The force of the last line is not just a matter of the sentiment expressed and the fitness of the metaphor employed: it springs as much from its formal qualities, too. It is the only line in the poem where two conditions occur: perfect coincidence of the syntactical unit with the line, absolute metrical regularity. (Of course, being the last line, it also shows the strongest degree of end-stopping.) In every other line there is either some metrical variation from the poem’s normative IP, or the line is broken by the patterns of syntax, or both these things occur. Furthermore, the sense of closure which couplet rhyme naturally tends to give is strengthened here by contrast with the handling of the quatrain patterns of the first twelve lines. In every case these are broken by strong enjambments, weakening any feeling of completion after the second rhyme-pair. Thus it is in the formal qualities of the last line that the striving for "the impure conditional", as mimed in the searching and unsettled syntax, in the unsettled metre, and in the rhyming of the previous lines, is finally resolved.
This is, by the way, an effect Rhina employs elsewhere, in - for instance - "Voyeur" in Where Horizons Go or "Pig" in Lapsing to Grace.
- Fine poem, Rhina!
Clive Watkins
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