Analysis of Response



When Phyllis sighs and from her eyes
The light dies out; my soul replies
With misery of deep-drawn breath,
E'en as it were at war with death.

When Phyllis smiles, her glance beguiles
My heart through love-lit woodland aisles,
And through the silence high and clear,
A wooing warbler's song I hear.

But if she frown, despair comes down,
I put me on my sack-cloth gown;
So frown not, Phyllis, lest I die,
But look on me with smile or sigh.


Scheme AABB AXXX CCDD
Poetic Form Quatrain  (67%)
Metre 11010101 01111101 11001111 111101111 1101011 1111111 01010101 0101111 11110111 11111111 11110111 11111111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 434
Words 83
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 113
Words per stanza (avg) 27
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

25 sec read
118

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar was a seminal American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries Dunbar gained national recognition for his 1896 Lyrics of a Lowly Life one poem in the collection being Ode to Ethiopia more…

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