You are welcome to ask
your questions on the speaker's actions, the poem's figurative language, and the poem's
continued relevance in additional posts. However, we are only supposed to address one question
per post; I have addressed your questions pertaining to rhyme, meter, and the meter's connection
to the poem's content below.
The poem's rhyme scheme is A-A-B-B; each of the
four quatrains follows this pattern. In the first stanza, lines 1 and 3 have seven syllables
each, and lines 2 and 4 have eight syllables each. In the second stanza, lines 5, 7, and 8 have
seven syllables each, and line 6 has eight. All lines in the third stanza have seven syllables
each. In the final stanza, all but the final line have seven syllables; the final line has
eight.
The meter is trochaic tetrameter. This
means that the prevailing foot is the trochee (two syllables, one stressed followed by one
unstressed), and most of the lines have four feet (tetra-). In addition, the final foot of every
line with only seven syllables has a final, truncated foot (this means that the unstressed
syllable we expect to hear at the end of the line is dropped). Often, trochaic meters sound
somewhat aggressive and menacing because they begin on an accented syllables. Furthermore, they
can sound almost spell-like and rather hypnotic at times. Here, the speaker is angry, and he
remains angryperhaps even growing more and more upset and vengeful as the poem progressesand so
the aggressive trochaic meter seems appropriate.
Moreover, because the
seven-syllable lines are truncated, it means that there are more stressed syllables than
unstressed, and this makes the poem sound somewhat more aggressive as well. The final line's
eight syllables give it a sense of finality, which the speaker now seems to feel because his foe
is dead.
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