Analysis of An Idyll
Padraic Colum 1881 (County Longford) – 1972 (Enfield)
You stay for a while beside me with your beauty young and rare,
Though your light limbs are as limber as the foal's that follows the mare;
Brow fair and young and tender where thought has scarce begun,
Hair bright as the breast of the eagle when he strains up to the sun!
In the space of a broken castle I found you on a day
When the call of the new-come cuckoo went with me all the way,
You stood by un-mortised stones that were rough and black with age,
The fawn beloved of the hunter in the panther's broken cage!
And we went down together by paths your childhood knew,
Remote you went beside me like the spirit of the dew,
Hard were the hedgerows still, sloe-bloom was their scanty dower,
You slipped it within your bosom, the bloom that scarce is flower!
And now you stay beside me with your beauty young and rare,
Though your light limbs are as limber as the foal's that follows the mare,
Brow fair and young and tender where thought has scarce begun,
Hair bright as the breast of the eagle when he strains up to the sun!
Scheme | aABB ccdd eexx aABB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (75%) |
Metre | 111010111110101 1111111010111001 1101010111101 1110110101111101 001101010111101 10110111111101 1111111010111 010110100010101 011101011111 01110111010101 100111111101 111011100111110 01110111110101 1111111010111001 1101010111101 1110110101111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 1,020 |
Words | 199 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 51 |
Words per line (avg) | 12 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 202 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 49 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 20, 2023
- 1:00 min read
- 63 Views
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