Analysis of Others, I Am Not the First
Alfred Edward Housman 1859 – 1936
Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.
More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their reins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.
Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way
Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there's neither heat nor cold.
But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.
Scheme | AABB CCDD EECC FFGG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 1011101 11110111 10010111 1011101 1111101 11010101 011101010 10101010 111101 11111111 1010111 1110111 11110111 1111101 010010111 0101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 533 |
Words | 103 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 103 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 27, 2023
- 31 sec read
- 119 Views
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"Others, I Am Not the First" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/906/others%2C-i-am-not-the-first>.
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