“When all its work is done” definitely supports the ironic interpretation.
I intuitively read this more as taking a little consolation in the bigness of the truth relative to the petty little intrigues and dramas that distort it. I agree that for people with out values this is illegitimate, and I think it’s kind of a stretch for the speaker, too, but I don’t see them as being cannily ironic so much a grasping for solace; same tone you get from Marcus Aurelius when he reassures you than eventually you’ll be dead.
I mean, I think the “plea for speed” is a normatively correct response to this situation, but it doesn’t feel like what the narrator is doing; he’s off nature-watching somewhere*.
(And writing poems- maybe a crux is that I feel like we’re kind of supposed to ignore that part unless she calls attention to it? Actually, how closely are you identifying Patmore with the narrator, here?)
*Which is also very healthy, to be clear, and I don’t mean to suggest I’d actually begrudge him that.
“When all its work is done” definitely supports the ironic interpretation.
I intuitively read this more as taking a little consolation in the bigness of the truth relative to the petty little intrigues and dramas that distort it. I agree that for people with out values this is illegitimate, and I think it’s kind of a stretch for the speaker, too, but I don’t see them as being cannily ironic so much a grasping for solace; same tone you get from Marcus Aurelius when he reassures you than eventually you’ll be dead.
I mean, I think the “plea for speed” is a normatively correct response to this situation, but it doesn’t feel like what the narrator is doing; he’s off nature-watching somewhere*.
(And writing poems- maybe a crux is that I feel like we’re kind of supposed to ignore that part unless she calls attention to it? Actually, how closely are you identifying Patmore with the narrator, here?)
*Which is also very healthy, to be clear, and I don’t mean to suggest I’d actually begrudge him that.
EDIT: Spelling