Analysis of Last Night-- And This
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
Last night-- how deep the darkness was!
And well I knew its depths, because
I waded it from shore to shore,
Thinking to reach the light no more.
She would not even touch my hand---.
The winds rose and the cedars fanned
The moon out, and the stars fled back
In heaven and hid-- and all was black!
But ah! To-night a summons came,
Signed with a tear-drop for a name,
For as I wondering kissed it, lo
A line beneath it told me so.
And now-- the moon hangs over me
A disk of dazzling brilliancy,
And every star-tip stabs my sights
With splintered glitterings of light!
Scheme | AXBB CCDD EEFF XAXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (50%) |
Metre | 11110101 01111101 11011111 10110111 11110111 01100101 01100111 010010111 11110101 11011101 111100111 01011111 01011101 0111001 010011111 110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 557 |
Words | 110 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 108 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 33 sec read
- 71 Views
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"Last Night-- And This" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20947/last-night---and-this>.
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