This then leads into the second stanza where time and life are portrayed even more. .
The second stanza reveals a bittersweet contrast of celebrating life yet understanding that time is limited. Now the poem starts to give a sense of how hard life can be and in the and lines:.
"Today begins cold and bright, .
the ground heavy with snow.
and the thick masonry of ice, .
the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds.".
The sadness really piles on to a reader. The lines, "Today begins cold and bright/the ground heavy with snow/and the thick masonry of ice" makes me believe that the mother has been told the young child has a severe illness, and through all of the troubles and hardship (which is symbolized as the heavy snow and the masonry of ice) she is still trying to keep her head up just like a turret above the clouds. It also gives a feeling, that the author is wishing that if the sick child was well, that they could be out in he snow playing. But life moves on, as if it were the sun glinting off the clouds. And once again the time issue remains going into the next stanza and the number of days are growing shorter for the young child.
This stanza resembles the pain and misery felt as in the second one. In addition to the emotions felt in the second stanza, this stanza has the underlying tone of being melancholy. This tone of melancholy is comforted by her thoughts of disbelief or shock that this is happening to her and her child. The lines: .
"Through the calm eye of the window .
everything is in its place .
but so precariously .
this day might be resting somehow" .
Resembles how the mother is sitting at a window and looking at everything out in the world that is in its place. The one thing that is wrong in the world is in her life, and she is forced to watch her baby suffering day after day. Through all of the the suffering, the word precariously to me means how he is hoping that by some chance, she could someday find a cure that would give her precious baby a chance at life.