Analysis of Change
Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1855 (Janesville) – 1919
Changed? Yes, I will confess it – I have changed.
I do not love you in the old fond way.
I am your friend still – time has not estranged
One kindly feeling of that vanished day.
But the bright glamour which made life a dream,
The rapture of that time, its sweet content,
Like visions of a sleeper’s brain they seem –
And yet I cannot tell you how they went.
Why do you gaze with such accusing eyes
Upon me, dear? It is so very strange
That hearts, like all things underneath God’s skies,
Should sometimes feel the influence of change?
The birds, the flowers, the foliage of the trees,
The stars which seem so fixed, and so sublime,
Vast continents, and the eternal seas, -
All these do change, with ever-changing time.
The face our mirror shows us year on year
Is not the same; our dearest aim, or need,
Our lightest thought, or feeling hope, or fear,
All, all the law of alternation heed.
How can we ask the human heart to stay,
Content with fancies of Youth’s earliest hours?
The year outgrows the violets of May,
Although, maybe, there are no fairer flowers.
And life may hold no sweeter love than this,
Which lies so cold, so voiceless, and so dumb,
And will I miss it, dear? Why, yes, we miss
The violets always – till the roses come!
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ BKBK LMLM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 1111011111 1111100111 1111111101 1101011101 1011011101 0101111110 1101010111 0111011111 1111110101 0111111101 111110111 1011010011 01010010101 0111110101 1100000101 1111110101 01101011111 11011010111 10101110111 110111001 1111010111 101101110010 011010011 1101111010 0111110111 1111110011 0111111111 0100110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,264 |
Words | 236 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 136 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 34 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 1:10 min read
- 123 Views
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"Change" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10563/change>.
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