“Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)” Summary

• In the last letter I got from the battlefields of France, you said thanks for the foil-wrapped Easter egg that I hid in the box of apples I sent you (since apples are your very favorite fruit). You found the egg on the Monday after Easter. In your letter to me, you said, "I'll always celebrate Easter Monday from now on—it was such a beautiful morning." Then you told me that a huge battle was about to happen, and said: "This is the night before. Goodbye—and please send me a letter soon."

  That Easter Monday was a day to celebrate. It was such a beautiful morning. We planted the year's first seeds in our garden, and out in the orchard, the apple blossoms were blooming. It was the night before the battle. I have written you three letters that you will never read.

“Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)” Themes

• 

  Grief and Shock

  “Easter Monday” recounts a tragic true story from poet Eleanor Farjeon’s life: the death of her friend Edward Thomas on a World War I battlefield. In this sonnet, the speaker (a voice for Farjeon herself) remembers the “last letter” that her soldier friend sent her from his deployment in France, and quietly marvels at the fact that he had been dead for a whole day before she knew he was gone. The poem captures the shock and strangeness of grief, the difficulty of coming to terms with the reality that a loved one is dead.

  The speaker remembers that the “last letter that [she] had” from her soldier friend was a thank-you note for a box of apples she’d sent him—a present in which she’d squirreled away a “silver Easter egg” for him to discover. He was delighted by this sweet gesture, and thanked her for making the day he found it a “day for praise,” a special pleasure in the midst of a grueling soldier’s life. Alas, this letter wasn’t just the “last” in the sense of “most recent,” but the “last” in the sense of “final”: her friend would be killed the very next day in the “coming battle” his letter warned of.

  The speaker, however, wouldn’t learn her friend had been killed until the day after his death. She remembers unwittingly writing him “three letters that [he] will not get” and enjoying a “lovely morning” in her garden on “Easter Monday,” the very day that he died. Her descriptions of her blissfully ignorant happiness—and her continued insistence on addressing her friend directly as “you” all through this poem, even though he can never respond to her again—suggest just how difficult it is to confront the reality of death. It seems impossible to the speaker that such a dear friend should disappear in an instant. Yet this is the painful reality that she (like so many grieving loved ones of World War I soldiers) must grapple with.

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• 

  Hope and Consolation

  This sad true story is set on and around Easter Monday, 1917—the day the poet Edward Thomas (the “E. T.” this sonnet memorializes) died on a World War I battlefield. While the poem focuses on the speaker’s grief over her lost friend, its allusions to Easter and springtime rebirth suggest the speaker’s quiet hope that new life and consolation might grow out of terrible pain.

  Hoping to cheer her soldier friend up, the poem’s speaker sends him a gift: a “silver Easter egg” hidden away in a “box of apples.” He finds the egg “the Monday before Easter” and delightedly writes back: “I will praise Easter Monday now.” He’s making a joke there; in the Christian tradition, Easter Monday is the Monday after Easter, not before. The point he’s making is that finding this treat made him feel as if that Monday were really Easter, the happiest and holiest day in the Christian calendar.

  And Easter might feel particularly meaningful both to the soldier and to the loving friend who grieves him. In the Easter story, Christ is crucified, suffers terribly, and dies, only to rise from the grave and ascend into heaven. As the Christian tradition has it, this sacrifice redeems all humanity’s sins and opens the gates to eternal life. While the speaker never directly reflects on the Easter narrative, the poem’s allusions to the holiday hint that this story might offer the only crumb of hope the speaker can find in her grief. Losing a friend to violence is a bleak and devastating experience, but the Easter story offers the hope that suffering might somehow, one day, turn to new life.

  The poem’s natural imagery similarly gestures toward the hope of resurrection. In line 2, the speaker sends her friend a “box of apples”; in line 13, she admires the “apple-bud” on the trees in her orchard, the flowers that promise more apples to come. The “earliest seeds” the speaker plants in her garden also speak of springtime renewal.

  In this sad poem, both spirituality and nature hint at consolation even in the midst of terrible grief. Eastertime and its blossoming flowers offer the speaker hope that her friend won’t be lost to her forever, and that her pain might mysteriously transform into joy somewhere down the line.

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)”

• Lines 1-4

  In the last letter that I had from France
  You thanked me for the silver Easter egg
  Which I had hidden in the box of apples
  You liked to munch beyond all other fruit.

