Boat Stealing- internal conflict

• It was an act of stealth and troubled pleasure.- oxymoron
• Small circles glittering idly in the moon- emphasis on smallness
• A skiff, that to a willow-tree was tied- sense of beauty from the start.
• ...the huge cliff rose up between me and the stars... like a living thing.- guilt? the rowing has no become a nightmare
• In my thoughts there was darkness- poem becomes nightmarish, narrators state of mind becomes troubled.
• 'with his best skill'- pride comes before the fall- a lesson he has learnt.
• 'the bound of the horizon... was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.'- limit without a care in the world he looks up.
• 'she was an elfin pinnace.'- small boat emphasises the smallness.
• 'heaving through the water like a swan'.- simile he is proud of his rowing.
• 'I struck and struck again.'- rowing has become erratic, repetition shows this.
• 'with measured motion, like a living thing.'- simile shows his fear (adds to internal conflict.)
• 'worked with a dim and undetermined sense of unknown modes of being.'- feeling that he can't understand the power of nature realising that to appreciate nature you must appreciate your own insignificance.
• 'there was a darkness- call it solitude, or blank desertion- no familiar shapes.'- poem becomes nightmarish and dark. Narrator's state of mind becomes troubled.