A photograph

by- Shirley Toulson

Shirley Toulson
About the poet
-has died aged 94, was a highly regarded poet and an
innovative writer about ancient tracks and traditions
-Toulson has worked as a teacher of creative writing
for adults.
- was greatly influenced by her father, who was a
writer as well. She from Brockenhurst College in
London in the year 1953, securing a B.A. in Literature;
this was followed by Toulson's desire to take up
writing as a career. Also, she served as the editor for
many magazines.
 
Toulson’s first collection of poetry entitled Shadows in
an Orchard came out in 1960. She went on to edit
important works on Dickens, Kipling, Milton and
Shakespeare. Her noted works are The Drovers’
Roads of Wales and The Drovers Roads of South
Wales.

Toulson lived in Somerset and is said to be worked on

two books – one about the Celtic church and another
 • Memories of past
• loss and bereavement and the impact it leaves on those who are left behind.
• Inevitability of death
• Nostalgia
Nostalgia describes sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with

Themes happy personal associations. The poet acquaint us with past happy moments related to
her mother’s childhood and happy days.
• Helplessness
• Acute sense of loss
• An embodiment of time and timelessness
The poem strongly hints at the eternal state of the natural being and ephemeral state of
the humans. Sea rarely changed but the mother of the poet met the horns of death.
• A melancholic poem
A photograph is melancholic to the utmost. We are acquainted here about loss, pain and
separation. The smiling photograph creates a pang in the heart of the poet as she
remembers and misses her mother with a doleful heart. The absence of her mother in her
life has made her life a gloomy one.
Cardboard : Pasteboard or stiff paper

Paddling : Present participle form of the word “paddle”, that is, to walk with bare feet in shallow water

Terribly : Very; extremely

Word
meanings
Transient (Adj): Lasting only for a short time; impermanent

Wry (Adj): (Of a person’s face or features) twisted into an expression of disgust, disappointment, or
annoyance

Labored (Adj): Alternate (American) spelling of the word “laboured”, which is in turn the past tense of
the word “labour”, that is, to have difficulty in doing something despite working hard

Ease : Freedom from worries or problems

Circumstance : A fact or condition connected with or relevant to an event or action

 Mortality
• Youthfulness
• Life and age – Girlhood – adulthood – motherhood –
death
• Discoloured photograph – Loss of color, fading
• Technology – In the past photographs were printed on
Symbols hard card-boards but today they are sleek, thin papers
and can resist decay
• Memories
• Footprints
• Dress style

Immortality
• The sea
 • Alliteration- Twenty thirty
Silence silences
Stood still to smile
Terribly transient
Poetic My mother’s

devices • Oxymoron- Laboured ease

• Transferred epithet- Terribly transient feet

• Personification- Silence silences

• Synecdoche- Terribly transient feet
Transferred Epithet
•A transferred epithet is a figure of speech wherein an adverb or adjective is
transferred from a noun to which it belongs, to a noun with which it fits only
grammatically, but not logically or practically.
An epithet is defined as an adverb or adjective (or a phrase including either), which
changes or modifies any noun.

•For instance, you must have said, on so many occasions, “I have had such a
wonderful day!”. This is an example of a transferred epithet, because the ‘day’ was
not wonderful, but the experiences that you had that day made you feel
wonderful. The feeling of wonderfulness has been transferred from you to the day.

•The same would go for another common phrase, “I had a sleepless night”. Here
again, the night was not sleepless, you were.
 •The poet is probably in her late twenties or
early thirties. She is sad.

•With an old photograph of her mother and two of

her cousin sisters (Betty and Dolly), all of them still
little girls, she feels at loss.
Summary
•She doesn’t have any memory of her mother as the
mother had died when she was too small to
remember.

•The poem is divided into two stages – before the

mother’s death and after the mother’s death.

The cardboard shows me how it
was,
When the two girl cousins went
paddling
Each one holding one of my
mother’s hands,
And she the big girl- some
twelve years or so.
All three stood still to smile
through their hair
At the uncle with the camera.  girls to let their hair hide a side of their face. Her mother
 
A sweet face, my mother’s, that
was before I was born
And the sea, which appears to
have changed less
Washed their terribly transient
feet.
• The poet is looking at an old, discolored photograph of
her mother, which was taken when her mother was 12
years old or so. She had gone for a sea holiday with her
cousins Betty and Dolly along accompanied by her uncle
• The uncle asked them to stand together to pose for a
photograph. The poet’s mother was the eldest of the
three. Each of the cousins was holding the poet’s
mother’s hands. All the three of them stood smiling
through their hair while the photo was taken. Probably
their hair got ruffled up in the air or it was a trend among
had a sweet face. All these happened before the poet
was born. Many years passed and her mother grew up to
an adult. They all underwent changes while the sea stood
still. The mother died and Betty and Dolly must have
aged. 

Some twenty- thirty- years later
She’d laugh at the snapshot.
“See Betty
And Dolly,” she’d say, “and
look how they
Dressed us for the beach.”
 
The sea holiday
was her past, mine is her
laughter. Both wry
With the laboured ease of loss.
 
Now she’s has been dead nearly
as many years
As that girl lived. And of this
circumstance
There is nothing to say at all,
Its silence silences.
After about twenty or thirty years the poet’s mother would
look at the photograph laughing nostalgically and
remembering the past. She would appreciate the dress worn
by her cousins Betty and Dolly.
Time fled past and all those who are in the photograph
underwent changes while the sea remained the same.
Time was remembered by her mother with a fondness as
well as a sense of loss because that time would never return.
Similarly, her laughter would never return to the narrator.
The sea holiday was the narrator’s mother’s past and her
mother’s laughter is the narrator’s past.
Both these pasts, the sea holiday as well as the laughter of
her mother are remembered with a difficult and yet easy
sense of loss. 
The silence of the whole situation silences the poet and
leaves her quiet. (poetic device: alliteration and
personification. The situation has been given the human
quality of silence and the sound of ‘s’ has been repeated)
 • Poetic device: oxymoron. The coming
together of two opposite ideas to describe
the same entity. ‘Laboured’ and ‘easy’ are
opposite words describing the same entity
Line: ‘Wry ‘loss’. The loss of the holiday and the
with laughter was easy because these things have
to be accepted as a part of life.
laboured • They are merely a part of the past and
ease of loss’ cannot be brought back or relived. However,
precisely because they cannot be relived,
there will always be a tinge of difficulty
letting them go completely. They will always
be seen as loss.
 • Nature is perennial while human life is
temporary or transient. The poet uses a
transferred epithet (terribly transient feet) in
order to make this comparison and highlight
the terribly short-lived life of her mother.
Line:
Terribly • Transient means something which is
temporary or short-lived. Here, when the
transient feet author says terribly transient feet, she refers
to the ever-changing imprints of the feet left
on the sea sand, as well as transience of
human life. The sea never appears to change
but the human life is transient. It's never
constant, it will see both ups and downs.