Days

Theme/Content:

Days about time, and the meaning of life, all personified. The persona questions then answers himself in the stanza. The poem questions what we are living for and whether we're doing anything worthwhile in our lives.

Analysis:

• The poem has a monotone voice, as if we do the same things again.
• 'What are days for?' is like a childish question, whereas the next few lines are like the answers an adult would give, a simple answer to a simple question. 
• 'Time and time over' suggests that we can't stop time, it repeats itself, and what we do is a waste of time with no control because we live in a cycle. This is quite dark, and that life has a deeper message than just the plain one that's given.
• 'To be happy in' implies that happiness is fundamental, that this succession of days where nothing much happens in them has to be enjoyed because there is not much else.
• 'Where can we live but days?' is a hint at Atheism, that our life is limited however Christians would say there is heaven and life after death. 
• The next stanza 'brings the priest and the doctor', the ones that hold different views on death and could maybe solve it. The poem suggests no solution however. The priest believes in life after death, embraces the current life but sees a new life afterwards which is a better, dayless existence. The doctor on the other hand cures people and tries to help the person keep the days they have, because they could be over soon. He increases the days, and the ill have less days to live. The doctors are the last people to see others before death too, and the first to see new life. 
• 'Running over the fields' is like freedom, the natural cycle, but trampling over nature which is inevitable.