  “Easter Monday” begins with a sweet anecdote. The speaker describes the “last letter that I had from France”: a thank-you note from a friend, to whom she'd sent a box of apples with a “silver Easter egg” hidden inside. The speaker and her correspondent clearly know each other well and have an affectionate, playful friendship. The speaker knows, for example, that her friend likes apples “beyond all other fruit”—they’re his very favorite—and that he’ll appreciate the whimsy of finding an Easter treat squirreled away in the box.

  The casual, colloquial tone here likewise suggests that this pair are close. The speaker doesn’t say that her friend enjoys apples, or that they’re his favorite, but that they’re the fruit he likes to “munch” best of all—a chummy word choice that suggests there’s no false formality between the two.

  But sadly, in spite of the playful language and easy affection in these first lines, this won’t just be a poem about a pair of buddies who enjoy each other’s company. The “In Memoriam E.T.” of the title (meaning “in memory of E.T.”) bodes ill. Eleanor Farjeon wrote this poem in the wake of a real-life tragedy. Her friend and fellow poet Edward Thomas (the “E.T.” of the title) was killed on a French battlefield in World War I.

  In light of this knowledge, the poem’s breezy first line becomes ominous. The “last letter that I had from France” at first seems to mean “the most recent letter.” But, as readers will soon discover, this was also the final letter the speaker got from France.

  Farjeon tells this story in the restrained form of a sonnet: a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter (lines of five iambs, or metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in “You thanked | me for | the sil- | ver Eas- | ter egg”). The tight borders of this form allow the poet to pack overwhelming grief into a small, controlled space.

  Unusually, however, this sonnet doesn’t use a rhyme scheme, a conspicuous choice in a poem that otherwise sticks pretty closely to a traditional form. The lack of rhyme here might make the reader feel as if something is missing—a fitting effect in a poem about loss.

• Lines 5-9

  You found the egg the Monday before Easter,
  And said, "I will praise Easter Monday now—
  It was such a lovely morning." Then you spoke
  Of the coming battle and said, "This is the eve.
  Good-bye. And may I have a letter soon."

  

  

  

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• Lines 10-14

  That Easter Monday was a day for praise,
  It was such a lovely morning. In our garden
  We sowed our earliest seeds, and in the orchard
  The apple-bud was ripe. It was the eve.
  There are three letters that you will not get.

  

  

  

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“Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)” Symbols

• 

  Eastertime

  With its promises of new life both natural and spiritual, Eastertime symbolizes hope and rebirth, even in the midst of grief and loss.

  Before she knew that her dear friend had been killed in battle, the speaker remembers, she enjoyed Easter Monday (the day after Easter Sunday) in her garden. There, she and her family planted their "earliest seeds" and relished the flowering "apple-bud" in the orchard—both traditional springy symbols of new life.

  Similarly, Easter itself (here evoked by the "silver Easter egg" the speaker sends her friend) symbolizes resurrection. In Christian tradition, the holiday commemorates the day Jesus rose from the dead.

  By planting these images of Christian hope and natural rebirth around the story of her friend's death, the speaker gets at a painful irony: this unfortunate young man died at a time when the world was coming to life again, symbolically and literally. Perhaps this symbolism also hints that the speaker finds comfort in Easter's promise of new life and resurrection. The flowers and the holiday alike might suggest to her that her friend won't be gone forever.

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“Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Repetition

  “Easter Monday” plays out its tragedy through a series of meaningful repetitions.

  Farjeon splits her sonnet into two unequal parts, introducing a sudden stanza break after line 9. Readers who look closely will notice that this stanza break turns the poem into a hinged mirror. Before and after the gap, lines 5-9 and 10-14 reflect each other’s language:

  You found the egg the Monday before Easter,
  And said, "I will praise Easter Monday now -
  It was such a lovely morning." Then you spoke
  Of the coming battle and said, "This is the eve.
  Good-bye. And may I have a letter soon."
  
  That Easter Monday was a day for praise,
  It was such a lovely morning. In our garden
  We sowed our earliest seeds, and in the orchard
  The apple-bud was ripe. It was the eve.
  There are three letters that you will not get.

