Analysis of Going Away
Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1855 (Janesville) – 1919
Walking to-day on the Common,
I heard a stranger say
To a friend who was standing near him,
'Do you know I am going away? '
I had never seen their faces,
May never see them again;
Yet the words the stranger uttered,
Stirred me with nameless pain.
For I knew some heart would miss him,
Would ache at his going away!
And the earth would seem all cheerless
For many and many a day.
No matter how light my spirits,
No matter how glad my heart,
If I hear those two words spoken,
The teardrops always start.
They are so sad and solemn,
So full of a lonely sound;
Like dead leaves rustling downward,
And dropping upon the ground,
Oh, I pity the naked branches,
When the skies are dull and gray,
And the last leaf whispers softly,
'Good-bye, I am going away.'
In the dreary, dripping autumn,
The wings of the flying birds,
As they soar away to the south land,
Seem always to say those words.
Wherever they may be spoken,
They fall with a sob and a sigh;
And heartaches follow the sentence,
'I am going away, Good-bye.'
O God, in Thy blessed kingdom,
No lips shall ever say,
No ears shall ever harken
To the words 'I am going away.'
For no soul ever wearies
Of the dear, bright angel land,
And no saint ever wanders
From the sunny golden land.
Scheme | ABCBDXEX CBBBXFAF GHEHDBXB GIJIAKXK GBABBJXJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (20%) |
Metre | 10111010 110101 101111011 111111001 11101110 1101101 10101010 111101 11111111 11111001 0011111 11001001 11011110 1101111 11111110 0111 1111010 1110101 1111010 0100101 111001010 1011101 00111010 11111001 00101010 0110101 111011011 111111 01011110 11101001 0110010 11100111 1101110 111101 1111010 101111001 111101 1011101 0111010 1010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,249 |
Words | 241 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 189 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 47 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:11 min read
- 99 Views
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"Going Away" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10621/going-away>.
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