91�ȱ�

Stanza ten continues to present images of this solitary, distanced, detached separate lifestyle as she describes the single golden items she discovers on her walk from the parked car to her husband: Golden trout and a hare hung from a larch.

She describes him in a sorrowful state as thin, delirious; hearing, he said, the music of Pan.

This associates him to another Greek god, this time the isolated figure of Pan, who was the god of shepherds and flocks, and we note the irony that a gift so equated with wealth and prosperity should result in such emotional poverty.

The final stanza stresses Mrs Midas' anger at her husband's pure selfishness in making a wish that has not only affected him but also deprived them both of any physical relationship and his wife of a chance to have her dream baby.

In the end, the poet is reminding us that the myth of Midas, normally only viewed in connection with how it affected Midas and his life, also affected his poor wife who, even after all her anger has been unleashed, is still left alone with nothing but a wistful, regretful sense of loss for the man she married.

In a poignant line, she remembers fondly their once full, physical relationship and mourns its passing: even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch.

The repetition of the words hands emphasises too that his touch, once a potent symbol of their intimacy is now lost forever and reminds us that, unlike human skin to skin contact, gold is cold and hard.