Analysis of Babyhood
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
Heigh-ho! Babyhood! Tell me where you linger:
Let's toddle home again, for we have gone astray;
Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger
Back to the Lotus lands of the far-away.
Turn back the leaves of life; don't read the story,--
Let's find the _pictures_, and fancy all the rest:--
We can fill the written pages with a brighter glory
Than Old Time, the story-teller, at his very best!
Turn to the brook, where the honeysuckle, tipping
O'er its vase of perfume spills it on the breeze,
And the bee and humming-bird in ecstacy are sipping
From the fairy flagons of the blooming locust trees.
Turn to the lane, where we used to 'teeter-totter,'
Printing little foot-palms in the mellow mold,
Laughing at the lazy cattle wading in the water
Where the ripples dimple round the buttercups of gold:
Where the dusky turtle lies basking on the gravel
Of the sunny sandbar in the middle-tide,
And the ghostly dragonfly pauses in his travel
To rest like a blossom where the water-lily died.
Heigh-ho! Babyhood! Tell me where you linger:
Let's toddle home again, for we have gone astray;
Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger
Back to the Lotus lands of the far-away.
Scheme | ABAB cdcd efef agag hihi ABAB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 1110111110 110101111101 11101110111010 11010110101 11011111010 1101010101 11101010101010 1110101011101 11011010010 101110111101 001010101110 101011010101 110111111010 10101100101 10101010100010 101010101011 101101101010 1010100101 00101100110 1110101010101 1110111110 110101111101 11101110111010 11010110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,173 |
Words | 218 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 39 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 154 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 36 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:06 min read
- 85 Views
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"Babyhood" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20838/babyhood>.
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