Form
The poem is comprised of four stanzas:
- three quatrainA stanza in poetry consisting of a group of four lines.
- a sestetA stanza of six lines, or the last six lines of a 14-line Italian or Petrarchan sonnet.
Visually, the lines of the poem are generally irregular. This perhaps reflects the dramatic, unpredictable landscape that the poem describes.
There are shorter lines in the closing stanza. Along with words associated with speed 鈥 surge
and impetuous
- these help move the poem to a climactic conclusion.
Unlike some of MacLean鈥檚 more immediately personal poems, this poem is not written in first personThe 'I' or 'we' used by a narrator who is a participant in a narrative, in contrast to the third person - 'he', 'she' or 'they' - of a narrator who is not directly involved..