Scholar Stephen Booth points out that the logical structure of the first quatrain imitates its own content—the movement of the waves. According to Booth, the first two lines form a combined unit which is then modified by the third line. As the reader encounters the notion of “each changing place,” her understanding of the waves/minutes in the first two lines is retroactively altered. Arriving at the fourth line, it becomes clear that the phrase “each changing place” actually serves as an adjectival modification of “all forwards.” Once again, the new line alters the reader’s understanding of “that which goes before.” Each successive line “chang[es] place with its predecessor.” As Booth puts it, the “physics of the quatrain” imitates the physics of the described wave pattern.
