“Colour” by Dorethea Mackellar is a poem describing a blind woman’s perspective on colour. It shows and describes many different natural habitats throughout Australia and in vivid rich detail and colour; this makes it [Australia] in vivid rich detail and colour, and makes it seem more striking than it actually is – as this woman is blond and cam only imagine the colours. She is drawing upon the time before her blindness to seek out the colours and feelings that she acquired with them “with scarlet flame” or “coolest lilac, float on my soothed eyes.”
The purpose and theme of this poem is to show gratitude and appreciation of the world and all it’s beautiful colours. It also teaches the readers not to take them [colours] for granted as one day they may disappear and you shall only have your memories to recall upon.
There were many emotions portrayed through this poem. Mackellar managed to express empathy and blissfulness, as the reader goes through the poem. The imagery created really brings out a calm, serene and peaceful feeling as you read it, “nights of blue and pearl, and long smooth beaches” or “misty and azure-stained...” The use of word choice also makes the poem seem more realistic and catches the readers eye, “their soft dyes have steeped my soul in colour”.
This poem uses enjambment in its form, but otherwise remains to be a free verse. It may feel like a ballad with a song swing to it, but it’s not. Personal Pronouns are also used throughout the poem and are often paired with descriptive word choices. There has been a wide vocabulary used within this poem, “steeped” another word for engrained, “larkspur” a vivid purple plant instead of bright purple, “unearthly” instead of abnormal. “Sunset hearted,” “gorgeous” and “stricken” are also prime examples of word choice. The above words are very ecstatic, bright, symbolic and happy which creates meaningful and plenty of imagery in the readers head. There were only a few techniques that created imagery and support the theme, “yellow as sunburnt wheat” This was really good as it gives a comparison for the reader to compare with, in this case a visual of yellow sunburnt wheat. This realistic comparison helps the reader realise how important colours are in our every day life. They rhythm is very “perky” but smooth. Adding to the perky affect is rhyme with the stanza’s following: abcbdefegihijklkmnonpqrqstutvwxw, which eventually leads off to the next stanza low key and therefore well. There is one example of onomatepia, which helps with the imagery in the poem, “foam that creams and hisses” there is also assonance with “es” and “s” and alliteration “saffron sunset” and “dream and dawn”.
This poem was very interesting, and managed to successfully portray the themes of gratatude, appreceiation and not taking anything for granted. This was protrayed through various poetic techniques, all of which made the poem enjoyable and realistic. The main technique that made the poem as great as it was, was the word choice, as this in turn created many visual accompanyments and was one of the highlights of Mackellar's poem.