This poem appeared in Owen Sheers’s first collection entitled The Blue Book, published in 2000. The title is ambiguous; it can be a noun refering to the natural phenonemon, but is also a verb which can signify overshadowing, as in for example, “his fame has been eclipsed by hers”. But both of these meanings apply.

The poem tells the story of a relationship breaking up and the speaker’s inability to accept it, until the end when he has to face the reality.

Structure
The poem comprises seven stanzas formed of couplets, that is two lines each, and a final single line. Some of the couplets rhyme, only one perfectly — “light” and “night” in stanza five — while “moon” and “again” in stanza three and “breeze” and “us” in stanza four are consonant rhymes. In line six “eclipsed” and “clipped” are internally rhymed.

Most of the lines in the poem are end-stopped, until stanza five, after which they are mostly enjambed, suggesting a change in mental attitude of the speaker.

Language and Imagery
The voice is that of a first person speaker. From what is known of Sheers’s biography, this is probably a personal story. The tone is subdued and sad.

The dominant imagery is that of light and dark, as expressed through the metaphor of the eclipse. These binary opposites are followed through in various forms throughout the poem. The couple watch the eclipse “apart” but the speaker sees them “connected” again. The flying rooks are associated with a rural setting compared to the city".