Analysis of The Swan

John Gould Fletcher 1886 (Little Rock) – 1950



Under a wall of bronze,
Where beeches dip and trail
Their branches in the water;
With red-tipped head and wings—
A beaked ship under sail—
There glides a single swan.

Under the autumn trees
He goes. The branches quiver,
Dance in the wraith-like water,
Which ripples beneath the sedge
With the slackening furrow that glides
In his wake when he is gone:
The beeches bow dark heads.

Into the windless dusk,
Where in mist great towers stand
Guarding a lonely strand,
That is bodiless and dim,
He speeds with easy stride;
And I would go beside,
Till the low brown hills divide
At last, for me and him.


Scheme XABXAX XBBXXXX XCCDEEED
Poetic Form
Metre 100111 11101 1100010 111101 011101 110101 100101 1101010 1001110 1100101 101001011 0111111 01111 01011 1011101 100101 11101 111101 011101 1011101 111101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 580
Words 108
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 7, 8
Lines Amount 21
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 157
Words per stanza (avg) 36
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Submitted by halel on July 13, 2020

Modified on April 28, 2023

32 sec read
41

John Gould Fletcher

John Gould Fletcher was an Imagist poet, author and authority on modern painting. He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, to a socially prominent family. After attending Phillips Academy, Andover Fletcher went on to Harvard University from 1903 to 1907, when he dropped out shortly after his father's death. more…

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