Analysis of Cadences
John Howard Payne 1791 (New York City) – 1852
I
(MINOR)
THE ANCIENT memories buried lie,
And the olden fancies pass;
The old sweet flower-thoughts wither and fly,
And die as the April cowslips die,
That scatter the bloomy grass.
All dead, my dear! And the flowers are dead,
And the happy blossoming spring;
The winter comes with its iron tread,
The fields with the dying sun are red,
And the birds have ceas’d to sing.
I trace the steps on the wasted strand
Of the vanish’d springtime’s feet:
Wither’d and dead is our Fairyland,
For Love and Death go hand in hand
Go hand in hand, my sweet!
II
(MAJOR)
OH, what shall be the burden of our rhyme,
And what shall be our ditty when the blossom’s on the lime?
Our lips have fed on winter and on weariness too long:
We will hail the royal summer with a golden-footed song!
O lady of my summer and my spring,
We shall hear the blackbird whistle and the brown sweet throstle sing,
And the low clear noise of waters running softly by our feet,
When the sights and sounds of summer in the green clear fields are sweet.
We shall see the roses blowing in the green,
The pink-lipp’d roses kissing in the golden summer sheen;
We shall see the fields flower thick with stars and bells of summer gold,
And the poppies burn out red and sweet across the corn-crown’d wold.
The time shall be for pleasure, not for pain;
There shall come no ghost of grieving for the past betwixt us twain;
But in the time of roses our lives shall grow together,
And our love be as the love of gods in the blue Olympic weather.
Scheme | AB ACAAC DEDDE FGFFG AB HHII EEGG JJKK LLBB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (26%) |
Metre | 1 10 010100101 0010101 0111011001 01101011 110011 1111001011 00101001 010111101 011010111 0011111 110110101 10111 10111010 11011101 110111 1 10 11110101101 011110101010101 101111100110011 111010101010101 1101110011 11101010001111 0011111010101101 101011100011111 11101010001 01110100010101 1110110111011101 001011101010111 0111110111 111111101010111 100111010111010 010111011100101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,620 |
Words | 283 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 5, 5, 5, 2, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 35 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 129 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 31 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 17, 2023
- 1:24 min read
- 185 Views
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"Cadences" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/23322/cadences>.
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