Analysis of Shadow March

Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 (Edinburgh) – 1894 (Vailima, Samoa)



All around the house is the jet-black night;
It stares through the window-pane;
It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light,
And it moves with the moving flame.

Now my little heart goes a beating like a drum,
With the breath of the Bogies in my hair;
And all around the candle and the crooked shadows come,
And go marching along up the stair.

The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp,
The shadow of the child that goes to bed--
All the wicked shadows coming tramp, tramp, tramp,
With the black night overhead.


Scheme AXAX BCBC DEDE
Poetic Form Quatrain  (67%)
Metre 1010110111 1110101 11001010101 01110101 111011010101 101101011 0101010001011 011001101 0110101101 011011111 1010110111 1011101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 532
Words 99
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 136
Words per stanza (avg) 32
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 02, 2023

29 sec read
175

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. more…

All Robert Louis Stevenson poems | Robert Louis Stevenson Books

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