One can't help responding viscerally to this poem! I'm not sure I entirely agree with Dick that a poem such as this should contrive to place its rhymes on the more "devastating" words, since the subject matter is already so devastating that the relatively "bland" rhymes may be a useful device to keep the poem from going too far over the top in a quasi-pornographic display of unfettered violence. Also, since the poem ultimately depends (thematically) on irony (the title is "Compassion," but the warder's cynical "compassion" hardly qualifies), the blander end-rhymes here may contribute to the irony by seeming to adopt a clinical or journalistic tone in depicting the horrors described in the middle of the lines. I think "was seen," for example, is just right in the way it journalistically reports the horrific news in the passive tense.
The only problem I had with the rhymes was "mother's name," since I can't imagine that a whipped person would call out his mother's name –rather than calling out simply "Mother!" or "Mom!", etc.
Perhaps they say "arse-cheeks" in Tasmania, but to my American ear this term sounds a bit too comical and Monty Python-esque, and I'd prefer "buttocks" or some other substitution because the "joke" is a tad too broad with the funnier word. I'd let the irony remain as understated as it wants to be, since it is nonetheless inescapable. The irony, I believe, is absolutely crucial to this poem, since otherwise it is just an extremely skilled portrayal of a gruesome whipping and the poem would be little more than a very well-made snuff-film. That the poem escapes this fate is one of its genuine pleasures and what, for me, justifies its selection as one of the master sonnets chosen for discussion.
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