Analysis of The Wild Common
David Herbert Lawrence 1885 (Eastwood, Nottinghamshire) – 1930 (Vence)
The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the peewits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.
Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.
Are they asleep? -- Are they alive? -- Now see, when I
Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their spurting kick.
The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the rushes
Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the blossoming bushes;
There the lazy streamlet pushes
Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps, laughs, and gushes.
Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,
Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the brook ebbing through so slow,
Naked on the steep, soft lip
Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow quivering to and fro.
What if the gorse flowers shrivelled and kissing were lost?
Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigolds and the songs of the brook!
If my veins and my breasts with love embossed
Withered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowers that the hot wind took.
So my soul like a passionate woman turns,
Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned, and her love
For myself in my own eyes' laughter burns,
Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to my belly from the breast-lights above.
Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air,
Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once, goes kissing me glad.
And the soul of the wind and my blood compare
Their wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in liberty, drifts on and is sad.
Oh but the water loves me and folds me,
Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as though it were living blood,
Blood of a heaving woman who holds me,
Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely good.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EEEX FGFG HIHI JKJK LMLM NXNX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (75%) |
Metre | 01110110110 10111101001 01101001110 1111010011101101 1011111 1101010111101101 110111011111 11101101101101 0101101011010 11100111110010010 1010110 11001101110111010 010111111 10111110110111 1010111 10111101111100101 110110101001 010101010010001101 1110111101 101100111111010111 11110100101 110101010111001 110111101 101010010110011110101101 1011101101 11011101101111011 00110101101 110010000110010011011 1101011011 11111110111110101 1101010111 1011010011101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 1,949 |
Words | 332 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 46 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 185 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 41 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:39 min read
- 43 Views
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