She sits in the tawny vapour
London is justifiably famous for its thick fog. Everything from songs to coat manufacturers have been inspired by London’s fog and the romance of the great city that its imagery inspires. That romance is severely tested in the poem’s opening line by the characterization of the weather phenomenon as being roughly the color of mustard. This undercutting of one of the definitive elements that makes London what it is sets the stage for a poem that challenges the wisdom of wars in far-away lands for no immediately apparent benefit. The fog is no longer pure; it is a eye-watering, breath-compromising mix of water particles and smoke otherwise known as smog. The tawny vapour which encircles our heroine is as yet outside and she is safe. But not for long.
'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
The postman nears and goes:
A letter is brought whose lines disclose
By the firelight flicker
His hand, whom the worm now knows:
The construction of the poem is a little off-kilter. It follows a very definite rhyming scheme as demonstrated in this excerpt. Despite the reliance upon rhyme, however, it avoids a rhythm threatening to become sing-songy. It accomplishes this by essentially following the exact opposite approach to meter. While the rhyme is strictly observed, the meter is really all over the place. The second line of the first stanza ends with a comma whereas here we have a colon. The final line of the first stanza, on the other hand, features neither the comma nor colon displayed here, bringing the entire thought to a clean close with a simple period.
The differences in the pause one has learned to give to a comma, a colon and a sentence will just naturally lead the reader toward the right rhythm even if technically the meter itself is off. The precision of punctuation serves a purpose, but the purposes vary from stanza to stanza. In this instance, the semi-colon in the first line and the comma which ends slows the pace considerably from that of the stanza which opened Part I, taking place the day before. The shortening of “It is” to “Tis” links with the punctuation to allow the rhythm to seem natural despite it being a genuinely significant alteration from the stanza which introduced the previous section. In that entire stanza can be found just two punctuation marks: a comma and the period which ends it. Here in just the first line of this stanza are three punctuation choices precisely intended to achieve effect.
He—has fallen—in the far South Land...
The final line of the second stanza presents another example of how punctuation is utilized to manipulate the rhythm even as it completely violates the meter established in the final line of the first stanza. This line adds three more syllables and ends not with the finality of the period, but that most difficult of all punctuation marks to gauge effectively for breathing and pausing, the ellipsis. The dashes and the ellipsis all are interesting enough to warrant closer study, but the real meat to be perused in this quote is the wording itself. It is not for nothing that the dash marks briefly interrupt the phrase “he has fallen.” The explicit signal by the poet to the reader to slow things down and break up that phrase is a key to figuring out the significance. What this entire line is telling this young woman can be phrased completely differently: “Your husband was brutally murdered by a stranger fighting for South Africa in the Boer War against the British.” That’s a little rough, however. The imagery of “fallen” carries very subtle referential links to Biblical imagery and the anonymity of a “far South Land” can almost make it seem unreal. It is a lie. War is a lie that gets dressed up in the trappings of phony patriotism and antiseptic heroism when it is, in fact, a very nasty and almost always pointless business. But the lie has so far proven a sweeter pill to swallow for recently widowed wives back home.
Page-full of his hoped return,
And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn
These lines appear in the final stanza which describes the letter the wife receives the day after the messenger presented her with the typed telegram’s tersely worded attempts to distract from the reality behind the truth of being officially informed of her husband’s death. By contrast, the letter is handwritten and rather than fitting on the restricted space of a small telegram, the entire page is filled. And that page is filled with planning for his return home and the real start of their life together. Again, we also see the precise utilization of a new punctuation mark: the hyphen. Hyphens which connect two distinct and separate words have the power to lend a certain kind of fullness and completion to the idea which would not be quite the same using a phrase like “fully written pages” or “plans made from home.” The introduction of the hyphens subtly creates a link to the hyphenation aspect of marriage in which two different and separate people become a single entity. The use is ironic, however, since that will now never be.
