Great Regulars: In the fourth stanza, the speaker begins

musing about the man's loved ones, how they were "weeping far away" and how they would be watching for his return. The speaker can be sure they were "sorrowful," because the speaker can empathize with the mourners, even though he knows they did not realize they were mourning a death and not merely an absence.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Bryant's 'The Murdered Traveller'

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The quietness implied by "shadows holding their breath" is astounding; it is a miracle of striking awareness, undetectable to most and unceasingly secure to but a few.

Then the speaker avows that when the sense of melancholy goes, when the "[h]eavenly hurt" lightens into understanding, it is "like the Distance/On the look of Death."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's Slant of Light

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But this speaker invokes his talent to serve as the "tenth Muse," which he deems ten time more valuable than the other nine: "Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth/Than those old nine which rimers invocate." This poet is more than a rimer; he is indeed a true poet.

The poet who calls on his own soul/talent will produce works even greater then these earlier poets who relied upon the nine Muses.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 38

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