Analysis of Hopes
Edith Nesbit 1858 (Kennington, Surrey ) – 1924 (New Romney, Kent)
A PRINCESS, sleeping in enchanted bowers,
Earth springs to waking at Spring's voice and kiss,
And after winter's cold, unlovely hours,
Laughs out to find how beautiful she is.
Spring flings a song across the field and fold,
And sighs it through the glad wood's tangled ways;
And million, million tales of love are told,
And dreams are dreamed of undivided days.
In hollows where so late but dead leaves lay,
Through the dead leaves the primroses push up;
And wind-flowers fleck the copse, and fields are gay
With daisies and the budding buttercup.
So in our hearts, though thick the dead leaves lie
Of grief--heaped up by winds of old despair--
May there not be a spring-time by-and-by,
When flowers of joy shall blossom even there?
So long has Winter held our hearts in his,
We dare not dream of Spring and all her flowers?
Ah! the undreamed-of happiness it is
That comes--the dreamed-of joy is never ours!
When late the trees were brown and hedges bare,
And keen east wind cut sharp as human pain,
Did the Earth guess how soon she would be fair
With Spring's dear dainty loveliness again?
We do not guess of joy, but hope alone--
Like life's mysterious force that thrills the earth--
Lives in our souls, unrecognised, unknown,
Till time shall bring unhoped-for joy to birth.
Scheme | AXAB CDCD EFEF GHGH BABA HXHX IJIJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (71%) |
Metre | 01010001010 1111011101 010101110 1111110011 1101010101 0111011101 0101011111 011110101 0101111111 101101011 01101010111 110001010 10101110111 1111111101 1111011101 11011110101 11110110101 11111101010 1001110011 11011111010 1101010101 0111111101 1011111111 11110101 1111111101 11010011101 10101101 111111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,284 |
Words | 226 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 143 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 32 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:09 min read
- 133 Views
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"Hopes" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/8835/hopes>.
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