Analysis of The Last Chrysanthemum
Thomas Hardy 1840 (Stinsford) – 1928 (Dorchester, Dorset)
Why should this flower delay so long
To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
When flowers are in their tombs.
Through the slow summer, when the sun
Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
Why did it not uncurl?
It must have felt that fervid call
Although it took no heed,
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,
And saps all retrocede.
Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
The season's shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
In tempests turbulent.
Had it a reason for delay,
Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
Winter would stay its stress?
- I talk as if the thing were born
With sense to work its mind;
Yet it is but one mask of many worn
By the Great Face behind.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GXGX HBHX IJIJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (83%) |
Metre | 111100111 1111001 1101110101 1101011 10110101 111101 11111101101 11111 11111101 11111 1011111101 0111 11110101 010111 1001111100 01100 11010101 1001 1101110001 101111 11110101 111111 1111111101 101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 820 |
Words | 148 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 102 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 44 sec read
- 88 Views
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