Syllables underlined = adjacent stresses
| asson: god prepares for -- | If but some vengeful god would call to me | If (only); vengeful god: unusual juxtaposition | |
| From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing, | |||
| asson: sorrow, lost, profit (1) | Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, | ||
| stresses (2) | allit | That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!" | hate: irony (7) |
| Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, | hyperbole | ||
| asson: steeled, eased, meted (1) | allit | Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; | |
| Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I | |||
| allit | Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. | ||
| asson: so, hope, sown (5); stresses (3) | But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, | joy: personification (6) | |
| allit (4) | And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? -- | metaphor: hope as flower (but cancelled) | |
| allit | Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, | crass: unimportance of outcome | |
| asson: dicing, Time, -blind | And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . | dicing: pure chance, i.e., unthinking | |
| These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown | Doomsters: randomness of actions | ||
| allits | Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain. | [Form (8)] | |
Notes
(1) In both sequences the first two words show what is endured; the last word is the action of the supposed god.
(2) Stresses: parallelism underscores symmetry of supposed relationship.
(3) Stresses: radically cancels the meaning of the previous two verses.
(4) Alliterative sounds here are all plosives (b, k, d, t, p), emphasizing the harshness of the conclusion; more plosives occur in this verse than in the rest of the poem.
(5) Assonance: note that across the verse the sequence of vowels promoted by assonance goes from wide to narrow: /o/, /a/, /I/, to /i/.
(6) Personification: continued in Casualty, Time (who is dicing), Doomsters.
(7) Irony: God exists to create misery, against traditional views of a benevolent God.
(8) Regularity of poem with basic iambic pentameter and 14 lines; appears to be a sonnet; contrast of form to the radical uncertainty inherent in the topic.
Document prepared February 27th 2001