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    Wild Lemons (David Malouf)

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    Zenith Roy
    The poem describes a path on a island that the speaker and a companion followed one evening. The path seemed to indicate that it was used and led somewhere promising. At the end of the path, they found wild lemon trees, which suggested that someone had been there before and left the trees. Now in a different place, the speaker reflects on how that path led him to where he is, and in his dreams he still smells the scent of the wild lemons from the island.

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    Wild Lemons (David Malouf)

    Uploaded by

    Zenith Roy
    2K views1 page
    The poem describes a path on a island that the speaker and a companion followed one evening. The path seemed to indicate that it was used and led somewhere promising. At the end of the path, they found wild lemon trees, which suggested that someone had been there before and left the trees. Now in a different place, the speaker reflects on how that path led him to where he is, and in his dreams he still smells the scent of the wild lemons from the island.

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    The poem describes a path on a island that the speaker and a companion followed one evening. The path seemed to indicate that it was used and led somewhere promising. At the end of the path, they found wild lemon trees, which suggested that someone had been there before and left the trees. Now in a different place, the speaker reflects on how that path led him to where he is, and in his dreams he still smells the scent of the wild lemons from the island.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    2K views1 page

    Wild Lemons (David Malouf)

    Uploaded by

    Zenith Roy
    The poem describes a path on a island that the speaker and a companion followed one evening. The path seemed to indicate that it was used and led somewhere promising. At the end of the path, they found wild lemon trees, which suggested that someone had been there before and left the trees. Now in a different place, the speaker reflects on how that path led him to where he is, and in his dreams he still smells the scent of the wild lemons from the island.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
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    David Malouf

    Give a summary of David Malouf's poem "Wild


    Lemons."
    "Wild Lemons" describes a path on an island, which seemed to show signs of habitation and other
    vague but promising indications that it was worth taking. The poet does not specify what was at
    the end of the path, but it has led him to where he is now. In a final image, his dreams include the
    scent of the wild lemons on the island.

    PDF Cite Share

    Cite this page as follows:

    "Give a summary of David Malouf's poem "Wild Lemons."" eNotes Editorial, 28 Apr. 2020,
    https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/give-a-summary-of-david-malouf-s-poem-wild-lemons-
    2271078. Accessed 3 Mar. 2023.

    Expert Answers
    The poem begins with a path on which the speaker recalls starting out among "blazed trunks" of
    trees, marked in such a way as to promise that the path must lead somewhere. The speaker and
    his unnamed companion took the wild lemon trees as a sign that they were expected to participate
    in some event at the end of the road, one which would not occur without them.

    The speaker saw the trees themselves as evidence that someone had been there before them and
    planted the trees to provide slices of lemon for drinks. The warmth of the island also seemed
    vaguely promising. All possibilities were open, but as they made their way down the track at seven
    o'clock in the evening, they had no idea what awaited them. This was a compact that had been
    made out of silence, which meant that it could never be explicit or clear.

    Now, the speaker lies down in a different climate, though he is the same man with the same body.
    This is where the track has led him. When it is dark, he sleeps, saying that his body tags along with
    his dreams "to see what goes." What goes, the speaker says in a final image, is time, as clouds melt
    into the next day's breath, and the distinctive scent of lemons persists.

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