Analysis of Garden Street
Roderic Quinn 1867 (Surry Hills, New South Wales) – 1949 (Darlinghurst, New South Wales)
LONG and drowsy and white and wide,
Villas and arbours on either side,
Pleasant under the cloudless skies,
Garden Street in the sunlight lies.
Twice a day — at the morning hour,
And again when the lights of sunset flower —
Its pavements ring to the footfall-noise
Of men and women, and girls and boys.
Townward, sprightly of foot, they go;
Home they come in the evening glow,
Labours over and questing done —
Some with money and some with none.
Most hours through, from morn to night,
It dreams and dreams in the drowsy light:
No call is there of the huckster-clan,
Of the bottle-oh and the rabbit-man.
Wafted odours of nameless flowers
Perfume the march of the golden hours;
Under the laurels, cooling the eye,
Pools of shade in the sunshine lie.
All day long, and night-long too,
Sunlight-sweetened or washed by dew,
Leaf and petal and fern and palm
Open their lungs, out-breathing balm.
Now the cooing of doves is heard,
Now the song of a single bird;
Beetles drone, and the murmuring bees
Make their round of the flowers and trees.
Echoes alone of the trouble and strife,
Stir and flurry and noise of life —
Hints alone of its fever and heat
Steal through the quiet of Garden Street.
Traffic and Trade with eyes awry
Seek the city, and pass it by;
Few daylong through its distance wend
With money to make or money to spend.
Yet yesterday, when the moon was sped,
Up and down, with a furtive tread,
Lounged a rogue with a wistful smile,
Whistling a jig on the wind the while.
Twice or thrice in the stirless trance
Stilling his feet, he paused to glance
Over the way to the vine-clad gate
Where the laurels droop and the poppies wait.
Rogue and robber and fool, I swear —
Love was the plunder that brought him there;
Love that laughed through a curtain of green,
Watching his tricks the while, I ween.
Rogue and robber, he went away
Sour and sick at the end of day,
Empty of hope and sad to see;
For bolt and bar on her heart had she.
She who lives in the Doric house,
Secret and shy as a little mouse,
Dainty and dear from head to feet —
Pansy. Princess of Garden Street!
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIJJKKLLMMNNOOPPJJQQRRSSTTUUVVWFXXYYZZPP |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10100101 10011101 10100101 1010011 101101010 0011011110 11011011 110100101 1101111 11100101 110011 11100111 11011111 110100101 111110101 1010100101 10111010 0101101010 100101001 1110011 1110111 1101111 10100101 10111101 10101111 10110101 101001001 111101001 1001101001 10100111 101111001 110101101 10011101 10100111 1111101 1101111011 11010111 10110101 10110101 100110101 1110011 1111111 100110111 1010100101 10100111 110101111 111101011 10110111 10101101 100110111 10110111 110110111 11100101 100110101 10011111 10101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,040 |
Words | 389 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 56 |
Lines Amount | 56 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,619 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 387 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:56 min read
- 179 Views
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"Garden Street" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32927/garden-street>.
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