The use of assonance within the poem help Rossetti tell the story as the initial lines dramatically link ‘love’ with ‘blood’, symbolising the theme of sinful passion which is ‘scarlet’ and ‘soiled’, this shows the speakers past has not always been one of pureness and well being through the eyes of the Christian views, this is reinforced with the quote ‘My lily feet are soiled with mud’ metaphorically meaning she has sinned once was pure as a lily but now is ruined, and is un pure, therefore is repenting to make up for her sins. Her Christian views are emphasized when she says ‘with Cherubim and Seraphim’ as she believes by repenting her sins she will also be innocent and become pure again, just as these high order of angels.
The poem breaks out of the regular iambic tetrameters of which it starts, Rossetti uses opening trochees in the lines, ‘Stair after golden skyward stair’ and ‘Mount with me, mount the kindled stair’, through the shift in , the speaker highlights the effort needed to break out of the expected patterns set by the world. Within the poem her struggle to break free of her past and prepare herself to enter heaven without feeling a ‘pitiful pang’ for her lover is reflected through the metre. This is stressed when she speaks with a sense of urgency, the metre changes to mirror her tone. For example, after a sequence of lines written in iambic tetrameter, she cries, ‘Flee for your life, gird up your strength’. By having a stress fall on the word ‘Flee’, she creates a trochee which draws attention to her heightened emotion.
The speaker tells her lover that as, in her dream, she prayed for him to repent, her ‘silence spoke like thunder’. This oxymoron conveys to the incredible power that she suggests silent prayer has, as well as to the effect that silence can create. In ‘speaking like thunder’, she alludes to the idea that the importance of a message does not correlate to the volume at which it is spoken. By turning away from her lover and entering the convent where nuns are required to remain in complete silence for certain lengths of time, the speaker suggests that she is giving him a more significant message than any words could possibly convey.
At first it seems the couple must separate in order to enter heaven. The "far-off city grand" does not contain any lovers, only "the righteous" who sing hymns. Couples singing "love-music" are strongly allied with the earthly realm. She begs her lover to "repent with me, for I repent," rather than claiming a need for an end to the lovers' relationship, the narrator asks for a conversion of it from physical to spiritual love. At the end of the poem, she offers the possibility, previously unmentioned, of a union in heaven ‘There we shall meet as once we met, And love with old familiar love.’
