Explication Of A Poem By A. E. Houseman

This poem by A.E Houseman is an eight-stanza poem with a rhyme scheme of ABCB. It is about a man struggling with his uneasy conscience. The narrator/speaker has a conversation with his dead friend, where he imagines what his friend would ask him, and then gives his response. The punctuation of the poem indicates who's speaking. In every odd stanza, which are surrounded by quotation marks, his deceased friend is asking him questions. Conversely, In every even stanza, which do not have quotation marks, the speaker is thinking his response by restating the question and then answering it.
The poem starts in a very casual manner, the syllable count throughout the poem is repetitive, with every odd stanza having a 5,6,7,6 syllable count, and each