Hilda Doolittle or H.D was born in an environment and oppression and secrecy she was brought up as such in Bethlehem.

This oppression sadly continued throughout her life though not physically but she never had the opportunity to find a voice that was away from the oppression of men or the society. All her life she felt tied by the name that a man (Ezra Pound) picked out for her and wished to be free and had her own free will. Her collection of poems pictures her inner struggles, the grief and repression that women go through. Her imagist poetry for which she was known is one of the active movements in poetry that was known in the modern age, where the poem was free verse just like H.D wishes to be free and unattached to the constraints of society. In her images she wanted to catch her readers attention and convey the deep emotions that she felt, she wanted to be recognized as a significant feminist voice and just be heard. From this point we can realize how clarifying the poem Mid-day is of H.Ds feelings and her life experiences. The poem is made to capture the emotion that H.D is feeling which are compared with and described by natural images. In the first stanza the narrator expresses the surprise or sudden hit she got from the thoughts that sprang to her mind, and she compares her thoughts to light showing how they eliminate her mind. She continues saying how she is startled and compares herself to a leaf that crackles on the floor for she is nervous and confused, not knowing at this moment what to do she feels defeated and distressed. She then continues to relate her thoughts to other images and describes them as black seeds that are tossed about by the wind. Her thoughts are sent for she can never express herself freely so they are scattered in vain and that is probably why she chose the color black to attribute to the

seeds that become shriveled since theyre not used and dont make a difference. These thoughts that the narrator has tears her apart, for it aches her not to be able to use them and present them as hers. She also fears the fever of her thoughts that is the strength of them because she cant show them to the world and thus she becomes scattered and confused in the whirl of these thoughts. In line thirteen she maintains the image of the shriveled seeds and depicts them as split on the path, which could probably mean that her thoughts and words are broken or wrecked on the path to be known and spread to the world. In line fifteen dust symbolizes the patriarchal society that demeans women and closes upon the freshness of their thoughts and ideas just like dust covers the freshness of the green grass. Also the grapes under the crackled leaf symbolize the women that are kept below men and are not allowed to express themselves freely, the image here is of a grape that slips thus falling lower to the place where men want to see women, which is lower than them. She then turns to the contrast of the shriveled seeds, and that is the strong and tall poplar tree on the hill. The poet shows a stark contrast between the great and bright poplar tree and the seeds that are herself and her thoughts that perish in the ground and get lost in the tight crevices of the rocks or because of the firm grip of society. This poem was intended to express H.Ds feelings and free them to be read by the world. She wants to convey how fragmented yet lonely she felt like the seeds that are isolated among the cervices of the rocks. H.D uses a lot of repetitions in the whole poem. The phrase the leaf crackles is repeated twice which emphasizes the idea of her nervousness and maybe confusion. The word that is

mostly repeated throughout the entire poem is seed which is the image that presents her scattered self and ideas to make it absolutely clear to the reader the state of loss and defeat that she is going through. Even the adjective black is repeated twice, black seeds and blackened stalks which is also used as evidence to the sense of despair the narrator is in. The repetition of the word shriveled indicates the spending of her ideas till theyre dry, shriveled, and useless like the seeds. Poplar is repeated to amplify the contrast between the seeds or herself and the strong Poplar that spreads out on its free will. Alliteration is used in the poem where there is repetition of the s sound at the beginning of words (startled, split, slight, seeds, scattered, spent, stalks, spreads, stones). The repeated s sound is like the sound of the wind, the scattering seeds and the crackling leaves which serves the imagery and solidifies the picture that the poet wants to clarify. Her poem is far away from generalizations and abstractions. There are no metaphors and similes used but the whole idea is shown by using stark and realistic images. There are also no illustrations and explanations whatsoever, her poems were always depended on the power of the image to convey her meaning and emotions. H.D always strove to find a voice for women and in her poems she found that voice. Hilda Doolittle always felt spoken for by men and especially Ezra Pound that chose her pen name and that is why she gave effort to have one of the strongest feminine voices in history. Mid-day is a poem from the heart that strongly showed the undermining of women and their imprisonment in the in their own thoughts.