Structure and Language

Structure

The poem has a mainly regular pattern: the stanzasstanzas: Lines of poetry that make up a unit; verses. consist alternately of 4 lines and 6 lines, although the lines are of varying lengths. It ends with a rhyming couplet [rhyming couplet: Pairs of lines of poetry that rhyme and have the same length and metric pattern. ].

Perhaps Clarke chose this structure because, in a way, it reflects what the poem suggests about memory - the main points are fixed but the details are looser.

Picture courtesy of Zara Tcherneva

Language

Think about how the language the poet uses helps to convey her ideas. Here are some points to consider:

• The title is the scene of the near-tragedy, Cold Knap Lake, an artificial lake in a park in Glamorgan. It is haunting that the name of the lake includes the word Cold - it is a word we associate with fear and death, ideas that are explored in the poem.
• The poem is written in the past tense [tense: The verb formation which describes the time at which the action occurred, eg past, present or future. ] because it is a narrative [narrative: The sequence of events in a plot; a story. ], dealing with events in Clarke's memory. Certain details, those that made a big impression on her, such as the appearance of the girl when she was pulled from the water 'dressed in water's long green silk' (line 3) are described in detail, while other aspects are left vague. What effect does this give? What does it suggest about memory?
• Apart from the poet's family, the characters are anonymous [anonymous: A text written by a person of unknown name or identity. ]. We hear about the "crowd" (lines 1 and 9) and the "child" (line 2) but we know little more about them - they are strangers to us, as they were to Clarke.
• The first stanza initially makes us believe that the child is already dead, "a drowned child" (line 2), then tentatively suggests that there is some hope: "she lay for dead" (line 4). This is a dramatic [dramatic: To do with a drama or play. A description or portrayal that is vivid and immediate - as if it is being acted out in front of you. Something that is tense or exciting. ] way of showing what the people at the scene must have felt: they thought that the girl was dead, then realised that she was just alive. (For here means 'as if she was'.)
• The person given the most vivid description is of Clarke's mother, since this is the scene that Clarke remembers most clearly. She was the "heroine" (line 6) - not just for Clarke, but in the eyes of the crowd. We can picture "her wartime cotton frock" (line 7): clothes were rationed, so the dress was home made. (Frock is an old-fashioned word for dress.)
• Just when we have been led to believe we are reading a 'happy ever after' story of rescue, we are told the girl was taken home and "thrashed" (line 14). We are not told specifically why she was beaten - perhaps her parents were angry with her for the trouble she had caused, or found that hitting her was a way of venting the anxiety they had when they realised she was missing. Either way, the beating troubled Clarke so much that she wonders whether it actually happened - "Was I there?" (line 15).
• There are a number of overtones of a fairy story in the poem - a miraculous rescue, a heroine, a poor family. Clarke explores this idea even further in stanzastanza: A group of lines of poetry that make up a unit - like a paragraph in a piece of prose; a verse. 4, where she wonders about memory and what affects it. She says, "When you recapture a memory from early childhood, you're sometimes not sure if you were really there, if someone told you about it, or if you read it in a story. I'd read fairy stories and legends about people drowning in mysterious lakes. I'd seen a famous painting of a drowned girl floating in a brook .."
• The final couplet is puzzling: "All lost things lie under closing water" (line 21) - we wonder what type of things Clarke means. She is presumably not talking about objects. Is she referring to lost memories? Missed chances? Regrets? What do you think? Of course, the "poor man's daughter" is not lost at all, but saved. Does this alter your reading of the ending? Clarke writes, "The rhyme [rhyme: In poetry, the use of words which have the same or a similar sound - eg 'flow' and 'bow' - to form a pattern of sound. ] at the end connects the real event with a fairy story, I think."