Denise K. Steen
February 28, 2012
English 102
Option #2

Reflections Within is a non-traditional stanzaic poem made up of five stanzas containing thirty-four lines that do not form a specific metrical pattern. Rather it is supported by its thematic structure. Each of the five stanzas vary in the amount of lines that each contain. The first stanza is a sestet containing six lines. The same can be observed of the second stanza. The third stanza contains eight lines or an octave. Stanzas four and five are oddly in that their number of lines which are five and nine. Beginning with the first line in the first stanza, "The Earth's cool breeze spoke to me", the meter examined within this line is trimeter, containing seven syllables, …show more content…

Line nineteen continues, "calling the pain from my ocean floors", declines to tetrameter while still containing a mess of syllables, the dactyl, trochee, spondee and iambic, suggesting a heed in warning. The twentieth line concludes, "and the Earth's land will be no more.", declines to eight syllables written in tetrameter now only including the pyrrhic, spondee and iambic syllables is suggestive of a last reasonable plea before chaos begins again. The rhyme scheme in the third stanza is not one of an established category, hh (end rhyme: me, seas) ii (internal rhyme: tears, disappear) hh (end rhyme) jjj (end rhyme: shores, floors, more). There is almost an asymmetrical balance in the third stanza between the consistent formal characteristics such as the repeated meter and rhyme scheme to the variance in usage of syllables. Both are about equal in presence suggesting that peace exists within the chaos of the text. In the fourth stanza we will observe how the text begins to transcend through its formal characteristics and signals a coming to a close or better phrased, resolution. The twenty first line continues, "As I rejected the offer he had for me", a familiar variation of line seven, is written in hexameter with