Analysis of A Wraith Of Summertime

James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)



In its color, shade and shine,
'T was a summer warm as wine,
With an effervescent flavoring of flowered bough and vine,
And a fragrance and a taste
Of ripe roses gone to waste,
And a dreamy sense of sun- and moon- and star-light interlaced.

'Twas a summer such as broods
O'er enchanted solitudes,
Where the hand of Fancy leads us through voluptuary moods,
And with lavish love out-pours
All the wealth of out-of-doors,
And woos our feet o'er velvet paths and honeysuckle floors.

'Twas a summertime long dead,--
And its roses, white and red,
And its reeds and water-lilies down along the river-bed,--
O they all are ghostly things--
For the ripple never sings,
And the rocking lily never even rustles as it rings!


Scheme AAABBB CCCCCC DDDCCC
Poetic Form
Metre 0110101 11010111 11010100110101 0010001 1110111 00101110101101 1010111 100101 10111011111 0110111 1011111 011011010101001 101011 0110101 011010101010101 1111101 1010101 00101010101111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 703
Words 129
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 184
Words per stanza (avg) 42
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

39 sec read
40

James Whitcomb Riley

James Whitcomb Riley was an American writer, poet, and best-selling author. During his lifetime he was known as the "Hoosier Poet" and "Children's Poet" for his dialect works and his children's poetry respectively. more…

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