Analysis of To A Distant Friend
William Wordsworth 1770 (Wordsworth House) – 1850 (Cumberland)
Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant
Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air
Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?
Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant,
Bound to thy service with unceasing care--
The mind's least generous wish a mendicant
For nought but what thy happiness could spare.
Speak!--though this soft warm heart, once free to hold
A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold
Than a forsaken bird's-nest fill'd with snow
'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine--
Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know!
Scheme | ABBA XBAB CDCEDE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111011101 11110101001 1101011111 1111111111 1111111100 1111010101 011100101 1111110011 1111111111 0101010101 1111001101 1001011111 111111010 11110011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 621 |
Words | 114 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 6 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 164 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 37 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 15, 2023
- 35 sec read
- 152 Views
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"To A Distant Friend" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/42426/to-a-distant-friend>.
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