Analysis of Covering Wings

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




Love! Love! Your tenderness,
Your beautiful, watchful ways
Grasp me, fold me, cover me;
I lie in a kind of daze,
Neither asleep nor yet awake,
Neither a bud nor flower.
Brings to-morrow
Joy or sorrow,
The black or the golden hour?

Love! Love! You pity me so!
Chide me, scold me--cry,
"Submit--submit!  You must not fight!"
What may I do, then?  Die?
But, oh my horror of quiet beds!
How can I longer stay!
"One to be ready,
Two to be steady,
Three to be off and away!"

Darling heart--your gravity!
Your sorrowful, mournful gaze--
"Two bleached roads lie under the moon,
At the parting of the ways."
But the tiny, tree-thatched, narrow lane,
Isn't it yours and mine?
The blue-bells ring
Hey, ding-a-ding, ding!
And buds are thick on the vine.
Love! Love! Grief of my heart!
As a tree droops over a stream
You hush me, lull me, dark me,
The shadow hiding the gleam.
Your drooping and tragical boughs of grace
Are heavy as though with rain.
Run! Run!
Into the sun!
Let us be children again.


Scheme XABAXCDDC DEXEXFBBF BAXAGHIIHXJBJXGKKX
Poetic Form
Metre 111100 1100101 1111101 1100111 10011101 1001110 1110 1110 01101010 1111011 11111 01011111 111111 111101101 111101 11110 11110 1111001 1011100 1100101 11111001 1010101 101011101 101101 0111 11011 0111101 111111 10111001 1111111 011001 11001111 1101111 11 0101 1111001
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 960
Words 186
Sentences 29
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 9, 9, 18
Lines Amount 36
Letters per line (avg) 20
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 244
Words per stanza (avg) 61
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

55 sec read
68

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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