The Song of the Shirt

Personified by the seamstress’s song, Death is one of the few figures mentioned in the otherwise solitary narrative. She introduces Death as “that phantom of grisly bone” (Line 34); this almost casual description and use of the relative pronoun “that” imply that the seamstress has earlier encountered Death and thus refers to him with a degree of familiarity. Her familiarity with Death is reiterated when she acknowledges she “hardly [fears] his terrible shape” (Line 35) because it “seems so like” (Line 36) her own starving body. Death thus acts as a mirror.

In the seamstress’s isolated and lonely profession, Death also acts as her primary company; his presence in her life only continues to flourish. As her life is worn out like the shirts she mends, the seamstress begins to consider and more frequently “talk of death” (Line 33), imagining things like the “shroud” (Line 32) or burial clothes she will wear when she dies. But like the shadow she is grateful to occasionally see on her “blank” (Line 47) wall, death never actually speaks or interacts with the seamstress. While she may derive some comfort from the brief interruption of monotony Death provides, Death’s inaction and irrelevance to the poem’s narrative further emphasizes the seamstress’s solitude and isolation.