Analysis of All That's Past

Walter de la Mare 1873 (Charlton, London) – 1956 (Twickenham)



Very old are the woods;
And the buds that break
Out of the brier's boughs,
When March winds wake,
So old with their beauty are--
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.
Very old are the brooks;
And the rills that rise
Where snow sleeps cold beneath
The azure skies
Sing such a history
Of come and gone,
Their every drop is as wise
As Solomon.

Very old are we men;
Our dreams are tales
Told in dim Eden
By Eve's nightingales;
We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.


Scheme ABXBXCXCXDXDXXDE XXEAXFXF
Poetic Form
Metre 101101 00111 11011 1111 1111101 1111 111100 1101 101101 00111 111101 0101 110100 1101 11001111 1100 101111 10111 10110 111 1101001 10111 100111 1101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 555
Words 107
Sentences 4
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 16, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 18
Words per line (avg) 4
Letters per stanza (avg) 213
Words per stanza (avg) 53
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 25, 2023

32 sec read
172

Walter de la Mare

Walter John de la Mare was an English poet short story writer and novelist best remembered for his works for children and The Listeners He was born in Kent and was educated at St Pauls Cathedral School His first book Songs of Childhood was published under the name Walter Ramal His 1921 novel Memoirs of a Midget won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction more…

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