Analysis of The Elephant Is Slow to Mate

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



The elephant, the huge old beast,
is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
they wait

for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
and drink and browse

and dash in panic through the brake
of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
together, without a word.

So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
hiding their fire.

Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
for the full repast.

They do not snatch, they do not tear;
their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
till they touch in flood.


Scheme ABXB CXXX DEDE CFGF HGHA XIXI
Poetic Form Quatrain  (83%)
Metre 01000111 1111 11011111 11 1010001111 101011 1110010101 0101 01010101 110101 010101001 0100101 1100111001 111010 0011101011 10110 1011001011 11111 11110111 1011 11111111 1101 11011111 11101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 705
Words 138
Sentences 5
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 94
Words per stanza (avg) 23
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 16, 2023

41 sec read
126

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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