Sunt Leones. Stevie Smith Essay Example

pentametre couplet, which is a classic literary pattern (for instance, in lines 15-16); in some other cases, the rhyming lines seems more like a nursery rhyme. It is that combination of classical and popular forms which strikes the reader. At the same time, the extensive use of enjambment provides the poem with a rose tone, thus challenging the boundaries between genres.

The most clear example of enjambment appears in the lines 2-3, with a line ending in a preposition ("... has now been seen a / not entirely negligible part"). Eclecticism is particularly remarkable in her verbal expression, which includes complex phrases with refined vocabulary ("not entirely negligible part", "liturgically sacrificial hue"), colloquialisms ("well", "it appears"), Journalistic expressions ("the state of things"), and even a phrase n Latin (the title).

The mixture of forms and registers combines with the use of wit and humour (predominantly dark humour, as we can see in lines 11-12: "And if the Christians felt a little blue- / Well, people being eaten often do'), so that the contrast between content and form, between solemnity and irony, is the most striking feature of the poem. In short, both the content and the rhetorical devices used by the poet ultimately aim at challenging all kind of traditional patterns or beliefs, either literary or spiritual.