The first lines of this poem appear to be the speaker's fervent declaration of faith:
This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond—
In other words: there is a world and a life beyond the one we know; the "conclusion" of life here isn't the end. What lies in the "beyond," exactly, the speaker can't say. It's just a "species," a something, and it's as "invisible, as Music." But it's also "positive, as sound."
Those paired similes suggest that the speaker's faith in the world beyond relies on a kind of perception very different from the ordinary. As the cliché has it, seeing is believing—but the world after ours most definitely cannot be seen. Thus, metaphorically speaking, it can't be understood, defined, or confirmed. Nonetheless, it can be perceived, as music can. There's no arguing that something doesn't exist just because you can't see it; sound is the proof.
By presenting the other world as a phenomenon like music, the speaker doesn't simply suggest that it's invisible but real. They also hint that it feels as alluring and haunting as the sound of a distant pipe over the hills.
In these first four lines, then, it sounds as if the speaker has a firm faith in something beautiful to come after this life. This apparent certainty, however, will shift into unease over the course of this poem's 20 lines. Already, the poem's form gives some hint of that shift:
- The ABCB rhyme scheme here cuts through the long unbroken stanza, making the poem feel more like five quatrains (or four-line stanzas) running into each other than a continuous train of thought. That shape will match the speaker's state of mind: a nervous, fretful one, in which very different thoughts and feelings chase each other's tails.
- The meter similarly suggests tension. Most of the lines here are written in iambic trimeter—that is, lines of three iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "A Spe- | cies stands | beyond." Occasionally, however, a longer line of iambic tetrameter (four iambs) intrudes. The rhythms thus feel as edgy as the rhymes—anxiously tight and unpredictable.