Meaning and Expression. In an ironic inversion, Tom (madly imagining himself as Adonis) asks forgiveness for what now seem to him the mad acts he committed when he was nominally sane. Tom still finds himself trapped musically within G minor (above an unrelenting B♭ in the bass), in another antecedent phrase without a consequent, and amid the labyrinthine accompaniment with its intermingling of tonic and dominant harmonies.