After the Rain
Maria S. Mendes
In Hecht’s short, tightly rhymed lines, such rhythmic effects occur strikingly at the level of the sentence. The first line in the second octave completes a sentence that began five lines earlier. Such periodicity dramatically postpones finality until it runs into the next octave. What a contrast to lines of a single sentence that end the third stanza and begin the fourth! Despite paying all its dues of stanza, rhyme, and meter, Hecht’s tightly controlled syntax soon breaks its bonds. A thirteen-line sentence linking two octaves together precedes the final octave, which is a single sentence. There are rules and forms, and there is the dance. Or is it the dancer, who strays from strict observance? Then the prodigal returns to a welcome homecoming of sound and sense.
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