Stanza 2 Summary

Lines 6-8

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.

• Stanza 2 begins with another mention of "the force." This time, instead of a flower image, we have the image of water moving through the rocks—like water in a rocky, swift moving river.
• The force drives the water through the river. It seems to be responsible for creating the river current itself.
• Water is a powerful life symbol, so we should pay particular attention to what happens to all things watery as we move forward.
• The force also seems to be responsible for the speaker's pulse; it "drives" the blood coursing through his veins.
• Both of these images, the river current and the pulse, feel positive. They feel like two more examples of the force as a life-giving, positive kind of energy. But things take a negative turn, much like they did in stanza 1.
• The force also "dries" the "streams." That doesn't sound good. And it turns the speaker's streams (his blood flowing through his veins) to "wax." That's definitely not good. That sounds like, well, death. So much for the whole life-giving thing: the force giveth, the force taketh away.
• Something else that we start to notice is the mirroring of natural imagery with body imagery.
• Check it out: Thomas gives us the image of water coursing through a river bed, right next to a line that implies blood coursing through human veins.
• We begin to see the natural world and the human body as reflections of one another. The way the force acts on one is the same as it acts on the other. The movement and imagery of nature is there in the movement and imagery of the human body, and vice-versa.
• What about that description of the "mouthing streams"? It seems a little strange, right? It's as if the stream were trying to speak, "mouthing" words as the force dries it up into nothing.
• This is another case of Thomas using personification. It heightens that connection between the natural imagery and the body imagery. Nature has qualities of the body and the body has qualities of nature. Neat trick.

Lines 9-10

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

• Anything sound familiar here? It should. That "And I am dumb" bit is repeated from stanza 1. It looks like this phrase might act as a kind of refrain, so let's keep an eye out for it moving forward.
• This time, the speaker is unable to tell his poor veins that the mouth—wait a minute. Which mouth is sucking and which mouth is "mouthing"? Things are getting all jumbled up here.
• Perhaps our boy Dylan just got a little confused? Or maybe, just maybe, he wanted us to feel like things were all jumbled up and confused. But why? 
• Once again, we're glad you asked. Remember how we said that the force seemed to be positive and negative at the same time—equally as capable of creation and destruction? Well, all this "mouth" confusion mirrors the force's (time's) duality. 
• Let us put it another way: We have the personified "mouthing stream," unable to speak as the force dries it up. We have the speaker, unable to "mouth" (to tell) his veins what's going on. And last, but not least, we have the "mouth" that "sucks" at "the mountain spring." So, whose mouth is that last one?
• If we go back to the stanza's first line, we find our answer. Remember, we're talking about the force. It's right there in the first lines of stanzas 1 and 2, for heaven's sake. So, this last "mouth" refers to the force.
• The stream, the speaker, and the force are all connected by this mouth imagery. 
• This is important. The mouth has traditionally been used as a positive and as a negative symbol (sound familiar?). According to The Herder Dictionary of Symbols, since the mouth allows us to speak and to breathe, it symbolizes life and "the power of the spirit and of creativity" (135). Unfortunately, it also represents destruction and the act of devouring—think about phrases like "the jaws of hell," or the gnashing teeth from Where the Wild Things Are.
• Here's the thing: Thomas would have known all about the mouth's dual symbolism and he wanted us to take note. The word "mouth" is used three times in a five-line stanza. We can't miss it.
• In fact, Thomas even alters the refrain to include the word "mouth." It's the only time in the whole poem that the refrain gets changed from, "And I am dumb to tell." This change draws even more attention to the word "mouth" and its associated symbolism.
• Now, he wasn't repeating "mouth" because he was lazy; he wanted us to notice that duality and to apply that duality to the force. Like the mouth, the force can be an agent of life and creativity or death and destruction.
• Still having trouble? Here's another example of how the mouth is simultaneously creative and destructive:
• When you eat, the food is destroyed, devoured by your mouth (yes, we've seen you in the cafeteria—it isn't a pretty sight).
• But that food you devour is going to give you energy and life. The mouth is destroying and creating at the same time, right?
• That's basically the kind of force our speaker is dealing with and why he chose to make us focus so much on mouth imagery in stanza 2.
• Everybody good? Okay, let's move on.
• That "mountain spring" sounds nice, right? A spring can represent vitality and youth. But if that's the case here, and if the "mouth" in line 10 belongs to the force, then we might have a problem.
• If it's the force "sucking" at the mountain spring then maybe it's going to drain it the way it did the stream. That would be bad.
• If you drain the symbol of life and vitality what have you got left? Yup, old age and death.
• So, just like in stanza 1, the force in stanza 2 is described as something that can fuel, "drive" life (the mountain stream, the speaker's pulse) and as something that can drain life (it dries the stream and drinks up the mountain spring).
• We talked about that refrain—"And I am dumb"—that pops up in stanza 2. Does anything else carry over from stanza 1 to 2?
• You probably noticed that the stanzas kind of look the same. They are "quintains," which is just a fancy name for five-line stanzas. As well, the lines follow a 5,5,2,5,5 metrical pattern (of mostly iambs—check out "Form and Meter" for more on that).
• There are also some similar-sounding end words: "flower," "destroyer," and "fever," "rocks," "wax," "sucks." There is a kind of loose rhyme scheme developing, only the words don't really rhyme.
• Thomas is using half, or slant, rhyme as well as alliteration to connect the word sounds in more subtle, more mysterious way than the more obvious connection of full or perfect rhyme.
• This more mysterious, more complex, sound connection mirrors the connection we talked about before between the human and the natural realms and, perhaps, between the natural and the metaphysical as well. (Check out "Sound Check" for more on this stuff.)
• Okay, that should do it for stanza 2. Take a deep breath. Ingest some caffeine and hold on tight. Things are only going to get more complex from here.