Before the Sun and Lament

A clear, useful PDF including an analysis of ‘Before the Sun’ and ‘Lament’, with a focus on labour, nature, celebration, destruction and grief.

This resource works well because it gives students something very manageable to hold onto while still building proper analytical ideas. It starts by setting out the main contrast between the two poems - ‘Before the Sun’ as a poem of labour, nature and celebration, and ‘Lament’ as a poem of destruction, grief and protest - then builds the comparison through short, focused sections rather than long blocks of notes.

The ‘Before the Sun’ side of the booklet tracks the poem from its vivid morning opening, through the speaker’s physical work, to the smoke, fire and final sharing of maize with the sun. It keeps drawing attention to the way labour is made to feel satisfying, energetic and even sacred. The ‘Lament’ side then shifts sharply into mourning, environmental damage, human suffering and large-scale destruction, with repeated attention to the poem’s list structure, the recurring ‘For’, and the widening sense of loss