Falling+Leaves

== =‘The Falling Leaves’= =Margaret Postgate Cole=

The actual falling leaves in this poem symbolise the falling solidiers who are dying in the battlefield. The poet uses what we call in poetry an extended metaphor. The leaves are the soldiers. The persona is riding a horse in the autumn time. She observes the leaves turning brown and falling from the trees and her mind is cast to the young men fighting and literally falling to their deaths at war.

The poem is written in one sentence, as one long stanza consisting of twelve lines. This is because it is a single thought which has consumed her there and then.

Usually when leaves die in nature they are swept away by the wind, but these leaves are falling like snowflakes from the trees on a ‘still afternoon’ and the speaker finds it odd. This prompts her to consider how the soldiers die ‘slain by no wind or age or pestilence’.

__**Glossary**__
 * Thence: and then, for that reason
 * Gallant: brave, chivalrous, stately (representative of the country)
 * Pestilence: fatal epidemic disease