hout emotional attachment. The repetition of 'burning' shows the narrators anguish, he longs to see no more. 'O Lord thou pluckest me out'. There is no finality here and we move from the burning, to the calm respite of the water. 'Death by Water', is linked to the prophecy of Madame Sosostris. The cleansing death represents an escape from worldly concerns that have been predominant up to this point. The philosophical tone gives the poem a feeling of fulfilment and hope. This calm and lyrical interlude gives the poem a much-needed release from the tension that has built up as the poem progressed.The final part 'What the Thunder said', is the heightened moment of crisis. The voice of thunder belongs to God, who has diagnosed the sickness of man and is pronouncing sentence. The first stanza portrays the biblical allusions of Christ's agony in the Garden of Getsemane, and the prisons and palaces are the places in which all the characters are trapped. We can sense the tone of urgency from the trapped souls 'We who are now living are now dead with a little patience'. The harsh and arid landscape is juxtaposed with the irritated question 'If there were water…' This lyrical dream of water having the power to create contrasts starkly with the images that are before us now. The thirst grows and this is reinforced by the metaphorical image of the mountain 'Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit' This image is reminiscent of the human condition, which is sterile and decaying. This image of death and decay is heightened by the rhetorical question 'Who is the third who walks always beside you'. Death is the only thing that is certain. The visions of hell on earth are seen with images of bats, blackened walls and tolling bells. These images are then juxtaposed with an image of lyrical beauty 'In this decayed hole among the mountains In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing'. As I stated in my introduction these...
