stranger’s child’ who she gives ‘her breath’ to. There is a sense of everyone watching, doing little else but watching with ‘dread’.

The child seems metaphorically like a lamb in the third stanza as when she breathes she is ‘bleating’ and seems ‘rosy’ as she is red from being in the lake, as her skin will have gone this colour.

She is taken to a ‘poor house’ by Clarke’s father, which makes her thrash about, as if drowning again, as she does not want to go there. The fact that she thrashes about in this way emphasises how little she actually wants to go there. The poor house is a place where the destitute and very poor are taken, those who have no family.

The fourth stanza questions whether Clarke was actually at the scene at all, in a sense of disbelief. The surface of the lake is described as ‘troubled’ as if something else lurks under there, ‘shadowy’ beneath what we can see: the willow tree, the mud and the swans.

The willow is personified as having ‘dipped fingers’ as if grabbing whatever is underneath the surface, adding a sinister feel to the poem. The final brief stanza gives a sense that the lake contains many lost things, just like ‘the poor man’s daughter’ as if she is lost, but what has the daughter lost?

It seems it could be a number of things: her mind (she has gone mad), her dignity, her family. She has lost hope, coming from such a poor background (poor must be significant as it is mentioned twice in the poem).