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  'Tis thy device
   devides thee so;
  'Tis by thy deeds
   thou art undone,
  Would'st thou feign keep
   what ne'er was thine?
 
 
 
         The illustration is a watercolor.  The sky is blue and is textured with high misty clouds, but there is no well- defined detail.  The land is rolling hills, but is barren. There is no vegetation on it and there are no stones and no water.  The earth is not even a yellow sand.  It is a brown dirt.  Far in the distance, a village sits in the valley.  Almost as far off is the gallows on a hilltop overlooking the village.  In the foreground is a lone, bare tree.  Beneath it sits a man.  He is dressed in brown and
beside him is the black, hangman's hood.
        The poem, which hovers in the sky, is written in the red angular script.  The spelling of "devides" instead of "divides" in the second line is interesting.  I don't think it is merely to make the word appear more similar to the word "device", as has been the accepted interpretation.  I think this spelling is used to call to mind both the words "dev" (divine being in Hinduism and Buddhism) and "devil".  It is the moral conflict which I think the voice is pointing to as self-inflicted.  It is the blue voice's own
values that cause him the agony described in the previous poem.  It is thedeeds he commits of his own choice that lead to his downfall.
      The last two lines again bring up for discussion man's fleeting mortality.  Three separate ideas are represented by the hangman.  He represents the laws which the villagers have set down.  He represents the free will of people who will either obey or violate those laws. Thirdly, he represents mortality, the end of a life which can never be owned, only borrowed.