Tone in Barter

The third stanza introduces a shift in tone and rhetoric. After referring to but concealing the price for loveliness, the narrator reveals it in the third stanza. This change is announced by a change to the imperative verb form. The narrator commands us to “spend all you have,” a rhetorical move that creates an increased sense of urgency.

The poem is set in iambic tetrameter, or four-beat lines with alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. Tetrameter lines tend to give a poem a song-like quality. They are shorter than standard pentameter lines, creating a quickened pace and excited tone.