Analysis of A Day in Bed

Katherine Mansfield 1888 (Wellington) – 1923 (Fontainebleau, Île-de-France)



I wish I had not got a cold,
The wind is big and wild,
I wish that I was very old,
Not just a little child.

Somehow the day is very long
Just keeping here, alone;
I do not like the big wind's song,
He's growling for a bone

He's like an awful dog we had
Who used to creep around
And snatch at things--he was so bad,
With just that horrid sound.

I'm sitting up and nurse has made
Me wear a woolly shawl;
I wish I was not so afraid;
It's horrid to be small.

It really feels quite like a day
Since I have had my tea;
P'raps everybody's gone away
And just forgotten me.

And oh!  I cannot go to sleep
Although I am in bed.
The wind keeps going creepy-creep
And waiting to be fed.


Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL
Poetic Form Traditional rhyme
Quatrain 
Metre 11111101 011101 11111101 110101 1011101 110101 11110111 110101 11110111 111101 01111111 111101 11010111 110101 11111101 110111 11011101 111111 11100101 010101 01110111 11101 01110101 010111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 658
Words 142
Sentences 8
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 84
Words per stanza (avg) 24
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
98

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. more…

All Katherine Mansfield poems | Katherine Mansfield Books

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