Guide to spelling, punctuation and grammar

Paragraph 3
By the third line of the verse, then, the cadence is
rising and this is reflected in his use of metaphor:
the waves are ‘startled’ and they ‘leap in fiery
ringlets’. The sea in the agitation caused by the
‘pushing prow’ reflects the excitement of the lover as
he races to the meeting place. Even the use of
‘quench’ to describe the boat’s landing on the ‘slushy
sand’ only manages to reinforce the feverish haste of
the lover. The alliteration of ‘pushing prow’ and
‘speed in the slushy sand’ helps to emphasise the tone
of wild excitement.
Paragraph 4
The second stanza starts similarly to the first with a
slowing of the rhythm and falling cadences: ‘a mile
of warm sea-scented beach’ and ‘Three fields to
cross’. Then the short, almost staccato rhythms and
73
8 – S
AMPLE ESSAY
3:
WRITING ABOUT POETRY

---

the rising cadence of the lines that follow anticipate
the climax of the poem: ‘ A tap at the pane’ and ‘the
quick sharp scratch’. The images of the ‘blue spurt’
and ‘lighted match’ suggest the explosive emotions of
the lovers. Browning effectively communicates the
intensity of feeling by describing the voice of one of
the lovers as being ‘less loud’ than the sound of their
hearts beating as they embrace. ‘Each to each!’
underlines with the additional emphasis of the
climactic exclamation mark the need of the lovers to
be together again. As in the first stanza, the first two
lines of the poem are end-stop lines, then the next
two lines are examples of enjambement where the
meaning flows without pause from one line to the
next. The rising cadence of ‘And’ as the first word of
both lines four and five helps to keep the flow of the
verse going, underlining the intensity of the feelings.