Analysis of Lines.—Why look'd I on that fatal line
Louisa Stuart Costello 1799 – 1870
Why look'd I on that fatal line?
Why did I pray that page to see?
Too well I knew no word of thine
Was fraught with aught but pain to me.
I should have known, I should have thought
The fleeting hope would soon decay!
So oft the gleam of joy it brought
Has only shone to pass away.
Thy hand had traced the words I read;
And in that dream I wandered on—
Forgot their cherish'd spell was fled,
Thy vows no more—thy fondness gone.
I lived whole years of joy again
I dwelt on each recorded vow;
Oh! tender was their meaning then—
Alas! they have no meaning now!
Scheme | ABABCDCDEFEGHIHI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111101 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 01011101 11011111 11011101 11110111 00111101 01110111 11111101 11111101 11110101 11011101 01111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 587 |
Words | 113 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 16 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 428 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 111 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 34 sec read
- 111 Views
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"Lines.—Why look'd I on that fatal line" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 9 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/26090/lines.%E2%80%94why-look%27d-i-on-that-fatal-line>.
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