Analysis of Wash of Cold River
Hilda Doolittle 1886 (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) – 1961 (Zurich)
Wash of cold river
in a glacial land,
Ionian water,
chill, snow-ribbed sand,
drift of rare flowers,
clear, with delicate shell-
like leaf enclosing
frozen lily-leaf,
camellia texture,
colder than a rose;
wind-flower
that keeps the breath
of the north-wind --
these and none other;
intimate thoughts and kind
reach out to share
the treasure of my mind,
intimate hands and dear
drawn garden-ward and sea-ward
all the sheer rapture
that I would take
to mould a clear
and frigid statue;
rare, of pure texture,
beautiful space and line,
marble to grace
your inaccessible shrine.
Scheme | ABABXXXXAX AXCA CXCDXAXDX AEXE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11110 00101 110 1111 11110 111001 11010 10101 110 10101 110 1101 1011 10110 100101 1111 010111 100101 1101011 10110 1111 1101 0101 11110 100101 1011 101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 581 |
Words | 97 |
Sentences | 2 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 10, 4, 9, 4 |
Lines Amount | 27 |
Letters per line (avg) | 17 |
Words per line (avg) | 4 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 114 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 30, 2023
- 29 sec read
- 92 Views
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"Wash of Cold River" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/19287/wash-of-cold-river>.
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