The time and sequence in the poem is quite deliberate in building sympathy for the speaker. If she had started the poem talking about how happy she is with her son then it would have been a lot more difficult to gain the readers sympathy. So the poem starts with the speaker looking back in restrospective at her life before she slept with the lord. The first stanza is filled with regret and wonder as to why it had to be her. This is shown in "why did the great lord find me out and praise my flaxen hair?"-it's as if she's asking a higher power why it had to be her. Why the lord had to pick her out. The fact that the man is just referred to as the lord could have a religious connotation. She could be asking why god chose her to be the one that succumbed to the man and then must bare all the guilt and consequence.
The speaker then shows how low she has sunk in the eyes of sociey etc by dwelling on what happened and how foolish she was. She also shows her bitterness towards cousin Kate. Her unhappiness and regret is shown in "now I moan an unclean thing, who might have been a dove"-She is now dirty in the eyes of everyone around her and she is filled with remorse and bitterness that she could have been this pure, virtuous woman had it not been for the lord.
However at the end of the poem the speaker drops in a twist, she reveals she has gained a son from her experiences and she seems to be sure that everything will be ok as she talks of her son inheriting the lord's lands. So we go on a journey with the speaker. We see he go from high to all time low to another, new different high. One that revolves around her son and the promises he holds for the future. Finally as we are told about her son at the end it's the last thing in our minds having read the poem. So the last message we get from the poem is that something good always comes out of a bad situation. In this case the speaker has become a stronger person and re-gained her pride in the form of her son.
Overall the sequence of the poem is ordered and simple so that there is no confusion. The time and sequence helps build on the morals and themes of the poem as well.
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