Analysis of To Her I Love

James Thomson 1700 (Port Glasgow) – 1748 (London)



Tell me, thou soul of her I love,
Ah! tell me, whither art thou fled;
To what delightful world above,
Appointed for the happy dead?

Or dost thou, free, at pleasure, roam
And sometimes share thy lover's woe;
Where, void of thee, his cheerless home
Can now, alas! no comfort know?

Oh! if thou hoverest round my walk,
While, under every well-known tree,
I to thy fancied shadow talk,
And every tear is full of thee;

Should then the weary eye of grief,
Beside some sympathetic stream,
In slumber find a short relief,
Visit thou my soothing dream!


Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH
Poetic Form Traditional rhyme
Quatrain 
Metre 11111011 11110111 11010101 01010101 11111101 00111101 1111111 11011101 1111111 110100111 1111011 010011111 11010111 0110101 01010101 1011101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 537
Words 100
Sentences 7
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 104
Words per stanza (avg) 25
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

30 sec read
61

James Thomson

James Thomson, who wrote under the pseudonym Bysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish Victorian-era poet famous primarily for the long poem The City of Dreadful Night, an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment. more…

All James Thomson poems | James Thomson Books

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