Theodore Roethke's Elegy For Jane

Theodore Roethke’s poem “Elegy for Jane” shows the speakers affliction towards the death of his former student Jane. Roethke uses personification, imagery and metaphors as well as other devices to show the love and sorrow the speaker feels for Jane.
The personification used by the speaker, when he says “leaves, their whispers turned to kissing” and “mold sang in the beached valley under the rose” is a representation of Jane’s presence, for bad and good her presence delighted them. The speaker uses sleep as a connoting death showing that’s he would like to see her alive again.
The speakers speaks of nature throughout the entire poem. He uses metaphors and similes to compare Jane to living things as an attempt to give her new life through nature