Analysis of Winter: My Secret
Christina Georgina Rossetti 1830 (London) – 1894 (London)
I tell my secret? No indeed, not I:
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today; it froze, and blows, and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.
Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to every one who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave that truth untested still.
Spring's and expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.
Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.
Scheme | XAAXBB CDCEDFFDGGDAAAHH IIJJJEKKLLEK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111010111 011111 1101110101 0111001 111111 101110111 11010111 0111110101 110111 0101010101 011101 01010101 11011100111 0101110111 11000101 10100101 1001011101 1111111101 111101 11111100111 1111111111 0111110101 1001011111 111111 1101111110 1101110 1111010110 01110101 11011101 0101110011 1111111111 0011110111 01110111 1111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,231 |
Words | 237 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 16, 12 |
Lines Amount | 34 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 320 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 78 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:13 min read
- 131 Views
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"Winter: My Secret" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/5993/winter%3A-my-secret>.
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