  In lines 5-9, the speaker describes what her friend had to say in his “last letter” to her. In lines 10-14, she describes what she was doing on Easter Monday, unaware that her friend had been killed. The speaker’s repetition of her friend’s words feels intimate: it’s as if the two are so close they speak in one voice. But that intimacy is also tragically ironic. In reusing her friend’s words here, the speaker only underscores the point that she didn’t know, for a whole day, that someone dear to her was dead.

  The echo between “This is the eve” and “It was the eve” also draws a sad parallel between the two friends. When the soldier friend writes these words, he’s referring to the "eve" of a battle that’s about to happen—the battle in which he’ll die. When the speaker writes these words, the battle has already begun, and her friend has already been killed. For her, it’s the “eve” of learning this awful fact: her last day of blissful ignorance.

  There’s a poignant little echo outside these mirrored passages, too. When the speaker observes that her garden’s “apple-bud was ripe” in line 13, readers might think back to the “box of apples” she sent her friend in line 2. Perhaps there’s just a hint of hope there, a vision of new life emerging in spite of grief and loss.

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• Understatement

  

  

  

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• Colloquialism

  

  

  

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• Irony

  

  

  

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“Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Last
• Easter Monday
• Eve
• Sowed

• There's a sad double meaning in the word "last" here. "The last letter" might mean "the most recent letter" or "the final letter"—and in this case, it means both.

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)”

• Form

  "Easter Monday" uses a variation on the sonnet form. Like a traditional sonnet, it's a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter (that is, lines of five iambs—metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "You thanked | me for | the sil- | ver East- | er egg"). Unlike a traditional sonnet, it doesn't use a rhyme scheme.

  Farjeon also does something a little different with the poem's shape. Most sonnets roughly break down into three quatrains and a couplet (as in Shakespeare's famous Sonnet 130), or an octave and a sestet (as in Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"). By contrast, Farjeon splits her sonnet at a surprising spot: after line 9. The first nine lines of the poem describe the letter the speaker got from her friend thanking her for a gift she sent him; the last five describe the Easter Monday the speaker spent at home in her garden, not knowing that her friend would soon be killed.

  That abrupt, unusual break between the stanzas thus marks the violent battlefield death that separates the speaker and her friend. The first stanza ends on the last words she'll ever hear from him.

• Meter

  "Easter Monday," like most sonnets, is written in iambic pentameter. That means that each of its lines uses five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's how that sounds in line 10:

  That East- | er Mon- | day was | a day | for praise,

  The poem doesn't stick rigorously to that meter the whole way through. Little variations make the poem's voice sound easy and natural, a tone that conveys the caring relationship between the speaker and her soldier friend.

  Twice, for instance—in line 7 (where she quotes her friend's letter) and line 11 (where she remembers her own Easter Monday)—the speaker begins a line with the words "It was such | a love- | ly morn- | ing [...]," starting out with an anapest (a foot with a da-da-DUM rhythm) instead of an iamb. This variation makes the friends' voices sound poignantly naturalistic, as if readers are peeking over their shoulders at their easy, affectionate correspondence.

• Rhyme Scheme

  Unlike most sonnets, "Easter Monday" doesn't use a rhyme scheme at all. The lack of rhyme feels particularly striking within the poem's otherwise pretty traditional sonnet form: it feels as if something is missing here. That sense of lack, of course, fits right in with the poem's mood. This is a poem about loss, absence, and grief; the absence of rhyme mirrors the speaker's loss of a dear friend.

  The lack of rhyme also removes a sonnet's usual dramatic music, making the speaker's final correspondence with her friend feel all the more sweetly informal. His last letter to her is a thank-you note touched with just a hint of danger, not a grand farewell—and that makes his death come as an even more terrible shock.

“Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)” Speaker

• The poem's speaker is a voice for the grieving Eleanor Farjeon herself. Farjeon wrote this poem shortly after her dear friend (and fellow poet) Edward Thomas died on the battlefields of World War I on April 9, 1917.

  The speaker's anecdote of sending her soldier friend a box of apples with a "silver Easter egg" hidden inside makes it clear she's a playful, loving person. The gift is doubly sweet because she knows that apples are what her friend "like[s] to munch beyond all other fruit": she and her friend clearly know each other well.

