Analysis of If You Could Come

Katharine Lee Bates 1859 (Falmouth) – 1929 (Wellesley)



My love, my love, if you could come once more
From your high place,
I would not question you for heavenly lore,
But, silent, take the comfort of your face.

I would not ask you if those golden spheres
In love rejoice,
If only our stained star hath sin and tears,
But fill my famished hearing with your voice.

One touch of you were worth a thousand creeds.
My wound is numb
Through toil-pressed, but all night long it bleeds
In aching dreams, and still you cannot come.


Scheme ABAB XCXC DEDE
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 1111111111 1111 11110111001 1101010111 1111111101 0101 11010111101 1111010111 1111010101 1111 111111111 0101011101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 466
Words 90
Sentences 5
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 30
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 122
Words per stanza (avg) 29
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

27 sec read
118

Katharine Lee Bates

Katharine Lee Bates is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem America the Beautiful Bates was born in Falmouth Massachusetts and lived as an adult on Centre Street in Newton Massachusetts An historic plaque marks the site of her home The daughter of a Congregational pastor she graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley While teaching there she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics for which she also studied She lived at Wellesley with Katharine Coman who herself was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College Economics department The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Comans death in 1915 It is debated if this relationship was an intimate lesbian relationship as different sources maintain or a platonic relationship called sometimes Boston marriages as the local historical society of her birthplace maintain more…

All Katharine Lee Bates poems | Katharine Lee Bates Books

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