Analysis of A Promise.

Fanny Kemble 1809 (London) – 1893



In the dark, lonely night,
When sleep and silence keep their watch o'er men;
False love! in thy despite,
I will be with thee then.
When in the world of dreams thy spirit strays,
Seeking, in vain, the peace it finds not here,
Thou shalt be led back to thine early days
Of life and love, and I will meet thee there.
I'll come to thee, with the bright, sunny brow,
That was Hope's throne before I met with thee;
And then I'll show thee how 'tis furrowed now
By the untimely age of misery.
I'll speak to thee, in the fond, joyous tone,
That wooed thee still with love's impassioned spell;
And then I'll teach thee how I've learnt to moan,
Since last upon thine ear its accents fell.
I'll come to thee in all youth's brightest power,
As on the day thy faith to mine was plighted,
And then I'll tell thee weary hour by hour,
How that spring's early promise has been blighted.
I'll tell thee of the long, long, dreary years,
That have passed o'er me hopeless, objectless;
My loathsome days, my nights of burning tears,
My wild despair, my utter loneliness,
My heart-sick dreams upon my feverish bed,
My fearful longing to be with the dead; -
In the dark lonely night,
When sleep and silence keep their watch o'er men;
False love! in thy despite,
We two shall meet again!


Scheme ABAbcdcefgfghihijajklcmnooABAb
Poetic Form Tetractys  (27%)
Metre 001101 11010111101 110101 111111 1001111101 1001011111 1111111101 1101011111 1111101101 1111011111 0111111101 1001011100 1111001101 1111110101 0111111111 1101111101 11110111010 1101111111 011111010110 11110101110 1111011101 111101101 1101111101 1101110100 11110111001 1101011101 001101 11010111101 110101 111101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,234
Words 236
Sentences 8
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 30
Lines Amount 30
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 967
Words per stanza (avg) 236
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:15 min read
1

Fanny Kemble

Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble was a notable British actress from a theatre family in the early and mid-nineteenth century. She was also a well-known and popular writer, whose published works included plays, poetry, eleven volumes of memoirs, travel writing and works about the theatre. In 1834 she married an American, Pierce Mease Butler, heir to cotton, tobacco and rice plantations on the Sea Islands of Georgia, and to the hundreds of slaves who worked them. They spent the winter of 1838–39 at the plantations, and Kemble kept a diary of her observations. She returned to the theatre after their separation in 1847 and toured major US cities. Although her memoir circulated in abolitionist circles, Kemble waited until 1863, during the American Civil War, to publish her anti-slavery Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839. It has become her best-known work in the United States, although she published several other volumes of journals. In 1877 Kemble returned to England with her second daughter and son-in-law. She lived in London and was active in society, befriending the writer Henry James. In 2000 Harvard University Press published an edited compilation of her journals. more…

All Fanny Kemble poems | Fanny Kemble Books

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