Analysis of The Three Witches



All the moon-shed nights are over,
And the days of gray and dun;
There is neither may nor clover,
And the day and night are one.

Not an hamlet, not a city
Meets our strained and tearless eyes;
In the plain without a pity,
Where the wan grass droops and dies.

We shall wander through the meaning
Of a day and see no light,
For our lichened arms are leaning
On the ends of endless night.

We, the children of Astarte,
Dear abortions of the moon,
In a gay and silent party,
We are riding to you soon.

Burning ramparts, ever burning!
To the flame which never dies
We are yearning, yearning, yearning,
With our gay and tearless eyes.

In the plain without a pity,
(Not an hamlet, not a city)
Where the wan grass droops and dies.


Scheme abab CdCD efef cgcg eded CCD
Poetic Form
Metre 10111110 0011101 11101110 0010111 11101010 1101011 00101010 1011101 11101010 1010111 11011110 1011101 101011 1010101 00101010 1110111 1011010 1011101 11101010 1101011 00101010 11101010 1011101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 707
Words 140
Sentences 8
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3
Lines Amount 23
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 93
Words per stanza (avg) 23
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
69

Ernest Christopher Dowson

Ernest Christopher Dowson was born in 1867 at Lea in Kent England he was an English poet novelist and writer of short stories associated with the Decadent movement Most of his life was spent in France more…

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