Changes happen and what was once there may not exist in the same form anymore.

Mr. Flood is alone and isolated. It's as if he's returned after being exiled. He feels alienated from everyone else and he wants things to be how they used to be.

Mr. Flood is seeing double due to being intoxicated, hinting at double-consciousness.

Like Adams, this speaker writes from a third-person perspective while being the narrator at the same time. He knows what happens, but is telling it from an outsider's point of view.

Adams and this speaker both present questions and want to find answers. Additionally, both of them speak about something that exists that also doesn't. For Adams, it's the forces. For this speaker, there's something that doesn't even exist, yet makes people "flutter round it."

Similar to Adams, this speaker can see himself from his own eyes but can also see the version of himself that others perceive.

Here is yet another instance of the dry motif with a negative connotation. The lifeless wasteland is dry and lacks water. Without water, the tree has no leaves and cannot provide shade, thus it has no purpose. In other words, water is necessary for having purpose and meaning in life. Without it, everyone and everything is dead or undead.

Here is another moment of the wet/dry motif. Rain is repeated here, however the connotation seems to be the opposite from the first instance. Unlike spring, summer evokes more positive feelings. The summer season came as a surprise, a happy surprise. The wet rain makes them pause, as if they're simply taking a break or relaxing, before returning to the dry sunlight for coffee and conversation.

The motif of wet/dry can be seen here. The dull roots must be dry, lacking color. This dryness is mixed with the wet spring rain. The dullness has a negative connotation which coincides with: "breeding," "dead land," and April/spring being the cruellest.

Why does Eliot parenthesize this line and the line from the previous stanza? Are these dedicated to us, the audience? It feels like the speaker is being personable and drawing me in.

Who is "us"? Is it everyone on Earth or does it refer to the speaker and someone in particular? Does the speaker believe April is cruel for everyone?

Why does the speaker choose this month, specifically? Why else is April so cruel for the speaker?

This poem doesn't follow traditional structures and a clear meaning isn't defined. The poet pushes the boundaries of typical rules for poetry forms. Here, is she the dog? Is she saying that her own rule-breaking may be seen as animalistic and that she hopes to be given mercy for being seen as a "dog"? Or is this way off and she's referring to mercy dogs? I feel like we, as readers, have the control to find any type of meaning to all the lines in this poem. give mercy

Why do some lines fully repeat and some half repeat, while others don't repeat at all? This poem seems to incorporate the functions of a poem without fully following a specific scheme; evidently a free verse poem. Still, I wonder about the poet's intentions for the repetition throughout this poem. winter wedding

At this point, my automatic response is not to find meaning, but rather to see how the words sound and feel when saying them aloud. Some of these lines, such as these ones, are fun to say aloud. This sounds like someone's stream of consciousness when literally playing with words. right hand writing

So, devilish men fool women into going out with them? Definitely problematic. These men are listening to their desires, rather than morals. Also, if "filth" is taken metaphorically here, the speaker must be shedding light on how these people can't see that their gauds and materialistic items are actually filthy. Are these items filthy since they're considered more important than human values? Moreover, these people appear to be losing themselves, losing their humanity, over personal desires and materialism. The speaker seems to emphasize America's materialism and lack of morals here.

The opening of this poem is ironic and fools the audience since the rest of the poem doesn't focus on physical products, but rather on Americans seeing each other as products.

The poem's form reminds me of Pound's "In a Station of the Metro." There isn't a clear pattern of rhymes. Although each stanza has 3 lines, I don't think the poem follows a strong metrical scheme. Also, there's no punctuation to separate the beginning and end of sentences.

The first line confused me. I was wondering what "delphinium" referred to. Then all the flower/plant images stood out to me: "unthorned," "spiny," "mignonette," "dews," "rose." I looked up "delphinium" after reading this poem and it turns out to be a type of flower/plant, makes sense. This was when I put two and two together to understand that "stalk" obviously referred to the stalk or stem of the delphinium. Then I reread the poem. The first two lines seem positive, there's a "tending hand" and no thorns. But, then there's a shift with the ellipses, the land is "spiny," the mignonette is ""sikly," the rose is feeling "regret." What happened during the ellipses?

This is the first instance where the speaker refers to herself in first person point of view. The poem shifts to her perspective on whether she would sell love.

At the start of the poem, I easily noticed the unstressed/stressed rhythm, a clear indication of iambic pentameter. I counted all the lines and sure enough, there are 14 lines. This takes me back to one of my favorite poetry forms: shakespearean sonnet, where the last 2 lines always stand out from the other lines. In this case, the speaker changes course and admits that she's the same as those men she was just looking down on. She too, believes love is everything and wouldn't trade it for anything, illustrating the irony of the poem's first words.

The last line makes me rethink the words spoken by the speaker's neighbor. He doesn't want to change his way of thinking. It was his father's words and now his own; he won't deviate outside the borders of his closed mind. This reminds me how we may lock ourselves in our own boundaries by performing habitual activities, thinking a certain way because of the way we grew up, or keeping walls up due to past experiences/traumas. We may have good reasons or good intentions, or maybe our reasons are just out of habit. Nonetheless, we could be trapping ourselves in close-mindedness, just like the speaker's neighbor.

Before this stanza, I felt like something was a little off, but I didn't give that feeling too much thought. For the most part, the speaker seemed to marvel at the woods. But here, the woods are "dark and deep" and the eerie repetition at the end confirms my suspicions to rethink the entire poem. Who did the speaker make promises to and what promises are so important to make him choose to lose sleep and travel in the "dark and deep" woods?

The speaker had taken his time choosing between the two roads, making it seem as if they were quite different. But, these lines illustrate that they aren't. Here, the speaker realizes the road he took isn't that much different than the other one. He recalls how both roads were actually filled with the same amount of leaves; both roads were taken about the same amount of times. So, he shouldn't have spent so much time questioning which path to take. This makes me think about how some people overthink or spend too much time wondering how to get somewhere or how to reach a goal, instead of just starting the journey with a simple plan.

Here, the main character sees John in a very positive light. Why does this change? She sees him simply as "that man" at the end of the story.

This is another moment where she does not want to be here. Why can't she leave or take a break on her own? Why does she rely on John so much? Her feelings towards him are different here versus at the end of the story, where she could care less about him fainting.

I’m confused at the main character’s thought process. Why is she angry here? Is she trying to escape? She’s clearly comfortable staying in here in the next moments of the story, so why is she feeling differently right now? Also, if she locked herself in the room on purpose, why does she later act as if John had trapped her in? As an audience member, I don’t think I can trust her emotions or thought process.

Does Adams see the Virgin or Virgin Mary as the force that draws people to Christianity? What about the Cross? It's interesting how he notes here that this woman's force was the strongest to draw "man's" activities.

Why does Adam compare the rays to the Cross's energy? What does he think the Cross draws in, Christianity? I'm sure there are other forces he could compare to, why does he specifically focus on the Cross or Christianity? Does he feel a "mysterious energy" whenever he sees a cross?

Why does Adams compare the force of the dynamos to the force of the cross? Why are the truths of Science denied in these cases? Do both Langley and Adams see this force as supernatural or transcendental?

Earth is participating in the "feeding." Why? Is the world ending? But, Earth is also trying to help the living?

Who are "they"? Who are "They Lion"? What or who is being used for feeding? Since this is the title, these are questions I'll keep in the back of my mind as I read the poem.