“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.
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