Task One:
The speaker is speaking in 1st person. I think that the speaker is speaking in present tense but mainly in the past tense. I also believe that the speaker is male as he mentions marrying a girl. Unless the character is homosexual and is female, I’m presuming that the character is heterosexual and is the opposite sex as this is the more common probability. I think that the message of the poem was that the speaker, regrets many events they have been involved in and is telling us (the reader) that you should think on your sins.
Task Two:
The second stanza starts with an ‘O’. This is a very peculiar start of a sentence as it is very similar to the language in the Shakespearean era. However, in this poem, I think that the ‘O’ is representing the pain or regret of the speaker because when you’d say ‘O’ in a sentence in the modern day, you would say ‘oh’ as in you understand or you’ve realised you’ve done something you didn’t intend to. So I believe that in this case, it is used to show the realisation and the instant regret of the situation.
Another language device I have found is the use of a metaphor for the marriage proposal with the scissors. This is very strange because the poem says ‘as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in’. I think this is peculiar because the thumb and middle finger are the common fingers to use scissors as a utensil but in this case (from the speakers point of view) it was a marriage proposal. Another abnormal aspect of this ‘marriage proposal’ is that the speaker is 13 years old at this incident.
React!