I'd like to cast an enthusiastic vote in favor of the alexandrine, which, as someone else pointed out, is appropriately about a prolonged hope. In general I'm somewhat skeptical of theories of imitative rhythm, which seem to be invoked much too often and glibly to explain metrical effects. But here, it's hard to avoid seeing the way in which the metrical shift to hexameter underscores the sense of the line. Similarly, I was thrown, the first time through, by line 2, momentarily hearing it as four beats until I realized that it was headless IP. I suspect this too was intentional on the poet's part, since it is there that the reluctant sailors reel and sicken.
This sonnet is extremely impressive in its handling of sound and meter, and I also like its unusual structure (seven lines, then five, then three). A distinctive use of the form, and one that avoids the tidy predictability that plagues many sonnets.
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Linear Mode
