After receiving the message that her lover is dead, the woman begins to think back to her words her lover spoke to her while they were still together. He had a whim That the sunlight carried blessing And I answered, "It shall be as you have said." Now he is dead. (lines 87-90) She believed all that her lover had told her and now how can she trust what is dead? All the patterns she …showed first 75 words of 188 total…

…showed last 75 words of 188 total…The pattern of her dress, the tears she sheds for her lover, and the garden she paces through each day give the reader a sense of this woman's incompleteness. Lowell also shows how these patterns are destroyed. The one event of the lover's death caused the once hopeful patterns to be useless. We all follow patterns in our own lives. Most of these patterns, however, will constantly need changing for the rest of our lives.