What Voice At Moth-Hour

In What Voice at Moth-Hour, Robert Penn Warren, the poem’s creator, is also its speaker. Within it, he continuously hears a voice of sorts during his expeditions through nature, which fill him with intense awe. Afterwards, the voice instructs him to return “home.” The poem is a representation of the journey of life, conveyed through Warren’s structure and symbolism. Moth-Hour’s structure is extremely strict: each of its five quatrains have a rhyme scheme of “A, B, A, B,” emphasizing the sound structure of life. In the first three, the primary line concerns the voice that the author has heard, while the rest contains vivid imagery of the location at which he heard it. Each time Warren hears the voice, he is exploring nature in some way, such as watching apple blossoms …show more content…
Additionally, all of these examples are accompanied by an extremely positive, almost mystical connotation: the apple blossoms are whiter than moth-wing, the stream is wisdomful, and finally, the forest is humbling. Each of the prior examples emphasizes the author’s absolute awe towards nature. After the poem’s tone shift in the first line of the fourth quatrain,, a picture of death starts to be painted. In it, Warren states that, “the voice that I heard once at dew-fall, I now can hear by a simple trick.” This is a depiction of Warren both growing older and more familiarized with nature. It breaks the established structure of the poem and creates the gloomy, somber tone that remains throughout the rest of it. Even towards the conclusion of his life, Warren expresses his admiration towards nature, remarking that he “Again [knows] the feel of damp grass between bare toes.” Furthermore, the final stanza elaborates that Warren is now hearing the voice for a final time. It is portrayed as the last