Analysis of Harlan Sewall
Edgar Lee Masters 1868 (Garnett) – 1950 (Elkins Park)
You never understood, O unknown one,
Why it was I repaid
Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations
First with diminished thanks,
Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you,
So that I might not be compelled to thank you,
And then with silence which followed upon
Our final Separation.
You had cured my diseased soul. But to cure it
You saw my disease, you knew my secret,
And that is why I fled from you.
For though when our bodies rise from pain
We kiss forever the watchful hands
That gave us wormwood, while we shudder
For thinking of the wormwood,
A soul that's cured is a different matter,
For there we'd blot from memory
The soft-toned words, the searching eyes,
And stand forever oblivious,
Not so much of the sorrow itself
As of the hand that healed it.
Scheme | ABCDEEFAGHEIJKLKMNOPG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110011011 111101 1010100100010 110101 1001100001011011 11111101111 0111011001 1010010 11110111111 1110111110 01111111 1111010111 110100101 11111110 110101 01111010010 11111100 01110101 010100100 111101001 1101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 770 |
Words | 141 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 21 |
Lines Amount | 21 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 624 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 139 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 82 Views
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"Harlan Sewall" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/8591/harlan-sewall>.
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