Observation

Many candidates attempted this question. A good number of them were able to identify the poet’s inability to make a decision.

Candidates were expected to discuss the following points:

• It is a moral poem that deals with the dilemmas facing human beings; the dilemma concerns the physical and spiritual battles and agonies which the poet and everyone confronts.
• The first four stanzas make statements that expresses the poet’s views and raise moral questions.
• The fifth stanza through a series of images, provides a picture of the poet’s struggles with the forces of good and evil.
• The sixth and seventh stanzas reveal another dimension of the poet’s predicament. He notices the change that have taken place in his environment and the importance of doing something but he recoils himself with the platitude- “there I lie”.