Analysis of Worn Out



You bid me hold my peace
And dry my fruitless tears,
Forgetting that I bear
A pain beyond my years.

You say that I should smile
And drive the gloom away;
I would, but sun and smiles
Have left my life's dark day.

All time seems cold and void,
And naught but tears remain;
Life's music beats for me
A melancholy strain.

I used at first to hope,
But hope is past and, gone;
And now without a ray
My cheerless life drags on.

Like to an ash-stained hearth
When all its fires are spent;
Like to an autumn wood
By storm winds rudely shent,--

So sadly goes my heart,
Unclothed of hope and peace;
It asks not joy again,
But only seeks release.


Scheme AXXX XBXB CDXD XXBX XXXC XAXA
Poetic Form Quatrain  (67%)
Metre 111111 011101 010111 010111 111111 010101 111101 111111 111101 011101 110111 01001 111111 111101 010101 11111 111111 1111011 111101 111101 110111 11101 111101 110101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 619
Words 127
Sentences 6
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 20
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 81
Words per stanza (avg) 21
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 17, 2023

38 sec read
68

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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