- TITLE: shows you instantly the poem is religious.
- 'Am I a stone, and not a sheep' key images, she's concerned that she's lacking in emotion/humanity. Questioning faith and emotional reaction to God. Sheep is an analogy for a follower of Jesus, as he is the shepherd.
-CONTENT: Someone is watching Christ's crucifixion but is not crying, guilt.
- Rossetti's speaker imitates Moses' exhausted tone when pleading to Christ.
- 3rd line on 1st stanza, shows the narrator to be too analytical - she is concerned with reason and fact, so doesn't have unquestioning faith.
- Poem is addressing Christ, poem is essentially a prayer.
- 'Not so... Not so...' this spondee breaks the flowing rhythm, adds to heaviness of situation.
- Themes of religion and gender.
- Iambic stresses falling on syllables that convey emotion (Like 'Song').
- Caesuras.
- 'And smite a rock' asking to be broken, asking for lack of faith to be destroyed so she can be a sheep.
- Pleading God not to give up on her.
- 'I only I' reinforcement of narrative stance in repetition of personal pronouns.
- 'o'er' archaic diction.
- Personification of 'Sun and Moon'
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