Read-along-with-Rest Note :

Poem # 2 :

I'm sort of worn out today (stayed up too late). So comments brief. A way to think about Rest Note structure : it's built on the most basic form of design, simple variation, back-&-forth, turning & returning. Software binaries : 1/0/1/0... a/b/a/b/a... night/day/night/day... That's the first level. The second is : return, recursion, reflection : a to b and back to a. It's in the rhyme-stanza scheme (ABBA). The third level : such returns or recursions are expansive, or exponential : a/b/a, A/B/A, A/B/A... in other words, the ring structures are reflected up from the smallest to the largest units.

There's a thematic aspect to this shuttling back & forth - but maybe I'll get into that another time. With respect to poem # 2, the variation goes from the 3rd person description of poem #1, to the 1st person soliloquy of poem #2. It's TR, feverish, in the jungle, addressing his wife, Edith, back in the USA.

2. (epigraph) : "In Xanadu", etc. - from Coleridge's famous dream-poem, which his companions said TR was muttering obsessively, over & over, during his fever-delirium.

2.1 : pretty clear... "pinhole star-swarm" - glance back at the camera obscura of #1. TR is also Lazarus.

2.2-3 - Again, see Candice Millard's book River of Doubt for insight on the eco-biology of rainforest. "my demise... undo myself" - echoes of Shakespeare's Richard II. Shakespeare's Richard is something of a narcissist as well as sacred king (ie. something of a poet). Mixing here the "hero" representative figurings - TR, Richard, Lazarus, poet. (Selva oscura.) Chaucer was a courtier in Richard's reign. Setting up relations between these figures.

2.4 : center stanza establishes image of arch-swing-tree for first time, on its smallest scale (the inch worm). So the imagery, in spreading & growing, will echo, to some extent (improvisationally) the structure of the poem as previously described. & eventually (hopefully) images & structure will fold into certain ideas or themes.

2.5-7 : TR's expressions of discouragement & despair. Part of the same alternating variation : thus the hopeful image of the inchworm (a "little little worm" - cf. Richard's "little little grave") is shrouded in gloom. And the tone of #2 - rather hopeless - contrasts with the tones of the adjacent sections (#1 - sort of apprehensive, wary; #3 - more hopeful, forward-looking).