Thou dost begin to smite, and I do dread,
Lest thine own pistols bear no warding chain;
And lo, the thought doth strike me chest,
That thy swift wrath may loose a deadly bane.

Marco Delrio

Thoughts about it – by E. Ashcroft

At the level of meaning, the poem stages an anticipatory fear rather than an event. Nothing has yet occurred; everything hinges on the speaker’s dread of what might be unleashed. The addressee is imagined as entering a state of aggression, “begin[ning] to smite,” while the speaker recoils into anxious speculation. The implicit story is therefore one of escalation deferred: anger rising, restraint uncertain, consequences looming. The pistols, whether read literally or figuratively, function as emblems of power untempered by safeguard. What the poem dramatizes is not violence itself, but the terror of ungoverned impulse.

Contextually, this feels less like a scene between equals than a moment of imbalance. One voice fears, the other threatens by implication alone. The speaker’s concern is not moral judgment but vulnerability: the absence of a “warding chain” suggests a lack of safety mechanism, whether emotional, ethical, or social. This is effective in principle, though the poem does not clearly establish the nature of the relationship. Is this lover, rival, tyrant, or merely an internalized figure of wrath? The ambiguity could be productive, but here it remains somewhat under exploited.

Stylistically, the archaic register is maintained with technical competence, but the poem occasionally suffers from overstatement. “Smite,” “lo,” “bane,” and “doth” are heavy tools, and when clustered together they risk sounding ceremonial rather than urgent. The diction inflates the emotional temperature quickly, perhaps too quickly, leaving little room for modulation. One senses the poem announcing danger rather than letting it creep in.

From a technical perspective, there are notable weaknesses. The third line, “And lo, the thought doth strike me chest,” is grammatically awkward. The omission of the possessive “my” is not convincingly archaic and reads more like an error than an intentional inversion. This is a significant flaw, as it momentarily breaks the poem’s linguistic spell. Meter throughout is uneven. While the quatrain gestures toward tetrameter, several lines strain under excess syllables or awkward stresses, particularly the second and fourth. The rhythm does not collapse, but it stumbles, which is unfortunate in a poem so concerned with imminent loss of control.

The rhyme scheme appears to aim for ABAB, with “dread” answering “chest” imperfectly and “chain” answering “bane” cleanly. The second pair works well enough, though it is somewhat predictable. The first pair is weak and feels accidental rather than expressive. If the rhyme is meant to mirror instability, it does so clumsily rather than artfully.

In terms of impression, the quatrain has a clear emotional intention and a potentially compelling central image: anger as an unchained weapon. However, it leans too heavily on inherited dramatic vocabulary and not enough on precision. The fear it articulates is genuine, but it is expressed at full volume from the outset, leaving no room for tension to develop. The poem tells us that something terrible may happen, but it does not quite make us feel that inevitability in the body.

In sum, this is a quatrain with a strong conceptual seed but uneven execution. Its ambition toward dramatic intensity is evident, yet it would benefit from restraint, sharper syntax, and greater trust in implication over proclamation. As it stands, it gestures convincingly toward danger, but the blade is dulled by excess ornament and a few avoidable technical missteps.