Top Highlights

• The poem links this horror with the speaker's mental state as it becomes clear that what the reader is really witnessing is a picture of psychological distress.
• the army is the haunting manifestation of the speaker's loneliness, anxiety, and fear in the wake of this loss.
• The soldiers' "whirling laughter," meanwhile, suggests that the speaker feels humiliated and ashamed, as though their feelings of love are worthy of mockery.
• The army's overwhelming power and ability to conquer the speaker's dreams thus implies that the speaker has been totally vanquished by their own romantic pain.

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