Analysis of The Going
Thomas Hardy 1840 (Stinsford) – 1928 (Dorchester, Dorset)
Why did you give no hint that night
That quickly after the morrow's dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
Where I could not follow
With wing of swallow
To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!
Never to bid good-bye
Or lip me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word, while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall,
Unmoved, unknowing
That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all.
Why do you make me leave the house
And think for a breath it is you I see
At the end of the alley of bending boughs
Where so often at dusk you used to be;
Till in darkening dankness
The yawning blankness
Of the perspective sickens me!
You were she who abode
By those red-veined rocks far West,
You were the swan-necked one who rode
Along the beetling Beeny Crest,
And, reining nigh me,
Would muse and eye me,
While Life unrolled us its very best.
Why, then, latterly did we not speak,
Did we not think of those days long dead,
And ere your vanishing strive to seek
That time's renewal? We might have said,
"In this bright spring weather
We'll visit together
Those places that once we visited."
Well, well! All's past amend,
Unchangeable. It must go.
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know
That such swift fleeing
No soul foreseeing--
Not even I--would undo me so!
Scheme | ABABCCB DEDEFFE GHXHGGH IJIJHHJ KLKLMMX NCNCFFC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111111 11010011 010110101 1111111011 111110 11110 111111101 101111 1110101 1100110111 110100101 01010 11110 111100101 11111101 0110111111 10110101101 1110111111 101001 0101 1001011 101101 1111111 10011111 010111 01011 11011 11111101 1111111 111111111 011100111 110101111 011110 110010 110111100 111101 1111 111011111 111111111 11110 11010 110110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,314 |
Words | 259 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 173 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 43 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 23, 2023
- 1:18 min read
- 160 Views
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"The Going" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/36512/the-going>.
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