Analysis of An Old Year's Address
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
'I have twankled the strings of the twinkering rain;
I have burnished the meteor's mail;
I have bridled the wind
When he whinnied and whined
With a bunch of stars tied to his tail;
But my sky-rocket hopes, hanging over the past,
Must fuzzle and fazzle and fizzle at last!'
I had waded far out in a drizzling dream,
And my fancies had spattered my eyes
With a vision of dread,
With a number ten head,
And a form of diminutive size--
That wavered and wagged in a singular way
As he wound himself up and proceeded to say,--
'I have trimmed all my corns with the blade of the moon;
I have picked every tooth with a star:
And I thrill to recall
That I went through it all
Like a tune through a tickled guitar.
I have ripped up the rainbow and raveled the ends
When the sun and myself were particular friends.'
And pausing again, and producing a sponge
And wiping the tears from his eyes,
He sank in a chair
With a technical air
That he struggled in vain to disguise,--
For a sigh that he breathed, as I over him leant,
Was haunted and hot with a peppermint scent.
'Alas!' he continued in quavering tones
As a pang rippled over his face,
'The life was too fast
For the pleasure to last
In my very unfortunate case;
And I'm going'--he said as he turned to adjust
A fuse in his bosom,--'I'm going to--BUST!'
I shrieked and awoke with the sullen che-boom
Of a five-pounder filling my ears;
And a roseate bloom
Of a light in the room
I saw through the mist of my tears,--
But my guest of the night never saw the display,
He had fuzzled and fazzled and fizzled away!
Scheme | XABBACC XDEEDFF XGHHGII XDJJDXX XKCCKLL MXMMXFF |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111011011 1110011 111001 11101 101111111 111101101001 110101011 111011001001 011011011 101011 101011 001101001 11001001001 111011001011 111111101101 1111001101 01111 111111 101101001 11110101001 10101001001 01001001001 01001111 11001 101001 111001101 1011111110110 1100110101 01101001001 101101011 01111 101011 011001001 01111111101 01011011011 11001101011 101101011 001001 101001 11101111 111101101001 1110101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,522 |
Words | 308 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 200 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 50 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:32 min read
- 123 Views
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"An Old Year's Address" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20822/an-old-year%27s-address>.
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