Analysis of Behind a Wall

Amy Lowell 1874 (Brookline) – 1925 (Brookline)



I own a solace shut within my heart,
A garden full of many a quaint delight
And warm with drowsy, poppied sunshine; bright,
Flaming with lilies out of whose cups dart
Shining things
With powdered wings.

Here terrace sinks to terrace, arbors close
The ends of dreaming paths; a wanton wind
Jostles the half-ripe pears, and then, unkind,
Tumbles a-slumber in a pillar rose,
With content
Grown indolent.

By night my garden is o'erhung with gems
Fixed in an onyx setting. Fireflies
Flicker their lanterns in my dazzled eyes.
In serried rows I guess the straight, stiff stems
Of hollyhocks
Against the rocks.

So far and still it is that, listening,
I hear the flowers talking in the dawn;
And where a sunken basin cuts the lawn,
Cinctured with iris, pale and glistening,
The sudden swish
Of a waking fish.


Scheme ABBACC XDDXXX EFFEGG HIIHJJ
Poetic Form
Metre 1101010111 01011100101 01110111 1011011111 101 1101 110111011 0111010101 101110101 1001000101 110 1100 111101111 101101010 1011001101 011110111 110 0101 1101111100 1101010001 0101010101 111010100 0101 10101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 808
Words 142
Sentences 7
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 159
Words per stanza (avg) 35
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

42 sec read
140

Amy Lowell

Amy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. more…

All Amy Lowell poems | Amy Lowell Books

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