"Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods..."
("The Widow's Lament in Springtime" - William Carlos Williams)
Symbols are extremely important to this poem about death and misery. In the excerpt above, "meadows" is mentioned as a symbol of moving in a new direction. This location is also related to another symbol in the story, the "yard." The meadow and yard both represent life when the woman was happy and her husband was alive. However, that joyous "fire" now ends with the loss of her husband. No longer can she enjoy the spring with all the colors and flowers that it brings. The "woods" in the excerpt represent the woman's despair. The two locations of the "woods" and "marsh" hint at dark and depressing places. This easily observed because the woods are described as being heavy which seems to be an odd adjective choice. However, heavy literally means "something of great weight, difficult to life or move." Sorrow is something that is difficult to shake in a person's life; memories of a person will last forever. The marsh is obviously negative because the woman hints that she would kill herself before even attempting to find hope. It is interesting how the meadows are at the edge of the dark woods, almost as if life is the meadows and the woods represent death.
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