Poem Analysis of James Joyce - Claire Dennis

I HEAR AN ARMY by James Joyce

I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armor, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame.
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

In red is the author’s use of end rhyme.
In orange is the author’s use of repetition.
In purple is the author’s use of personification.
In blue is the author’s use of similies.
Underlined is the author’s point of view. In this poem, he uses first-person.
In green is the author’s use of the sense of sound.


ANALYSIS

In the poem "I Hear An Army" by James Joyce, the poet describes a nightmare about charioteers clad in black armor and with long green hair, riding out of the sea and charging towards him. He uses intense, graphic imagery to portray the powerful image of an army of horses galloping in battle.

Joyce opens the poem with sound, writing “I hear an army charging upon the land”. He employs music in his poem, using his words as lyrics that accompany the underlying beat of his stanzas.
In the second stanza, he uses abrupt, short phrases that emphasize his descriptions of the horses and charioteers. Along with his violent imagery, this stocatta-like phrasing establishes a rhythm for the poem. Maybe it matches the rhythm of the horses’ hooves as they gallop across the shore. Maybe it’s the loud, fast beating of his own anxious heart.

Joyce uses repetition in the fourth stanza to emphasize the “clanging, clanging upon the heart”, which is the action of the charioteers as they “cleave the gloom of dreams”. Again the beat of the poem is detected and builds momentum in the reader’s mind.

The threatening force is portrayed in this poem through the charioteers. Joyce continually refers to the soldiers as “they”, using parallel sentence structure in the third stanza to describe what they do and why they are so fearful. He says the charioteers “come shaking in triumph”, making the charioteers seem powerful and frightening.

His fierce imagery and intricate rhythm in “I Hear an Army” allows Joyce to convince the reader of any emotion he wishes to portray. Although a relatively short poem, “I Hear an Army” certainly does not lack ambition.