peated clipped, single vowels (“Waxy stalactites/ Drip and thicken,” and “Wrap me, raggy shawls”.) In Mary’s Song, however, neither assonance nor consonance is used particularly frequently. The harsh tones of By Candlelight are accompanied by an implication of pity: “Poor heirloom, all that you have” and “No child, no wife”. The suggestion is that the “Five bright brass balls” will be all that remain “when the sky falls.” This sounds like an apocalyptic prophecy, but we don’t know whether the mother is talking to her child or to Hercules, who is holding up the source of light in that room. The use of “my love” implies the former, but it is the latter’s hands that will need occupying when he is no longer supporting the sky. Whichever is the case, the theme of ominous divination recurs throughout Nick and the Candlestick and Mary’s Song. “Let the stars/ Plummet to their last address” suggests that the mother is prepared for the world, and even wants it to end. The end of Mary’s Song, however, is much less pleasant: “It is a heart,/ This holocaust I walk in,/ O golden child the world will kill and eat.” In Nick and the Candlestick, “Wrap me, raggy shawls” shows the comfort seen earlier mixed with a sense of claustrophobia. There also seems to be a sense of uncertainty (“The Candle/ Gulps and recovers its small altitude,”) but the recovery implies that the flame is always safe. “The earthen womb” creates images of a miner trapped below ground, which could be the mother trying to imagine (or remember) what life is like inside the uterus. There seems to be a general loss of sentimentality as she refers to “its dead boredom”, suggesting either that she could not imagine much, or that her imagination is not coming up with anything that inspires any particular em...
