'A Woman's Fancy'

This poem narrates the progress of a curiously pathetic intimacy between a woman and a dead man, initiated by critically mistaken assumptions that both were once man and wife. As is general with narrative verse, it is the broad outlines of the story which give the poem its emotional charge, and encourage the reader's involvement in two complementary ways. We feel the need to fill out yhe story with detail on the one hand , and are led to meditate on the larger themes it outlines on the other. The poem is made accessible through the use of traditional verse patterns and direct vocabulary. A strong rhytmic pa...