Analysis of Melancholy. A Fragment.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 (Ottery St Mary) – 1834 (Highgate)



Stretched on a mouldered Abbey's broadest wall,
Where ruining ivies propped the ruins steep--
Her folded arms wrapping her tattered pall,
Had Melancholy mused herself to sleep.

The fern was pressed beneath her hair,
The dark green adder's tongue was there;
And still as past the flagging sea-gale weak,
The long lank leaf bowed fluttering o'er her cheek.

That pallid cheek was flushed: her eager look
Beamed eloquent in slumber! Inly wrought,
Imperfect sounds her moving lips forsook,
And her bent forehead worked with troubled thought.
Strange was the dream-----


Scheme XAXA BBCC DEDEX
Poetic Form
Metre 110110101 1100110101 0101100101 110010111 01110101 0111111 0111010111 011111001001 1101110101 110001011 0101010101 0011011101 1101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 560
Words 92
Sentences 5
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 5
Lines Amount 13
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 150
Words per stanza (avg) 30
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

28 sec read
133

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. more…

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