Analysis of Gloire de Dijon

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



When she rises in the morning
    I linger to watch her;
    She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
    And the sunbeams catch her
    Glistening white on the shoulders,
    While down her sides the mellow
    Golden shadow glows as
    She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts
    Sway like full-blown yellow
  Gloire de Dijon roses.

She drips herself with water, and her shoulders
  Glisten as silver, they crumple up
  Like wet and falling roses, and I listen
  For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals.
  In the window full of sunlight
  Concentrates her golden shadow
  Fold on fold, until it glows as
  Mellow as the glory roses.


Scheme XABACBDXBE CXXXXBDE
Poetic Form
Metre 11100010 110110 1101101010 00110 10011010 1101010 10111 111010011 111110 11110 11011100010 101101101 11010100110 1010111110 0010111 100101 11101111 10101010
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 671
Words 108
Sentences 4
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 10, 8
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 248
Words per stanza (avg) 53
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 20, 2023

32 sec read
116

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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