Analysis of To ----
Sidney Lanier 1842 (Macon) – 1881 (Lynn)
The Day was dying; his breath
Wavered away in a hectic gleam;
And I said, if Life's a dream, and Death
And Love and all are dreams -- I'll dream.
A mist came over the bay
Like as a dream would over an eye.
The mist was white and the dream was grey
And both contained a human cry,
The burthen whereof was "Love",
And it filled both mist and dream with pain,
And the hills below and the skies above
Were touched and uttered it back again.
The mist broke: down the rift
A kind ray shot from a holy star.
Then my dream did waver and break and lift --
Through it, O Love, shone thy face, afar.
So Boyhood sets: comes Youth,
A painful night of mists and dreams;
That broods till Love's exquisite truth,
The star of a morn-clear manhood, beams.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EXEX FGFG HIHI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (80%) Etheree (40%) Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 0111011 100100101 011110101 01011111 0111001 110111011 011100111 01010101 01111 011110111 0010100101 010101101 011101 011110101 1111100101 111111101 11111 01011101 11111001 01101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 732 |
Words | 147 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 112 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 29 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 45 sec read
- 67 Views
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"To ----" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/34808/to----->.
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