I love the last three lines. There's so much going on, and I don't fully understand them. A couple observations:
1) Although we're pretty sure that the addressee is dead (appearance in a dream, "gone to stay"), it's still very effective to delay the explicit announcement of their death. The final confirmation of our guess hits pretty hard.
2) We're forced to wait two lines to find out why the rain matters to the narrator. We expect the rain to be in some way comforting (rain is often particularly associated with grief in our culture, although I think that's culturally determined and not found elsewhere). It hits hard, though, that the rain not only comforts the narrator but also substitutes for a real farewell.
3) The specific detail of the reservoir provides a sense of verisimilitude and also marks the experience as an extreme for the narrator.
4) Also, I love the way he emphasizes the last syllable of "reservoir" (I can't think of another word with that sound -svw-) and all the alliteration in s in the last line.
And I'm pretty sure it's "I'd never seen the reservoir so high" not "I've..."
I love the last three lines. There's so much going on, and I don't fully understand them. A couple observations:
1) Although we're pretty sure that the addressee is dead (appearance in a dream, "gone to stay"), it's still very effective to delay the explicit announcement of their death. The final confirmation of our guess hits pretty hard.
2) We're forced to wait two lines to find out why the rain matters to the narrator. We expect the rain to be in some way comforting (rain is often particularly associated with grief in our culture, although I think that's culturally determined and not found elsewhere). It hits hard, though, that the rain not only comforts the narrator but also substitutes for a real farewell.
3) The specific detail of the reservoir provides a sense of verisimilitude and also marks the experience as an extreme for the narrator.
4) Also, I love the way he emphasizes the last syllable of "reservoir" (I can't think of another word with that sound -svw-) and all the alliteration in s in the last line.
And I'm pretty sure it's "I'd never seen the reservoir so high" not "I've..."