  Her description of planting seeds in her garden in England, all the while relishing the "apple-bud" on the spring trees, also suggests that she's a person who finds hope and beauty in nature. On the day she plants those seeds—Easter Monday, the Monday after Easter—her friend is about to go into the battle that will kill him, though she can't yet know that. But her delight in nature's renewal (and in the apple buds that will soon make more of the apples her friend loves) hints that she might be able to find some consolation in her garden.

“Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)” Setting

• "Easter Monday" is set on and around a poignantly specific date: April 9, 1917. That was the first day of the Battle of Arras—a World War I clash that would kill Eleanor Farjeon's dear friend Edward Thomas. In this poem, Farjeon remembers exchanging letters with Thomas, sending him little gifts of apples and Easter eggs to keep his spirits up.

  Readers don't get a direct look at the French battlefield from which Thomas writes his part of the correspondence. Instead, they see Farjeon's garden on Easter Monday (the day after Easter Sunday), a week after Thomas finds the Easter egg she sent him in a box of apples (on the "Monday before Easter"). Scented with blossoming "apple-bud," this garden feels a world away from the mud, blood, and chaos in which Thomas dies on that very day. The juxtaposition of grief and new flowery life hints at a kernel of hope even in the midst of awful tragedy.

  The specific date of the action is likewise quietly hopeful. In Christianity, Easter Week commemorates the death and rising of Jesus, and Easter Monday marks the day after the Resurrection. The poem's focus on Easter and new life like the "apple-bud" suggests, perhaps, that the speaker finds some consolation in faith—in the idea that her friend isn't lost forever.

Literary and Historical Context of “Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)”

Literary Context

Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) was an English writer most famous for her hymn "Morning Has Broken" and her stories for children. The daughter of a novelist and the granddaughter of an actor, Farjeon grew up in a lively artistic environment. But after her father died (when she was just 22), she found herself in tough financial straits, and she began publishing stories to earn money. These sad circumstances would begin a happy literary career: Farjeon went on to become a prolific and well-loved author.

This poem marks the tragic end of another major relationship in Farjeon's life: her close friendship with the poet Edward Thomas. Thomas and Farjeon met not long before Thomas (spurred on by Robert Frost) began writing poetry, and the two became inseparable, each inspiring and supporting the other in their work. After Thomas's untimely death on a World War I battlefield, Farjeon wrote not just this grief-stricken poem, but an important biography of her friend, Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years (1958).

Thomas and Farjeon were both part of a literary movement in which soldiers and their loved ones wrote haunting, unflinching poetry about their experiences in World War I. Farjeon's "Easter Monday" and Thomas's "Adlestrop" are both gentler examples of verse from the period, works on the outskirts of what became known as "trench poetry" (after the horrible, muddy trenches in which WWI soldiers sheltered while fighting). In both of these friends' poems, a vision of nature (real or remembered) offers consolation, a glimpse of beauty in troubled times.

Farjeon's most famous works—her children's books—were part of a rising tide of children's literature at the turn of the 20th century. Alongside writers like Edith Nesbit, Kenneth Grahame, and A.A. Milne, Farjeon contributed to a rapidly evolving genre as it moved away from stern morality tales and toward humor, whimsy, melancholy, and enchantment.

Historical Context

Farjeon wrote this poem in memory of her friend Edward Thomas. He was killed in France on April 9, 1917—Easter Monday, and the first day of the Battle of Arras, a notable clash in World War I.

World War I was known, at the time it was fought, as "the war to end all wars" (a phrase that proved tragically inaccurate when World War II broke out a generation later). It began when assassin Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which ruled a large section of Central and Eastern Europe at the time). Austria-Hungary accused their enemy Serbia of masterminding this assassination; Germany supported Austria-Hungary; Russia supported Serbia. Soon, chains of pre-existing alliances had pulled nearly all of Europe (and countries beyond) into bloody trench warfare. This snowballing catastrophe would claim millions of lives. Thomas was only one of almost a whole generation of young men who would die on the dreadful battlefields of Europe.

More “Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)” Resources

• External Resources

  • A Brief Biography — Learn more about Eleanor Farjeon's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.

  • The Real "E. T." — See a portrait of Edward Thomas (the "E. T." to whom this poem is dedicated) once owned by Farjeon.

  • Farjeon and Thomas — Read a short, heartbreaking article about Eleanor Farjeon's relationship with Edward Thomas—and her grief over his death.

  • The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.