Analysis of Sonnet to the Moon



The glitt'ring colours of the day are fled;
Come, melancholy orb! that dwell'st with night,
Come! and o'er earth thy wand'ring lustre shed,
Thy deepest shadow, and thy softest light;
To me congenial is the gloomy grove,
When with faint light the sloping uplands shine;
That gloom, those pensive rays alike I love,
Whose sadness seems in sympathy with mine!
But most for this, pale orb! thy beams are dear,
For this, benignant orb! I hail thee most:
That while I pour the unavailing tear,
And mourn that hope to me in youth is lost,
Thy light can visionary thoughts impart,
And lead the Muse to soothe a suff'ring heart.


Scheme ABABCDEDFGHIJJ
Poetic Form
Metre 01110111 1100111111 10101111101 110101101 1101010101 1111010101 1111010111 1101010011 1111111111 11111111 111100101 0111110111 111100101 010111011
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 614
Words 112
Sentences 7
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 482
Words per stanza (avg) 110
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 16, 2023

35 sec read
76

Helen Maria Williams

Helen Maria Williams was a British novelist poet and translator of French-language works A religious dissenter she was a supporter of abolitionism and of the ideals of the French Revolution she was imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror but nonetheless spent much of the rest of her life in France A controversial figure in her own time the young Williams was favorably portrayed in a 1787 poem by William Wordsworth but she was portrayed by other writers as irresponsibly politically radical and even as sexually wanton more…

All Helen Maria Williams poems | Helen Maria Williams Books

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