Analysis of Sonnet XIX: Silent Noon

Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828 (London) – 1882 (Birchington-on-Sea)



Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,—
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:—
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.


Scheme ABAAACCADDEFGE
Poetic Form
Metre 1111000111 0101111101 1111010101 11001110001 11101110111 110111101 101101011 110010110101 1001110101 1101110101 111101111101 1111101111 1110010010 1111010111
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 654
Words 112
Sentences 8
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 37
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 520
Words per stanza (avg) 108
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 20, 2023

33 sec read
162

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. more…

All Dante Gabriel Rossetti poems | Dante Gabriel Rossetti Books

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