Analysis of Butterfly

David Herbert Lawrence 1885 (Eastwood, Nottinghamshire) – 1930 (Vence)



Butterfly, the wind blows sea-ward,
    strong beyond the garden-wall!
Butterfly, why do you settle on my
    shoe, and sip the dirt on my shoe,
Lifting your veined wings, lifting them?
    big white butterfly!

Already it is October, and the wind
    blows strong to the sea
from the hills where snow must have
    fallen, the wind is polished with
         snow.
Here in the garden, with red
    geraniums, it is warm, it is warm
but the wind blows strong to sea-ward,
    white butterfly, content on my shoe!

Will you go, will you go from my warm
    house?
Will you climb on your big soft wings,
    black-dotted,
as up an invisible rainbow, an arch
till the wind slides you sheer from the
    arch-crest
and in a strange level fluttering you go
    out to sea-ward, white speck!


Scheme AXBCXB XXXXDXEAC EXXXXXXDX
Poetic Form
Metre 1001111 1010101 101111011 10101111 10111101 1110 01011010001 11101 1011111 10011101 1 1001011 0100111111 10111111 11010111 111111111 1 11111111 110 1110100111 10111110 11 00011010011 111111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 795
Words 137
Sentences 9
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 9, 9
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 189
Words per stanza (avg) 44
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 22, 2023

41 sec read
188

David Herbert Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence was an English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. Lawrence's writing explores issues such as sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage". At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the literary critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness. more…

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