First we must decide if there are not positive features in the poem which make it possible to judge it in these respects as a formal poem and which should occur in any rewriting of the poem with much the same emphasis. The title might undergo some amplification because of a veiled literary reference in lines five and six to Rémy De Gourmont’s _Litanies De La Rose_: it might reasonably include some acknowledgement of the poet’s debt to French influences, and read “Sunset Piece: After Reading Rémy De Gourmont”; although the original title _Sunset_ would be no less literary. The heavy alliteration in _s_ in the first seven lines, confirmed in the last by the solitary capitalized _S_, cannot be discarded. The context demands it--certain inevitable associations are connected with the words as they stand. The first word, _stinging_, taken alone suggests merely a sharp feeling; its purpose is only to prepare for the poem and supply an emotional source from which the other _s_ ideas may derive. In the second line _swarms_ develops the alliteration, at the same time colouring _stinging_ with the association of golden bees and softening it with the suppressed idea of buzzing. We are now ready for the more tender _s_ word, _spires_, in the third line. _Silver_, the single word of the fourth line, brings us back to the contrast between cold and warm in the first and second lines (_stinging_ suggests cold in contrast with the various suggestions of warmth in the _gold swarms_) because _silver_ reminds one of cold water as _gold_ does of warm light. Two suppressed _s_ words play behind the scenes in this first part of the poem, both disguised in _silver_ and _gold_, namely, _sea_ and _sun_. _Sea_ itself does not actually occur until the twelfth line, when the _s_ alliteration has flagged: separated from alliterative associations, it becomes the definite image _sea_ and the centre around which the poem is to be built up. But once it has appeared there is little more to be said; the poem trails off, closing with the large _S_ echo of the last line. The hyphen before this _S_ detaches it from _dream_ and sets it apart as the alliterative summary of the poem; in a realistic sense _-S_ might stand for the alternation of quiet and hiss in wave movement. As a formal closing it leaves us with a feeling like the one we started with, but less acute, because the _z_ sound has prevailed over the _s_ sound with which the poem was begun. The sunset is over, the final impression is darkness and sleep, though the _-S_ vaguely returns to the two large _S_’s of the title.