What is a detailed analysis of the poem "Sons Departing" by John Cassidy in terms of language, structure, themes, imagery, and symbols?

Structure: The poem consists of five quatrains (four-line stanzas). The four lines are each comprised of a single sentence (this technique is called enjambment) spoken in the past tense and beginning with the plural pronoun "they" to observe the young men. The form is free verse, meaning there is no regular meter or rhyme scheme.

Language: Cassidy intersperses descriptions of the natural world (see below in imagery) with that of the depersonalization...

Structure: The poem consists of five quatrains (four-line stanzas). The four lines are each comprised of a single sentence (this technique is called enjambment) spoken in the past tense and beginning with the plural pronoun "they" to observe the young men. The form is free verse, meaning there is no regular meter or rhyme scheme.

Language: Cassidy intersperses descriptions of the natural world (see below in imagery) with that of the depersonalization that results from entering the larger world.  The hedges are "clipped privets" and the young men who are first described as just clearing the top of the hedges with hair "blond with sunlight" resolve, in the final stanza, to "sunlit points" as they fade into the distance.

Themes: John Cassidy's "Sons, Departing" speaks to loss and separation and the pain parents feel as their grown children leave their daily care.  The speaker observes at least two young men taking leave, presumably, of their seaside home.  Their destination is unknown--it could be war or the larger world generally.

Imagery: The poem relies heavily on natural imagery; examples by stanza, quoted, are:

1. "hedges," "sunlight," "flowers"


2. "sea," "air," "sky," clouds"


3. "privets" (hedge)


4. "gulls," "wind"


5. "sunlit," "random patterns of the sea"

The natural imagery contrasts with the "clipped privets" and the straight line of the young men's path.

Symbols: The young men head toward a distant sea that perhaps symbolizes the profundity of the separation the observer feels as the young men depart. The observation that the young men don't look back and the last line, "their walk was one-dimensional and final," deepen the pathos of the idea that an irrevocable line has been crossed.