A Poem of Changgan Time

Tic toc… tic toc… On a fundamental level, "A Poem of Changgan" is a poem about time. After all, it's a poem that covers a big chunk of the speaker's life, from her days as a child when she first meets her sweetheart, to her marriage and her months of waiting for him to come back. So the passage of time is an important theme in the poem, and it's signaled in a number of ways.

Questions About Time

1. How does the speaker use nature to signal the passage of time in this poem?
2. How do we see the speaker develop as a person from her childhood and into her teenage years and adulthood in the poem?
3. Is this speaker afraid of time? How can you tell?

Chew on This

Time is the speaker's enemy in "A Poem of Changgan."

Please—time is a source of hope for the speaker in "A Poem of Changgan."