Hello friends today we are discuss this question, the question is -“Ah, Nature, keep him warm; he may catch cold.”-Who is ‘he’? Why may he catch cold? Why does the poet ask Nature to keep him warm?
‘He’ refers to the young soldier who is asleep in the small green valley of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem ‘Asleep in the Valley’. He may catch cold as he is lying under the open sky. The poet asks Nature to keep him warm.
Rimbaud by requesting Nature to keep the soldier warm portrays ironically the futility of war. Death is inevitable and if death embraces a person, then Nature cannot make that person alive. A cold lifeless body can never receive warmth again. Even the creator cannot bring a dead person back to life. The irony in the request expresses the dark side of war and the consequence of violence.