Analysis of The Romany Girl

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 (Boston) – 1882 (Concord)



The sun goes down, and with him takes
The coarseness of my por attire;
The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame
Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher.

Pale Northern girls! you scorn our race;
You captives of your air-tight halls,
Wear out in-doors your sickly days,
But leave us the horizon walls.

And if I take you, dames, to task,
And say it frankly without guile,
Then you are Gypsies in a mask,
And I the lady all the while.

If, on the heath, below the moon,
I court and play with paler blood,
Me false to mine dare whisper none,--
One sallow horseman knows me good.

Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain,
For teeth and hair with shopmen deal;
My swarthy tint is in the grain,
The rocks and forest knoww it real.

The wild air bloweth in out lungs,
The keen stars twinkle in our eyes,
The birds gave us our wily tongues,
The panther in our dances flies.

You doubt we read the stars on high,
Nathless we read your fortunes true;
The stars may hide in the upper sky,
But without glass we fathom you.


Scheme XAXA XBXB CDCD XXXX EFEF GHGH IJIJ
Poetic Form Quatrain  (86%)
Metre 01110111 01111010 01110101 110101010 110111101 11011111 11011101 11100101 01111111 01110011 11110001 01010101 11010101 1101111 11111101 1110111 11111101 1101111 11011001 01010111 0111011 011100101 011110101 010010101 11110111 1111101 011100101 10111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 996
Words 194
Sentences 9
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 28
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 109
Words per stanza (avg) 27
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 12, 2023

58 sec read
71

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. more…

All Ralph Waldo Emerson poems | Ralph Waldo Emerson Books

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