Analysis of Growing Old
Matthew Arnold 1822 (Laleham) – 1888 (Liverpool)
What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not for this alone.
Is it to feel our strength -
Not our bloom only, but our strength -decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung?
Yes, this, and more! but not,
Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!
'Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,
A golden day's decline!
'Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more!
It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young.
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.
It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel:
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion -none.
It is -last stage of all -
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.
Scheme | AXXXX XXXXB XXXXX XXXXX XBAXX XXXXX XXXXX |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111111 1111010101 010101 1111010101 1111101 1111101 110110110101 111111 11010010101 111101 110111 1111011111 1111101 100101111 010101 111101 1101110101 010101 010101101 011111 111111 0111110101 11111 0011010101 111101 111101 0111010111 1010101 101010101 110101 111111 1111010101 0101001 1101010101 110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,117 |
Words | 228 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 35 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 124 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 32 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 30, 2023
- 1:08 min read
- 169 Views
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