Analysis of Sleep Flies Me
Robert Fuller Murray 1863 – 1894
Sleep flies me like a lover
Too eagerly pursued,
Or like a bird to cover
Within some distant wood,
Where thickest boughs roof over
Her secret solitude.
The nets I spread to snare her,
Although with cunning wrought,
Have only served to scare her,
And now she'll not be caught.
To those who best could spare her,
She ever comes unsought.
She lights upon their pillows;
She gives them pleasant dreams,
Grey-green with leaves of willows,
And cool with sound of streams,
Or big with tranquil billows,
On which the starlight gleams.
No vision fair entrances
My weary open eye,
No marvellous romances
Make night go swiftly by;
But only feverish fancies
Beset me where I lie.
The black midnight is steeping
The hillside and the lawn,
But still I lie unsleeping,
With curtains backward drawn,
To catch the earliest peeping
Of the desired dawn.
Perhaps, when day is breaking;
When birds their song begin,
And, worn with all night waking,
I call their music din,
Sweet sleep, some pity taking,
At last may enter in.
Scheme | ABAXAB AXAXAB CDCDCD XEXEXE FGFGFG FHFHFH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111010 110001 1101110 011101 1101110 01010 0111110 11101 1101110 011111 1111110 11011 1101110 111101 111111 011111 1111010 11011 1101100 110101 11010 111101 11010010 011111 01111 01001 11111 110101 11010010 100101 0111110 111101 0111110 111101 1111010 111100 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 977 |
Words | 178 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 133 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 29 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 53 sec read
- 56 Views
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