Analysis of In The Placid Summer Midnight
William Ernest Henley 1849 (Gloucester) – 1903 (Woking)
In the placid summer midnight,
Under the drowsy sky,
I seem to hear in the stillness
The moths go glimmering by.
One by one from the windows
The lights have all been sped.
Never a blind looks conscious -
The street is asleep in bed!
But I come where a living casement
Laughs luminous and wide;
I hear the song of a piano
Break in a sparkling tide;
And I feel, in the waltz that frolics
And warbles swift and clear,
A sudden sense of shelter
And friendliness and cheer . . .
A sense of tinkling glasses,
Of love and laughter and light -
The piano stops, and the window
Stares blank out into the night.
The blind goes out, and I wander
To the old, unfriendly sea,
The lonelier for the memory
That walks like a ghost with me.
Scheme | ABCB XDCD AEFE CGHG XAFA HIII |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (67%) |
Metre | 0010101 100101 11110010 0111001 1111010 011111 1001110 0110101 11110101 110001 110110010 100101 01100111 010101 0101110 010001 01110010 1101001 001010010 1110101 01110110 1010101 0110100 1110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 707 |
Words | 140 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 94 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 45 Views
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