Analysis of There's a Regret
William Ernest Henley 1849 (Gloucester) – 1903 (Woking)
There's a regret
So grinding, so immitigably sad,
Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad. ...
Do you not know it yet?
For deeds undone
Rnakle and snarl and hunger for their due,
Till there seems naught so despicable as you
In all the grin o' the sun.
Like an old shoe
The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie
About the beach of Time, till by and by
Death, that derides you too --
Death, as he goes
His ragman's round, espies you, where you stray,
With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way
And then -- and then, who knows
But the kind Grave
Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm,
In that black bridewell working out his term,
Hanker and grope and crave?
"Poor fool that might --
That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be,
Think of it, here and thus made over to me
In the implacable night!"
And writhing, fain
And like a triumphing lover, he shall take,
His fill where no high memory lives to make
His obscene victory vain.
Scheme | ABBA CDDC DEED FGGF HIIH JKKJ LMML |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 1001 110111 01111100101 111111 1101 101010111 11111010011 0101101 1111 0110010111 0101111101 110111 1111 11111111 11110111111 010111 1011 1110110101 011110111 100101 1111 1111111111 11110111011 0001001 0101 010110111 11111100111 1011001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 928 |
Words | 184 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 103 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 26 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 55 sec read
- 238 Views
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