Summary
The speaker pleads for John to put this conflict behind them. She wants him to stop asking her for something she never promised, then tells him that she'd rather reject him fifty times than accept his love. Rather than let their friendship and their youths be destroyed, the speaker urges John to simply enjoy his life, and to let her enjoy her own. She even tells him that she'll forgive his lies—namely, his claims that the speaker has led him on or unjustifiably broken his heart. She extends an offer of friendship, on the condition that he put aside any plans or hopes of the friendship becoming romance. She instructs him to put aside his complaints and desires, and to satisfy himself with a friendship—to his love, however, she simply says, again, "no thank you."
Analysis
Whereas the previous half of the poem featured a number of questions directed at John, in which the speaker urged him to justify his actions, here the speaker does not ask questions and instead crafts a neat, clear argument, as if creating a contract. She tries to resolve the impossible power dynamic between the two of them, in which she keeps John at bay but cannot free herself from him, through a compromise. The terms of this compromise are simple: friendship, with full transparency and no attempt to transmute friendship into romance. Tonally, the poem shifts in this second half, with the speaker's bewildered frustration giving way to a more lyrical and persuasive style. She portrays herself and John as being essentially on the same team. They are not enemies, she suggests, but two individuals enduring an impossible situation together, and seeking a mutually acceptable solution. The closing line (and title) "no thank you, John" illustrates her new tone: firm but scrupulously polite and civil. She has clearly decided that a new strategy, using persuasion rather than refusal, is her best option. She also appears to be trying to salvage something: her own youth, John's youth, and possibly even their previously harmonious relationship.
This focus on preservation and salvaging brings a bittersweet mood to the poem, since it implies that John has done far more than erode the speaker's patience. He has managed to disrupt and even destroy potentially enjoyable parts of both his own life and that of the speaker. This disruption is visible in the poem's meter, which is jarring and stilted. For the most part, the first two lines of each quatrain (four-line stanza) stick to an iambic tetrameter rhythm. They each include eight syllables, with the stress falling on every second syllable. This feels relatively natural and speech-like. In the second half of each stanza, though, Rossetti violates all expectations. In the third line of each quatrain, she adds one iambic foot to her previously-established iambic tetrameter, creating a new pattern of iambic pentameter. This differs only a little from the meter readers have grown accustomed to, adjusting by only two syllables. But in the final line of each stanza, Rossetti abruptly cuts down from ten syllables to six, using a new meter: iambic trimeter. This trimeter, especially following the long third line, feels shockingly abrupt. This is especially true because of the poem's ABAB rhyme scheme, which means that each line rhymes with another line of unmatched length: for instance, the eight-syllable second line and the six-syllable fourth line of each stanza rhyme. The rhythmic mismatch creates a feeling of disruption and of something being cut unexpectedly short. Enjambment in the final two stanzas of the poem further intensifies the impression of disruption. Whereas before Rossetti stuck to end-stopped lines—so that phrases and sentences neatly ended where line breaks occurred—as the poem reaches its end she lets line breaks intrude mid-sentence. Indeed, the sentence "Only don't keep in view ulterior ends, / And points not understood / In open treaty" is spread across two different stanzas.
The use of enjambment and uneven meter to evoke disruption reflects the disruption that John's pursuit has caused. The speaker's life, and possibly even her friendship with John, has been jolted out of its expected patterns in much the same way that the poem is jolted out of expected patterns. Even as the speaker proposes a compromise, sounding hopeful, a certain feeling of disturbance and loss pervades the poem due to these technical choices.
