"Maypole of Merry Mount" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne starts off the piece with beautiful imagery that takes you back to a time of idealism and gaiety. He personifies Midsummer Eve as a woman with roses in her lap, bringing lush vegetation to Merry Mount. He then goes on and describes the seasons as teasing friends, enjoying the company of each other. This beautiful use of personification sets the mood of the story, he weaves this beautiful, idealistic, fairy-tale environment to show exactly how perfect and gay Merry-Mount is. However, this can also be a foreshadowing of the tragedy that is to come.
He uses very colorful language in his description of the may-pole. …