18 pages • 36 minutes read
What mystery pervades a well!
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“What mystery pervades a well” is written in six stanzas of four lines each. It uses iambic tetrameter and trimeter: lines of four or three sets of iambs, or alternating unstressed and stressed syllables.
There is one notable variation in the length of the lines: “Where he is floorless” (Line 15), which stops abruptly at five syllables, ending on an unstressed syllable rather than a stressed one. The following line returns to iambic tetrameter. This deviation in rhythm causes an auditory break and draws the reader’s attention to the word “floorless” (Line 15). The drop in rhythm emulates the ocean’s vast, fathomless expanse as well as the unconquerable divide between the full breadth of nature and human knowledge.
The rhyme scheme is ABCB, with the second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyming. Many of these are perfect rhymes, such as “most” and “ghost” (Lines 18, 20). Others are near or slant rhymes, such as “glass” and “face” (Lines 6, 8). The poem uses clear, simple language, favoring monosyllabic words. There is only one word, “timidity” (Line 16) that has three syllables.
Personification
The poem uses personification and the assignment of gender to inanimate objects to explore the natural world. Early in the poem, the well water is described as “A neighbor from another world” (Line 3). While this is closer to a metaphor than true personification, it lays the groundwork for what is to come. In the next stanza, the water is gendered: Its surface is “just his lid of glass” (Line 6).
In the third stanza the poem identifies two male personas: grass near the well and sedge grass near the sea. The grass’s attitude towards both bodies of water echoes qualities traditionally coded as male: Neither betrays any hesitation or fear despite the presence of the dangerous and the sublime. The sedge, growing on a coastline at constant risk of erosion “is floorless / And does no timidity betray” (Line 15-16).
In the final two stanzas, the poem personifies nature, this time coding this force as female. Unlike the well water, nature is a “stranger” (Line 17) whose power few can truly understand: “pity those that know her not” (Line 21). As befits this unbounded being, nature is given more space in the poem, and the pronoun “her” is used seven times. It becomes clear that the grass and the sedge do not feel fear because they don’t understand what nature is capable of. The speaker, at first seemingly jealous of their courage, now looks on their foolhardy arrogance in the face of great mystery with disdain.
Alliteration, Assonance, and Consonance
The poem uses several instances of repeated sounds. In particular it favors soft sounds over harsh consonants, consistent with the themes of nature and knowledge.
An alliterated “w” bookends the first line, “What mystery pervades a well” (Line 1), and continues in “water” (Line 2) and “world” (Line 3). The second stanza uses a repeating “l” in “limit” (Line 5), “lid” (Line 6), and “Like looking” (Line 7). The repeated long “o” sounds in third stanza create rhythm in the line “so close and look so bold” (Line 11), while the “w” of the word “wonder” (Line 10) connects back to the first stanza.
Meanwhile, end-word consonance gives us the recurring double “s” of “glass” (Line 6), “abyss” (Line 8), “grass” (Line 9), and “floorless” (Line 15). The “s” sound is also alliterative in the fourth stanza, with phrases like “somehow […] / The sedge stands near the sea” (Lines 13-14) replicating the sea breeze rustling the stalks of sedge. In the two closing stanzas, the repeated “s” appears again in “passed” (Line 19), “less” (Line 23), “stranger” (Line 17), “cite” (Line 18), “simplified” (Line 20), and “ghost” (Line 20), giving the poem a sense of sonic unity.
The final stanza uses alliteration to buttress its philosophical thesis. Repetition occurs not only with the sound “n” but also with the word “know,” linking lines and ideas together:
To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get (Lines 21-24).
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