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Questions:
1. What "kind" of poem is this?
Tale? "an example of narrative verse in its purest, least formalized state"
Ballad, Tragedy, Gothic
2. Narrative vs Lyric
"A lyric is --relatively--so brief that we may without danger of going far wrong consider it temporarily self-contained, timeless in the way that a painting is timeless. But a narrative is a temporal process. ... A verse story like Tam o' Shanter is, in fact, a dynamic system of probabilities created first of all by the order of the happenings which occur, and only secondarily by the nature of the protagonist whom they befall."
3. Humor
"Gathering her brows like gathering storm,/ Nursing her wrath to keep it warm"(11-12)
"The landlady and Tam grew gracious,/Wi' favors secret, sweet, and precious"(47-48)
4. Philosophical
"But pleasures are like poppies spread--/You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;/ Or like the snow falls in the river--/A moment white, then melts forever;/Or like the borealis race,/That flit ere you can point their place;/ Or like the rainbow's lovely form/ Evanishing amid the storm."(59-66)
5. Terror
"Five tomahawks, wi' blude red rusted;/Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted;/ A garter, which a babe had strangled;/ A knife, a father's throat had mangled,/Whom his ain son o' life bereft-"(135-139)
6. Sympathy
"Ah! little kent hey reverend grannie/That sart she coft for ther wee Nannie/ Wi' twa pund Scots('twas a' her riches)/Wad ever graced a dance of witches!"(175-178)
 
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