Analysis of She Tells her Love While Half-Asleep by Robert Graves

She Tells her Love While Half-Asleep

By Robert Graves

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

This is a short poem by Robert Graves, a British poet during the Victorian Era.  It begins with the title of the poem.  There's eight syllables in the first line.  The second line has half the first.  Creating a nice symmetry in rhythm and tempo.  The third line has six syllables and has a clipped tone due to the compound half-words.   The there's an alliterative duo in words and whispered. The fourth line parallels the sleep of the unnamed woman with that of the earth, sexing the earth as female.  While the woman whispers her love during her sleep, the earth is paralleling this by putting out grass and flowers during it's winter sleep.  The miracle of all this is that it's doing this during the snow. We can extrapolate if we take the metaphor of the sleeping woman as mother earth putting out grass and flowers despite the snow, that there is something akin to snow falling in the life of the half-asleep woman.  It's only hinted at, but what it is doesn't seem to be important to the narrative.  Only that there is a hint of it, and only that she yet tells her love while half asleep despite whatever the snow in her life may be.