Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The poems has a first-person narrator who is directly addressing God.
Form and Meter
The poem is made up of 11 sestains (stanzas of 6 lines). The poem is written in iambic pentameter (lines 1,2,5,6) and iambic trimeter (lines 2 and 4). In this way, the first four lines of each stanza alternate between 5 metrical feet (a total of 10 syllables) and 3 metrical feet (6 syllables) while the last 2 lines (couplet) of each stanza contain 5 metrical feet (5, 3, 5, 3, 5, 5). The rhyme scheme is ABABCC.
Metaphors and Similes
Blunted knife (metaphor)
The speaker compares himself to a blunted knife to describe his uselessness. Just as a blunted knife is not effective at cutting, the speaker is not able to be useful to anyone once his friends begin dying and his health suffers.
Sweetened pill (metaphor)
When describing how he feels that God has tricked him, the speaker uses the metaphor of a sweetened pill. The bitter medicine of pain and sickness is hidden under a sweet taste.
Alliteration and Assonance
Alliteration:
“I looked on thy furniture so fine,/And made it fine to me” - /f/ sound
“Paid me wages in a world of mirth” - double /w/ sound
“Therefore my sudden soul caught at the place,/And made her youth and fierceness seek thy face” - double /s/ and double /f/
“I had my wish and way” - /w/
“There was no month but May” - /m/
“Sorrow was all my soul” - /s/
“Thine own gift good” - /g/
Assonance:
“Consuming agues dwell in ev’ry vein,/And tune my breath to groans” - the long /o/ and /u/ sounds link the first and last part of the line together while the /e/ repeats through the middle
“Thus thin and lean without a fence or friend” - short /i/ and /e/ sounds
“Though I am clean forgot,/Let me not love thee, if I love thee not” - long /e/ sounds give the line a sense of unity
Irony
The speaker marks the last part of the poem with the time-word “now,” suggesting that he has now matured and can look back on the early part of his spiritual journey with distance. Yet his threat to “seek/Some other master out” in the last lines make the reader aware of the ways that the speaker has not fully matured.
Genre
Renaissance English verse; metaphysical poetry; devotional poetry
Setting
In the speaker’s mind; God’s metaphorical household; a tree
Tone
Anguished; philosophical; accusatory; resigned
Protagonist and Antagonist
Speaker vs. God
Major Conflict
Selfishness and a desire to choose one’s own destiny versus trust in God
Climax
The line starting with “But” marks a major turn in the poem. “Now” marks the beginning of the present moment. The exclamation “Ah my dear God!” marks the highest emotional point of the poem.
Foreshadowing
The use of financial and monetary images in the first stanzas ("money," "wages," etc.) foreshadow the problems that will arise in the speaker’s relationship to God. His perspective is too transactional.
Understatement
Allusions
Many biblical allusions:
The speaker’s general tone of accusing God for his sufferings - The Book of Job
The speaker’s anger about not being compensated for his “wages” - the story of Jacob and his unfair master Laban in Genesis 29-31
“Wish I were a tree” - Psalm 92:12, also a reference to the tree of paradise in Genesis 2:9
“I must be meek” - Matthew 5:5
“I am clean forgotten” - Psalm 31:12
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Syechedoche:
"Gown" stands for academic or priestly life in which gowns are worn
Personification
“My sudden soul . . . made her youth and fierceness seek thy face” - speaker's soul seeks God
“My flesh began unto my soul in pain” - the speaker’s flesh begins complaining to his soul
“Grief did tell me roundly” - grief talks the speaker
Hyperbole
“Such stars I counted mine: both heaven and earth”
