The Red-letter Day

About this poem

The poem is symbolic and has two meanings: the literal one where a friend is lost and the narrator can not tend to bring themself around the fact that they are not together anymore; and the metaphorical one where the "friend" is actually a personification of the narrator's biggest failure in life, which can be anything ranging from a loss in their career to them facing a big failure in their academic life. Despite the fact that they face what means for them to be "an" end, they do not let it come in their way to be what they want, as can be seen from the last three lines of the poem where they find that the failure they face is nothing more than one more step towards success. They take it as one less way of them failing, and one more of them actually doing what they want. The "token" which they receive from the second person is actually a chance for them to learn from their mistakes and move forward in their life, and gives them the energy which their friend failure has in wrecking what they built. They finally realise that if someone can try to make them lose with such great enthusiasm, then they too can revert that enthusiasm back at their "friend" and finally win in their game. more »