The poem "The voice" is a touching account of a man's sense of loss and of his difficulty to come to terms with the absence of a loved woman. The narrator, hearing the voice of the woman he loved but who is now absent from his life, addresses her directly and is led to happily and in a very touching way reminisce in the second stanza about his past with her; however, there is then a shift in tone in the third stanza, as he is brought back to earth whilst questioning the probability of really hearing this woman's voice. Finally, in the fourth stanza, we leave him struggling with his sense of loss.

The poem starts with "Woman much missed," thus immediately introducing the notion of a sense of loss. This sense of loss is not an acute pain but rather a soft ache: this impression of...