Leave thee naked to laughter...

Here the absence of will before leave makes for a certain difficulty. The same grammatical lapse can be observed in the 2nd stanza, wherein the line "Like the wind through a ruined cell" the words that passes (or that sounds, or that blows) are omitted.

Those hurried skippings over words logically necessary further the impression of the unbearable emotional strain that is created by accretion of the boldest imagery expressive of destruction, decay and disaster (shattered lamp, light dead in the dust, shed glory of rain­bow, broken lute, mute spirit, ruined cell, dead seaman, bier of love, storm-rocked ravens, wintry sky, rotting rafters, falling leaves, cold wind).

The high concentration of images does not impress one as being artificial because they seem to flow quite naturally. It is the easier to believe in that spontaneousness on account of the logical lapse mentioned above and still more on account of the simple, unaffected colloquial intonation of the whole poem.

The metrical stresses coincide with the stresses that would fall on the same words in ordinary speech. This is the case in 21 out of the 32 lines of the poem; this gives it an easy and natural flow. In the remaining 11 lines, where that natural flow is impeded by re­peated heavy spondees, the weakening of the metrical scheme has the effect of utter freedom of versification, of freedom from the shackles of verse and of spontaneous feeling breaking through met­rical restrictions. As a matter of fact, this occurs in one line of the 1st, descriptive and restrained, stanza, in the most emotionally laden line, by the way: "Loved accents | are soon | forgot". In ordi­nary speech we would stress: ― ― | ― | ― . Now the metre requires no stress on loved, i.е. ― | ― | ―. The same is repeated in two lines of the 2nd and 3rd stanzas (the third and eighth lines of the 2nd stanza, the second and fifth lines of the 3rd) and in six lines (all but the first and fourth) of the last and most intensely tragic stanza.

The natural intonation of a spoken confession, painful and pas­sionate, is kept up by Shelley observing the direct and ordinary word-order. The exceptions are "Sweet tones are remembered not", "Music and splendour survive not the lamp and the lute" and "Why choose you the frailest?" Two of them, are due to omission of the auxiliary verb do in negative and interrogative sentences, which is common in old ballads and songs and does not sound bookish or artificial. The only inversion proprement dite is the one in the final stanza:

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 810