Analysis of Mid-Winter Monody
Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis 1876 (Auburn) – 1938 (Melbourne)
There's a bleak, black world without,
And the rain falls fast;
And the wind, with a whine and a shout,
Blows buffeting past
To wail thro' the tortured trees,
With cold wet breath,
Like a choir of dank banshees
Foretelling death.
I sit by the fire and I now,
And I juggle with rhymes.
Oh, the ways of our world grow odd,
And the trend of our times.
My tired eyes roam the news,
These columns tell
Of earth and its warring views,
And I sigh, 'Well, well!'
Idly I turn the page;
And I ponder then
Of the hopes and the dreams and the rage
And the folly of men.
What profits this modern show?
And where do we gain?
But - twenty short years ago,
Ah, then we were sane!
Speed-drunk and pleasure-crazed
We ravage and waste,
Dull, sentient things, half-dazed
By our own mad haste;
Selling content for gold,
Our peace for a fad.
Alas, for the wisdom of old!
We are mad! stark mad!
How, when, came earth's golden age
If ever it shone?
Wise years of the saint and the sage,
These are gone - long gone,
Never to blossom again
'Mid a peace well-won,
In a world of the simply sane.
We are doomed! We are done!
When a score more years drift on,
Then another shall dwell,
Here in my place, when I've gone.
And he'll sigh, 'Well, well!
What profits this modern show?
And where do we gain?
But - twenty short years ago,
Ah, then we were sane!'
Scheme | ababcdcd xexefgfg hihiJKJK lmlmnono hxhpiqkq xgpgJKJK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011101 00111 001101001 10101 1110101 1111 1010111 0101 111010011 011011 101110111 0011101 1101101 1101 1101101 01111 101101 01101 101001001 001011 1101101 01111 1101101 11101 110101 11001 11111 110111 101011 101101 01101011 11111 1111101 11011 11101001 11111 1011001 10111 00110101 111111 1011111 101011 1011111 01111 1101101 01111 1101101 11101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,288 |
Words | 261 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 21 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 166 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 43 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:18 min read
- 56 Views
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"Mid-Winter Monody" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/6453/mid-winter-monody>.
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