Great Regulars: Instead of Clancy's pleasant sounds of

"lowing cattle," the poor speaker's ears are accosted with "the fiendish rattle/Of the tramways and the buses." He also must endure hearing the foul language of "children fighting" in the streets. And there is the "ceaseless tramp of feet."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: A.B. Paterson's Clancy of the Overflow

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In the second grand movement, the speaker shifts his focus from crawfish to people. Later in Theodore's life, instead of watching crawfish, he turned to observing people, "your vision watched for men and women."

Because of his former experience of watching for crawfish, the speaker/poet metaphorically refers to the places from which people exit as "burrows of fate amid great cities" after "hiding" for some period of time. Theodore was watching the people to determine the nature of the souls; thus, he was constantly "looking for the souls of them to come out."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Edgar Lee Masters' Theodore the Poet

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