Analysis of At Her Door
Roderic Quinn 1867 (Surry Hills, New South Wales) – 1949 (Darlinghurst, New South Wales)
OPEN! Open! Open!
I am here at your door outside;
The sea's blue tide flows speedily,
And ebbs a thin red tide.'
The woman rose from her warm white bed,
Threw back her hair and smiled;
The ears of scorn heard the words of love,
And the wind and the words were wild.
'Wake! Awake! Awake!
And hearken the woe outside;
The moon is hid in cloudiness;
Calleth and calleth the tide.'
The woman stood in the silence still
As a thing men carve from stone.
Her eyes burned largely in the dark,
And the smile, like a stain, stayed on.
'Listen! Listen! Listen!
Hear you the rain to-night?
A warm dark rain is falling too,
And I grow ghostly-white.'
The woman took three steps and bowed;
The smile waned from her lip;
She heard the dripping of the rain
And a soft thick other drip.
'Open! Open! Open!
I die in the dark alone.
My voice goes up in weariness
Against your heart of stone.'
The moon to a cloud-cleft stealing
Gazed down on the yearning tide;
The woman opened the streaming door
And stood in the rain outside.
Silence! Stillness! She whispers,
'Ah, Love, that death should be!'
He sighed, 'Your lips are loveliness!'
And she sobbed, 'Woe is me!'
The woman pressed his dead white face
With her face as deadly white:
The moon drew in behind a cloud,
And the tide moaned through the night.
Scheme | AbcbdefegbhbijklamnmopqpAjrjsbtbuchcvmom |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (33%) |
Metre | 101010 11111111 01111100 010111 010110111 110101 011110111 00100101 10101 010111 01110100 10101 010100101 1011111 01110001 00110111 101010 110111 01111101 011101 01011101 011101 11010101 0011101 101010 1100101 11110100 011111 01101110 1110101 010100101 0100111 1010110 111111 111111 011111 01011111 1011101 01100101 0011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,254 |
Words | 248 |
Sentences | 30 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 40 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 980 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 239 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:12 min read
- 117 Views
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"At Her Door" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32919/at-her-door>.
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