Analysis of Forbidden Speech
Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1855 (Janesville) – 1919
The passion you forbade my lips to utter
Will not be silenced. You must hear it in
The sullen thunders when they roll and mutter:
And when the tempest nears, with wail and din,
I know your calm forgetfulness is broken,
And to your heart you whisper, 'He has spoken.'
All nature understands and sympathises
With human passion. When the restless sea
Turns in its futile search for peace, and rises
To plead and to pursue, it pleads for me.
And with each desperate billow's anguished fretting.
Your heart must tell you, 'He is not forgetting.'
When unseen hands in lightning strokes are writing
Mysterious words upon a cloudy scroll,
Know that my pent-up passion is inditing
A cypher message for your woman's soul;
And when the lawless winds rush by you shrieking,
Let your heart say, 'Now his despair is speaking.'
Love comes, nor goes, at beck or call of reason,
Nor is love silent, though it says no word;
By day or night, in any clime or season,
A dominating passion must be heard.
So shall you hear, through Junes and through Decembers,
The voice of Nature saying, 'He remembers.'
Scheme | ABABCC DDDXEE EFEFEE CGCGDD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01010111110 1111011110 01010111010 0101011101 11111110 01111101110 1100101 1101010101 10110111010 1101011111 0111011010 11111111010 10110101110 01001010101 111111011 0101011101 01010111110 11111101110 11111111110 1111011111 11110101110 010010111 111111011 01110101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,067 |
Words | 198 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 212 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 48 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 58 sec read
- 101 Views
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