Analysis of I Hid My Love

John Clare 1793 (Helpston) – 1864 (St Andrew's Hospital)



I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light;
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where'er I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love goodbye.

I met her in the greenest dells,
Where dewdrops pearl the wood bluebells;
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by,
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee's song
She lay there all the summer long.

I hid my love in field and town
Till e'en the breeze would knock me down;
The bees seemed singing ballads o'er,
The fly's bass turned to lion's roar;
And even the silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love.


Scheme AABBCCAA CXAADDEE FFXXXEXX
Poetic Form
Metre 11111111 101010101 11111101 111111111 11110101 110100011 101101101 1101111 11000101 111011 01110111 01101101 0110101 01110111 11010111 11110101 11110101 111011111 011101010 01111101 010010101 11110101 01010111 11011101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 835
Words 172
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 218
Words per stanza (avg) 57
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 16, 2023

53 sec read
113

John Clare

John Clare was an English poet in his time he was commonly known as the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet more…

All John Clare poems | John Clare Books

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