0 a piece of writing in which the words are arranged in separate lines, often ending in rhyme, and are chosen for their sound and for the images and ideas they suggest: --
1 a piece of writing in which the words are carefully chosen for the images and ideas they suggest, and in which the sounds of the words when read aloud often follow a particular rhythmic pattern --
It is very much in the nature of an epitaph, indeed almost literally so, as the first two lines of the poem make clear.
As a poem about echoes, these echoes are sounded in the present, invoke the past, but also look into the future.
By endowing wine with these attributes, the wine poem appropriates the spiritual realm and reveals its full character.
Plans to publish an illustrated edition of the poem were never realized.
In a way the painting is not fully (159) realized until several centuries of poems have been added.
Since readers had to guess the names, the poem must have had the character of a set of miniature riddles.
Despite the chronological distance from his early work, the politics of these later poems do not reflect any substantial change in outlook.
The poem has enduring significance because of its comment on the "transhistorical" nature of oppressive institutions.
