Analysis of Anxiety

David Herbert Lawrence 1885 (Eastwood, Nottinghamshire) – 1930 (Vence)



The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun,  
 The crisping steam of a train  
Melts in the air, while two black birds  
 Sweep past the window again.  

Along the vacant road, a red
 Bicycle approaches; I wait  
In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy  
 To leap down at our gate.  

He has passed us by; but is it  
 Relief that starts in my breast?
Or a deeper bruise of knowing that still  
 She has no rest.


Scheme XXXX XAXA XBXB
Poetic Form Quatrain  (67%)
Metre 01110001 011101 10011111 1101001 01010101 10001011 00110100101 1111101 11111111 0111011 1010111011 1111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 395
Words 77
Sentences 5
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 96
Words per stanza (avg) 25
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

23 sec read
86

David Herbert Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence was an English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. Lawrence's writing explores issues such as sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage". At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the literary critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness. more…

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