Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 231-238
- The speaker's not sure what happened next – everything went dark, and he lost all feeling.
- He's like a "stone" in the stony dungeon.
- He's as unconscious of what's going on around him as a shrub on a mountainside.
Lines 239-250
- In the speaker's mind, it's neither night nor day – he's not in his dungeon anymore, but in some vacuum of empty space.
- He's lost in an overwhelming sense of nothingness – or, it would be overwhelming if he could feel anything, which he can't.
- Basically, his grief and shock have thrown him into a state of depressed torpor.