Analysis of Why This Volume Is So Thin
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch 1863 (Bodmin, Cornwall) – 1944 (Cornwall)
In youth I dreamed, as other youths have dreamt,
Of love, and thrummed an amateur guitar
To verses of my own,—a stout attempt
To hold communion with the Evening Star
I wrote a sonnet, rhymed it, made it scan.
Ah me! how trippingly those last lines ran.—
O Hesperus! O happy star! to bend
O'er Helen's bosom in the tranced west,
To match the hours heave by upon her breast,
And at her parted lip for dreams attend—
If dawn defraud thee, how shall I be deemed,
Who house within that bosom, and am dreamed?
For weeks I thought these lines remarkable;
For weeks I put on airs and called myself
A bard: till on a day, as it befell,
I took a small green Moxon from the shelf
At random, opened at a casual place,
And found my young illusions face to face
With this:—'Still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever,—or else swoon to death.'
O gulf not to be crossed by taking thought!
O heights by toil not to be overcome!
Great Keats, unto your altar straight I brought
My speech, and from the shrine departed dumb.
—And yet sometimes I think you played it hard
Upon a rather hopeful minor bard.
Scheme | ABCBDDEFFEGGHIJIKKHFJFLLMNMNOO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 0111110111 110111001 1101110101 1101010101 1101011111 11111111 11110111 1010100011 11010110101 0101011101 1101111111 1101110011 1111110100 111111011 0111011101 1101110101 11010101001 0111010111 111111 1011111001 1111011101 0111000101 1111010101 0111011111 1111111101 111111110 1110110111 1101010101 0101111111 0101010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,278 |
Words | 242 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 30 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 977 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 235 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:13 min read
- 55 Views
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"Why This Volume Is So Thin" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/35038/why-this-volume-is-so-thin>.
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