The speaker of this poem describes what she imagines it will be like to return to the earth and address the men who pity her; she will tell them to save their pity, because, during her life, she "'found more joy in sorrow / Than [they] could find in joy'" (lines 15–16). This creates situational irony: when what we might expect differs from, or is the opposite of, what really happens. We would not expect a person to experience more happiness from sadness than a person who actually feels happiness; put differently, we'd expect the happy person to be more joyful than the sad person.

The speaker also personifies pity, giving it qualities associated with people, when she calls it "false and feeble" (6). She seems to associate these qualities with the men who do the pitying, and so she personifies their pity as possessing these qualities of being deceitful and weak. She also describes compassion as "poor": something that excites her pity as a result of its meagerness. One might consider this an example of personification, too, because it is also associated with these men.

She uses a metaphor when she says, "Joy was a flame in me / Too steady to destroy" (11–12). A metaphor compares two unalike things, claiming that one thing is another. She also uses a simile when she says that "Joy was . . . / Lithe as a bending reed" (11–13); a simile compares two unalike things by saying that one thing is like or as another. And she personifies that same reed as something that "Lov[es] the storm that sways her" (14).

In this poem, Teasdale imagines herself answering back from the grave to people who might pity her for having led a sad life. She says she is content and when alive, found joy in her sadness greater than other people experienced through joy alone.

She uses the literary device of metaphor, a comparison that does not use the words "like" or "as," when she calls her joy a "flame," extending this metaphor by saying it was flame "too steady to destroy." Flame is also an example of imagery, or describing using any of the five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Here we can see her joy as a steady flame.

Other images include likening her joy to a "bending reed." We can visualize a reed bending, but not breaking, in a breeze.

Teasdale also uses alliteration in the poem. Alliteration is when words in close proximity use the same first consonant. This creates a sense of rhythm. In this poem, we find "false" and "feeble," and "lithe and loving" placed close together.