Analysis of The Queen Of Hearts
Christina Georgina Rossetti 1830 (London) – 1894 (London)
How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we
Play cards together, you invariably,
However the pack parts,
Still hold the Queen of Hearts?
I've scanned you with a scrutinizing gaze,
Resolved to fathom these your secret ways:
But, sift them as I will,
Your ways are secret still.
I cut and shuffle; shuffle, cut, again;
But all my cutting, shuffling, proves in vain:
Vain hope, vain forethought too;
The Queen still falls to you.
I dropped her once, prepense; but, ere the deal
Was dealt, your instinct seemed her loss to feel:
'There should be one card more,'
You said, and searched the floor.
I cheated once; I made a private notch
In Heart-Queen's back, and kept a lynx-eyed watch;
Yet such another back
Deceived me in the pack:
The Queen of Clubs assumed by arts unknown
An imitative dint that seemed my own;
This notch, not of my doing,
Misled me to my ruin.
It baffles me to puzzle out the clue,
Which must be skill, or craft, or luck in you:
Unless, indeed, it be
Natural affinity.
Scheme | AABB CCDD XXEE FFGG HHII JJXX EEAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (71%) |
Metre | 1111010101 11010101000 10011 110111 111101001 0111011101 111111 111101 1101010101 1111010101 11111 011111 110111101 1111010111 111111 110101 1101110101 0111010111 110101 011001 0111011101 110011111 1111110 0111110 1101110101 1111111101 010111 1000100 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 963 |
Words | 181 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 107 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 54 sec read
- 416 Views
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