Analysis of Expostulation and Reply
William Wordsworth 1770 (Wordsworth House) – 1850 (Cumberland)
"Why, William, on that old grey stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?
"Where are your books?--that light bequeathed
To Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind.
"You look round on your Mother Earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you;
As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you!"
One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply:
"The eye--it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.
"Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.
"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?
"--Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old grey stone,
And dream my time away,"
Scheme | ABAB XCXC DEDE FGFG HIHI JXJH KLKL ABAB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 11011111 11011101 11011101 011101 11111101 11010101 11010101 111111 11111101 111111011 11100111 0111011 1101111 11111111 11111101 011101 01110111 11010111 101011011 0111101 111111110 110110101 111111110 0011 11111101 1111010 11010111 1111110 1111101 010111 11011111 011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,076 |
Words | 206 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 101 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 1:01 min read
- 1,448 Views
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"Expostulation and Reply" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/42199/expostulation-and-reply>.
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