Order and Disorder

This poem uses the opposing concepts of order and disorder to show the two sides of human nature. The orderly side appreciates logic and reason, while the disorderly side is driven by intuition. As Gregg puts it, humans require both, but in different ways, which she likens to the twin drives of hunger and thirst. Allowing the desire for order to take over would be counter-productive because only the mind can find and appreciate order, but the world does not exist in the mind. That is why it is described as "the greater, the wetter, the more tired, the more torn"—all concepts that the mind would fail to add to an idealized version of the world, but which nonetheless appear in the real, non-idealized version. The two characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet to which the poem refers are both doomed by following extremes and failing to...