2.The Laburnum Top

The laburnum top
By Ted Hughes

The Laburnum Top is silent, quite still

in the afternoon yellow September sunlight,

A few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen

Till the goldfinch comes, with a twitching chirrup

A suddeness, a startlement,at a branch end

Then sleek as a lizard, and alert and abrupt,

She enters the thickness,and a machine starts up

Of chitterings, and of tremor of wings,and trillings -

The whole tree trembles and thrills

It is the engine of her family.

She stokes it full, then flirts out to a branch-end

Showing her barred face identity mask

Then with eerie delicate whistle-chirrup whisperings

She launches away, towards the infinite

And the laburnum subsides to empty

Introduction : This poem “The laburnum top” is a  beautiful poem by Ted Hughes. In this poem, the poet has used the laburnum tree and goldfinches as a symbol of life and its fluctuations. He describes the visiting of goldfinches on the laburnum tree and how she has made a nest on it. When the goldfinches have , it brings alive the  tree as the chicks start to rustle and chirp. Hughes is trying to convey the message that the life is a process of exchange and transformation . People are alive because they undergo exchange of . The goldfinches transform the tree and make it alive coma without goldfinches and that chicks the laburnum is just another tree.

Line 1-3  : In the first stanza the poet says that he saw a laburnum tree with its yellow flowers. The tree is still and looks dead like in the day of September . Even the sunlight is also yellow. As it is the time of autumn the leaves of the tree have turned yellow and its seeds have fallen off it. The yellow colour symbolises beauty (because of flowers which  have fallen off in the form of seeds,  ( because of yellow leaves) as well as silence (day time without rain or wind) .In the whole stanza ,the poet is trying to describe the miserable condition of the laburnum tree which is silent , and without seeds.(useless)

Line 4-8 : the dead like me however changes as soon as the Goldfinch comes with a twitching chirrup. Goldfinch is a bright yellow coloured bird.

The poet uses similes comparing the bird’s movement to that of a lizard to describe the alertness and abrupt movements of the bird.

The poet uses onomatopoeia to bring the poem alive. In line 8,word like to drink and trillings are onomatopoeic words. He has also used the phrase “tremor of wings” to make the poem three dimensional by adding movements to it.  The tree comes alive with all that is happening in it.

Line 9 -12: Now the whole tree trembles and thrill because of the mother bird and her young ones The poet probably wants us to feel how a dead like tree becomes alive because it has given space to the bird and her young one stop the birds have gotten shelter and the tree in return has got life
The Goldfinch is thus the engine of her family which includes the laburnum tree as well. According to the poet it fills the them with fuel i.e. It gives food to the young ones and thrill to the tree. Having done that, she against flies to a branch and non stop only had dark colours tried face is visible as it is yellow and hence becomes invisible in the yellow leaves of the tree.

Line 13- 15 : Reaching the branch-end of the tree, it makes strange but sweet chirping sounds and then begins his journey that is the sky and the laburnum tree again becomes silent and dead like.