Analysis of John Gorham
Edwin Arlington Robinson 1869 – 1935
“Tell me what you’re doing over here, John Gorham,
Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you’re not;
Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight
Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot.”—
“I’m over here to tell you what the moon already
May have said or maybe shouted ever since a year ago;
I’m over here to tell you what you are, Jane Wayland,
And to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so.”—
“Tell me what you’re saying to me now, John Gorham,
Or you’ll never see as much of me as ribbons any more;
I’ll vanish in as many ways as I have toes and fingers,
And you’ll not follow far for one where flocks have been before.”—
“I’m sorry now you never saw the flocks, Jane Wayland,
But you’re the one to make of them as many as you need.
And then about the vanishing. It’s I who mean to vanish;
And when I’m here no longer you’ll be done with me indeed.”—
“That’s a way to tell me what I am, John Gorham!
How am I to know myself until I make you smile?
Try to look as if the moon were making faces at you,
And a little more as if you meant to stay a little while.”—
“You are what it is that over rose-blown gardens
Make a pretty flutter for a season in the sun;
You are what it is that with a mouse, Jane Wayland,
Catches him and lets him go and eats him up for fun.”—
“Sure I never took you for a mouse, John Gorham;
All you say is easy, but so far from being true
That I wish you wouldn’t ever be again the one to think so;
For it isn’t eats and butterflies that I would be to you.”—
“All your little animals are in one picture—
One I’ve had before me since a year ago to-night;
And the picture where they live will be of you, Jane Wayland,
Till you find a way to kill them or to keep them out of sight.”—
“Won’t you ever see me as I am, John Gorham,
Leaving out the foolishness and all I never meant?
Somewhere in me there’s a woman, if you know the way to find her.
Will you like me any better if I prove it and repent?”—
“I doubt if I shall ever have the time, Jane Wayland;
And I dare say all this moonlight lying round us might as well
Fall for nothing on the shards of broken urns that are forgotten,
As on two that have no longer much of anything to tell.”
Scheme | ABCB XDED AFXF EGXG AHIH XJEJ AIDI KCEC ALKL EMJM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 111110101110 1010101110111 111111111110001 101111101011101 1101111101010 111110101010101 1101111111110 011110101111101 111110111110 111011111110101 110011011111010 01110111111101 1101110101110 11011111110111 010101001111110 01111101111101 101111111110 111111011111 11111010101011 001011111110101 111111101110 1010101010001 111111101110 1010111011111 111011101110 1111101111101 111111010101111 1111010111111 111010010110 1110111010111 00101111111110 111011111111111 111011111110 1010100011101 101101011101110 111110101111001 1111110101110 01111111011111 1110101110111010 11111110111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 2,310 |
Words | 467 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 41 |
Words per line (avg) | 11 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 166 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 46 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 08, 2023
- 2:20 min read
- 80 Views
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"John Gorham" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9987/john-gorham>.
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