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LINES 114-116 Nor perchance, If I were not thus taught, should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay: Line 113 ended halfway through its iambic pentameter, containing three complete feet and half of a fourth. The fourth foot, and the rest of the pentameter, are completed in line 114, at the beginning of the next stanza. Taken as a single line, they'd be scanned as: Of allmymoral being. Nor perchance, In a way, this break in the line echoes and recalls the stanza break between the first two stanzas, which likewise divided the pentameter of the previous line almost exactly in half, to be completed in the following line and following stanza. Here, the effect of the caesura is heightened by introducing a stanza break not only mid-pentameter but mid-foot; the unstressed second syllable of “being” finds its stressed counterpart in “Nor,” but only after the reader traverses the pause and white space in between stanzas. This stanza break and metrical divided between two lines has effects that, as in the break between the first two stanzas, work in tension with one another. • First, the increased white space gives the reader a greater sense of pause, as the speaker shifts more dramatically from one rhetorical mode to another (in this case, shifting from an apparent dramatic monologue to a direct address to his sister). • At the same time, because the pentameter (and a foot within the pentameter) are only completed in line 114, at the start of the fifth stanza, the reader can interpret these stanzas as being implicitly connected. The pause, then, slows the reader down but also propels the reader forward to reach the next line. The opening lines of this final stanza also work as a kind of transition to the poem’s final movement. The speaker reflects on what he has just said about having learned to see nature as his guide and protector. Referencing this, he says that even if he hadn’t been “taught” through his experiences to love and appreciate nature, he wouldn’t let his good spirits “decay” or fall apart. The speaker’s use of the word “decay” is interesting, here, give the poem’s emphasis on the natural setting as well as the progression of time. Everything living, and in the natural world, does eventually “decay.” Here, the speaker uses a word that often refers to natural decomposition to essentially refute it, saying that his good spirits—perhaps like the “spirit” he has said runs through all of life and nature, which is eternal and infinite—won’t decay.