The centralwhich runs through the poem is .
The man in the poem did the thing that couldn't be done and so, says the poet in the last line,
can you. Since the thing ends up being done, the repeated assertions of impossibility on the
part of the onlookers also amount to .
The jaunty internal rhymes bolster the
striking use of repetition to create a sense of optimism throughout. The word "grin"
is repeated at the end of the fifth line in each stanza and is twice paired with "buckle
in" or "buckled right in" to show a cheerful attitude to the work in hand and
also a sense that the person undertaking the task is smiling to himself at knowing something the
pessimistic onlookers do not.
Thegives a sense of reassuring certainty as to
how it will end in the third stanza. Here the poet uses apostrophe, directly exhorting the
reader to apply the lesson of the previous stanzas to his/her own life. This is a favorite
technique of inspirational didactic verse, such as Longfellow's "Psalm of
Life"intended first to create a sense of infinite possibility and then to inspire us with
the idea that this applies as much to our lives as those mentioned earlier in the
poem.
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