And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belovèd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,—
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.
Conrad Potter Aiken
I consider this sonnet even though it does not have 14 lines like tradition sonnets do for these reasons: It has a rhyme in the second and fourth line of every quatrain, the dominant metric line of iambic pentameter, has a volta, and the main focus is love.
There are two places that the volta could be, on line three or on line eleven. I think the more major one takes place on line eleven because the poem had a sad tone up until that point, where it changes to a more upbeat tone that describes the love that his heart has for the one that has died.
On the second and fourth line of every quatrain, I believe there are feminine endings on them and I think this helps add to the feeling of sadness in the poet's voice; it makes it seem as if he talks of a memory that is gone.
The actual message of the poem to me is that he is remembering all the things that he shared with the person who has passed away and that a lot of things that seemed small were actually important to him. He then goes into saying that there's nothing that can bring her back and that some things might not remember her but he always will.
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