Point of View

This poem uses the second person "you" as a projection of the speaker. Such use often suggests that the speaker is alienated from herself in some way, that she feels disembodied. Use of the second person has become more prominent in twentieth-century literature in general and in the last few decades of the century in particular. This use fits symbolist verse well because it is a stylized form of address when the "you" stands for the speaker.

However, the "you" here also works to draw the reader into the speaker's experience, Warren's chief aim. The goal of the poem is not to name things in the world but to evoke an experience in readers.

Imagery and Sound

Warren employs a combination of crisp symbolic and concrete visual imagery and a variety of near-rhymes, off-rhymes, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia to create a verbal texture suggesting busy-ness and...