What does the poet mean by 'their senses eroded beyond fear'?
Answers
When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear. When great souls die,the air around us becomeslight, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly,see witha hurtful clarity.
Answer:
The poem, When Great Trees Fall opens with the metaphor of the tree that falls. It, of course, symbolizes the loss of a great person. When a great tree falls, it is felt for miles around. In the same way, when a great soul departs, the effects are felt deep and far. The image of the “rocks on distant hills shudder[ing]” symbolizes the ways in which the death causes people, even distant people, to feel despair and shudder.
The lions which “hunker down” reflect the way some people will react to the loss. The loss causes a certain amount of fear and the pressing need to hide away and escape to safety. Only, there is no escape from the feeling of despair that comes from losing someone great. The speaker’s use of nature and animals to create the image of the effects of death allows the reader to connect with the feeling through the visual imagery presented