"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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resolution through atonement, which he does not reach. There is no deity in “The
Wall”, rather, the rational fulfils this function. But, as in “The Rime”, no concrete
resolution is reached. Both poets in effect quest after the albatross of poetic genius.
Coleridge kills his and so lives in a “death in life” torment. Livingstone quests for
possession of the “goose-quill” (line 10) which he sees in the first stanza.
I concentrate on the imagery in the following closer analysis of “The Wall
Beyond Station X”. The extended metaphor of the quest or journey includes the path and
the destination. Both keep shifting. The anticipated destination is “some promised land”
(line 9), a metaphor for reconciliation and peace. Other more direct references to the
destination in stanzas two and three are: “that distant shore” (line 25); “journey’s end in
sight” (line 30) and then the drawing in of “all visible horizons” (line 34). There are no
further references to the destination in the remaining two stanzas of the poem.
The wall, as metaphor for the path or way, is safe and solid at the start of the
poem and is described in concrete terms: “two bricks wide, about two hands high” (line
7). By the end of the poem the wall becomes precariously high and narrow (line 57 and
60) and then 'dissolves’ as Livingstone ventures more deeply into the unconscious.
Even as it advances, the wall is strongly used as a trope for division. This is
introduced at the start of stanza two with the uneasy observation that “the history of walls
is not good”, followed by the image of cutting sharpness and the repeated use of the
preposition “through”: “The wall / cleaves through” (lines 31-2) and “the wall knifes
through” (line 35), a metaphor ominously extended in the final stanza where the wall’s
“haft / spears blackness” (lines 57-8).
The description of pastoral ease (of which Livingstone is not part) in the opening
quatrain of the poem serves as a metaphor for an idyllic state and contrasts with the
speaker’s quest for a “promised land”:
The promenade along this sunbright bank
is pleasant: folk amble; engage in talk
at tables beneath the trees; or recline
upon the springy turf, intent on love.
The degree of visibility metaphorically represents Livingstone’s journey into
uncertainty. At the start of stanza two the seabed was still visible (line 16), but by the end
of it "the seas on either hand have turned opaque” (line 27). In the final stanza “Little
light remains” (line 66). The poet’s resolve carries him forward: “You soldier on” (line