gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
life is but a dream.
What happens in the first three lines of this familiar poem? In the first line the scene is set. The reader and the speaker are rowing a boat. Note how the repetition of the word ‘row’ and the repetitive rhythm textually mirror the real-life act of rowing. The sentence of the first line continues on the second line. Where are we? We are still in the stream. Still rowing. ‘gently down the stream’ modifies all those verbs ‘row’ in the first line. Again, note how the rhythm is expressive of the act – which does a lot to put us, as readers, in the world of the poem, with the speaker. The lines are moving with the pace and feel of a boat being rowed through water. What happens on the third line? A bunch of ‘merrily’’s over and over. Are we still in the stream? Certainly. Merrily modifies or describes the emotional state of the rowing.
But what about the fourth line? It’s a pretty grand declaration – about the nature of existence, no less – and one that has little, specifically, to do with boats and rowing. In some ways this poem, as a whole, is built entirely to set us up for a surprise ending. To lull us into a state of dreamy, lazy ‘merriment’ – only to pull the rug out from under us at the end with a deceptively simple commentary on the fleeting, and possibly even false, nature of life itself. Is life ‘but a dream’?
Mark Leidner, University of Iowa | Read more:
Image: uncredited via
[ed. I know, not rowing, and those aren't boats. Disjunction and surprise. See also: The Disjunctive Dragonfly: A Study of Disjunctive Method and Definitions in Contemporary English‑language Haiku (Haiku Research); with a more concise/understandable summary here.]
