Here is a link to the poem Death by Anonymous.

All cultures have their oral stories and songs. Many of these were told around the fire at night-time and passed down from generation to generation. This poem, ‘Death’, is an example of a ballad – a narrative song – which was passed down orally for a long time. This is why the author of this poem is unknown and therefore anonymous. It was only written down and translated from Welsh into English long after it was created.

A narrative poem tells a story from the speaker’s point of view. As this poem was usually sung, it has a strong rhythm and a fixed rhyme scheme. It’s divided into five stanzas of equal length. The speaker deals with the subject of death. He is frightened of death and tries to run away from it. Of course, he can’t and so death inevitably catches up with him. Although the subject matter is serious and the speaker is frightened, his antics in trying to escape Death are humourous.

The poem starts off in real story-telling mode, ‘One night as I lay on my bed’ and immediately the attention of the speaker’s audience’s is captured. He is having trouble sleeping, ‘And sleep on fleeting foot had fled’. He personifies sleep as a person who has run away and alliterates the soft ‘f’ sound to show how quickly it has got away. He gives the reader the reason why he’s not sleeping. His ‘mind was heavy’ as he is worried about death. It’s metaphorically ‘heavy’ as a bag might be if it was full of items. He’s thinking about ‘my last journey’. This is another metaphor which he uses to describe death. After death, there will be no more going anywhere. It’s also a euphemism as he avoids saying the more direct word, death, to soften its impact.

In the second stanza, the speaker continues with his story. He gives up on sleep and asks someone to bring him water, ‘that I might wash, and so feel better’. It’s rather humourous that he tries to wash death away. Inevitably he is unsuccessful: ‘But before I wet my eyes so dim, / There was Death on the bowl’s rim.’ So there is death waiting for him on the edge of the water bowl! Notice that he says his eyes are ‘so dim’. Is this because it’s dark, or is he old and that’s why he’s so worried about death? Death is personified as a person who has come to fetch him, so he gives it a capital letter throughout the rest of the poem.

In this stanza, and the others that follow, the speaker repeats the word ‘But’ at the beginning of the 3rd line to show how all his attempts at escaping death are futile.

In the third stanza, the speaker tries to avoid death by going to pray in Church, ‘thinking sure he’d keep away’. A church was holy ground, and it was a place that people fled to in the past to be safe. But he has no such luck with death! ‘But before I got on to my feet, / There sat Death upon my seat.’ Once again, Death (personified) outsmarts him and is waiting for him next to his seat. Even Christians die, not matter how much you pray for it not to happen! This reinforces the theme that it is foolish to even try to escape death as everyone dies at some point.

The speaker then hurries to his room, ‘To my chamber then I hied’. He refers to death as ‘he’ when he writes, ‘Thinking sure he’d keep outside’. He thinks that if he locks the door, he will be safe from death but, of course, ‘Death came from underneath the floor.’ Death isn’t restricted by the norms of what people can do so it’s ironic that the speaker thinks a locked door will protect him. Again, there is a simplistic humour in anyone thinking that locking a door can keep death out.

As a last resort, the speaker decides to go ‘to sea’ in a rowboat, ‘Thinking sure Death can’t float’. He thinks that he can escape Death at sea but, again, escaping death is impossible. The poem concludes with the inevitability of this, ‘But before I reached the deep, / Death was captain of the ship.’ Here, ‘deep’ means the depth of the sea. So, he didn’t manage to go far before Death, personified as the captain of the ship in the final line of the poem, finds him. Death is in charge and the speaker can’t escape him, no matter how hard he tries. This, then, is the last journey taken by the speaker as death claims him.

It’s clear that this ballad was sung to people over the centuries to highlight the frightening reality that there is no-one or no way anyone can escape death. This would have brought fear into the hearts of the audience, but the elements of humour and the rhythm and regular rhyme would also have entertained the crowd. Perhaps it was also a message to enjoy life while you can!