Analysis of Exmoor Verses
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch 1863 (Bodmin, Cornwall) – 1944 (Cornwall)
I. VASHTI'S SONG
Over the rim of the Moor,
And under the starry sky,
Two men came to my door
And rested them thereby.
Beneath the bough and the star,
In a whispering foreign tongue,
They talked of a land afar
And the merry days so young!
Beneath the dawn and the bough
I heard them arise and go:
And my heart it is aching now
For the more it will never know.
Why did they two depart
Before I could understand?
Where lies that land, O my heart?
-O my heart, where lies that land?
From my farm, from hèr farm
Furtively we came.
In either home a hearth was warm:
We nursed a hungrier flame.
Our feet were foul with mire,
Our faces blind with mist;
But all the night was naked fire
About us where we kiss'd.
To her farm, to my farm,
Loathing we returned;
Pale beneath a gallow's arm
The planet Saturn burned.
O'er the tears that we shed, dear
The bitter vines twist,
And the hawk and the red deer
They keep where we kiss'd:
All broken lies the shieling
That sheltered from rain,
With a star to pierce the ceiling,
And the dawn an empty pane.
Thro' the mist, up the moorway,
Fade hunters and pack;
From the ridge to thy doorway
Happy voices float back…
O, between the threads o' mist, love,
Reach your hands from the house.
Only mind that we kiss'd, love,
And forget the broken vows!
Scheme | A XBXB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJXJ XKXK ILIL MKMKANXN OPOPQXQX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111 1001101 0100101 111111 010111 0101001 00100101 1110101 0010111 0101001 1110101 01111101 10111101 111101 011101 1111111 1111111 1111111 10011 01010111 1101001 1010111 1010111 110111010 011111 101111 10101 101011 010101 10011111 01011 0010011 11111 110101 11011 10111010 0011101 101101 11001 101111 101011 10101111 111101 1011111 0010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,271 |
Words | 253 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 45 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 98 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 1:17 min read
- 131 Views
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"Exmoor Verses" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/35008/exmoor-verses>.
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