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

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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    "She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies."
    A Percy Bysshe Shelley
    B Lord Byron
    C William Wordsworth
    D John Keats