"The Burden of Time" Poem Analysis

Throughout Frederick George Scott’s poem “The Burden of Time”, Scott’s use of personification, hyperbole and pastoral language indicates how a life is built through the knowledge a person gains overtime, rather than getting stuck being unable to live up to a higher power; God.
Scott exemplifies the ability mankind has to create an amazing world through hard work and time. Specific examples of Scott’s piece express that he is able to personify nature’s elements with overall a pretty positive connotation. One for instance, when the speaker “gave the deep his thunder; the Most High [K]nows well the voice that shakes His mountain thrones.”(11-12), the audience sees the ocean as a person, it’s just as important as the humans on earth, according to this line. The emphasis of this personification is so that nature can also grow in experience, just as in the smaller picture: people grow every day. As well as the larger picture: God made the world one step at a time.
Scott’s writing style is unique in this poem because it reads as if it is a detailed story. The speaker says that they “hung the universe in space” (2), this is almost a connection to hanging a picture on the wall just because he chose to use the word “hung”. This goes on throughout the poem in its entirety because when the speaker brings up creating anything Scott chooses his verbs to be at the beginning of the line causing the
perspective of the listener to change as now instead of just seeing the mountains or the seas the listener sees how those things came to be. When he “capped earth’s poles with ice to South and North”, the action of capping shows how much larger he is in retrospect of the entire universe. This highlights the concept that in order to move forward in time one must fully understand their past because the past makes the future throughout time, as well as time helps those learn from their successes and their mistakes.
Time is prevalent throughout Frederick George Scott’s “The Burden of Time” as we see how God created everything but, everything started out as one small thing, and slowly but surely things kept getting added and eventually became The World. Connecting this to The Phantom of The Opera, the Phantom's past plays an important role in how he never learns how to let go. His only form of escape is through murderous acts and taking revenge on those who have made his goals unattainable, but he needs this escape because instead of time helping to heal his wounds it continuously reminds him of his past, therefore causing them to fester. Specifically in the poem when Scott mentions that "[O]n plain and island, or where huge cliffs frown, [W]rapt in the deep thought of the ancient hills" (Scott), we see that he is explaining how the world is being created from the object made before, the past. One cannot move forward without the past, which is why the Phantom cannot act more rational because he had such a harsh past.
This theme of time is less obvious throughout The Mystery of the Yellow Room, however it is still there. As the woman was severely injured in the beginning of the novel and then throughout the rest of the book a man named Joseph Rouletabille is said to be the investigator. He writes down all of the evidence and looks for clues to figure out how the man got into the yellow room if there was only one way in. He is also trying to find him because he is trying to murder Miss Stangerson. Throughout all of this there are multiple pieces to the puzzle that include times of when things occur such as when he asks, "At what time, M. Jacques, did M. Stangerson and Mlle Stangerson enter the laboratory?' 'At six o'clock."(45). This is only important because in order to figure out the sequence of events to solve the mystery Rouletabille must figure out how time plays a role in each action that took place before and after the murder. In Scotts poem the lines "[T]he hand that made them shall unmake again, [I] curse them and they wither one by one" (Scott), he is actually talking about the hands of God creating and being able to take away the creations, however this can be connected to Leroux idea of putting things together piece by piece. In order to figure out how everything came to be and how the murderer has gotten away with his actions the investigator must take the entire puzzle apart so that he can put it back together and find the solution.