Speaker:

The author -"When I"(1)

Tone:

Formal, mournful

Poetic Language:

Denotation- "unutterable" (13) too great, intense, or awful to describe

"slums"- squalid and overcrowded urban streets inhabited by very poor people

Connotation- negative

Figurative Language:

Personification- "her smells" (9) "her throbbing force" (10)

personifies Manhattan as a woman

Metaphor- "death's endless night" (1) "the threshold of the unknown dark to cross,/what to me then will be the keenest loss,"(2-3)

To Determine Poetic Meaning