"I Shall Return By Mckay"
I shall return again; I shall return
To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes
At golden noon the forest fires burn,
Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies.
I shall return to loiter by the streams
That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses,
And realize once more my thousand dreams
Of waters rushing down the mountain passes.
I shall return to hear the fiddle and fife
Of village dances, dear delicious tunes
That stir the hidden depths of native life,
Stray melodies of dim remembered runes.
I shall return, I shall return again,
To ease my mind of long, long years of pain.
Claude McKay: Poem And Analysis
"I Shall Return By Mckay" Analysis
This by poem Claude Mckay is about sorrow and remorse and longing to be accepted. Mckay wrote this poem to illustrate his torment and his dream to return home to Jamaica. In keeping with the style of the Harlem Renaissance movement McKay uses a lot of repetition. The line “I shall return” is repeated six times, illustrating his determination. McKay wrote this poem as an English sonnet. There are fourteen lines in this poem. The fourteen lines are broken down into three quatrains, and finishes off with a rhyming couplet. It is also interesting that every line has ten syllables. There is a lot of alliteration in the poem, resulting in the iambic pentameter. Forest fires, dances, dear, and delicious are good examples. The reason for this quick pace could be to imply that McKay delight is in remembering his home country, which he is so desperate to return too. McKay is talking quickly trying to express all of the delightful images in his head. His imagery is beautiful and used in bountiful supply. ‘Golden noon’ and ‘waters rushing’ create mental pictures in the reader’s mind, allowing them to see exactly what Mckay has intended the reader to experience.