Analysis of When You Come Home
Katharine Tynan 1861 (Ireland) – 1931
All will be right when you come home, dear lad,
But oh, 'tis long of coming that you are!
Everything's wrong with all the world and sad;
There are so many hurt in this long war,
So many missing, who will never come,
Lying out in the rain and in the cold.
I shall forget it all when you come home,
I shall forget the lonesome things they told.
There's something, something sad, that troubles me.
Beats like the rain upon my frightened heart;
A tale about a girl, the thing might be,
Whispered in corners, secret and apart
How he was killed and how she never knew
Because God put a small cloud on her mind,
And how she waited the black winters through
And the wet summers; surely God was kind!
I took a daisy from the garden-bed
And plucked the petals, one by one, to tell
When I and my true lover should be wed,
This year: Next year: Never: the petals fell
And stopped at Never. But it could not guess,
The foolish daisy, what true love I had.
I turned from daisies and I plucked heartsease
To rest my heart on and be safe and glad.
Everything's wrong, Love, since you went away,
Such a queer world when all the boys are gone,
And there is no one left but old and grey,
Women and children, frightened and alone.
Sometimes the tale is crying at my heart
Of that poor girl. Maybe 'twas but a dream.
When you come home the shadows will depart,
The lonesome dreams die off in morning gleam.
Scheme | AXAXXBXB CDCDEFEF GHGHIAIA JXJXDKDK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111111111 1111110111 101110101 1111010111 1101011101 1010010001 1101111111 1101010111 1101011101 1101011101 0101010111 1001010001 1111011101 0111011101 0111001101 0011010111 1101010101 0101011111 1101110111 1111100101 0111011111 0101011111 111100111 1111101101 101111101 1011110111 0111111101 1001010001 0101110111 1111101101 111101101 0101110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,362 |
Words | 269 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 268 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 67 |
Font size:
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:21 min read
- 97 Views
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem analysis to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"When You Come Home" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/25095/when-you-come-home>.
Discuss this Katharine Tynan poem analysis with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In