Analysis of I Shall Not Forget
Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1855 (Janesville) – 1919
I shall not forget you. The years may be tender,
But vain are their efforts to soften my smart;
And the strong hands of Time are too feeble and slender
To garland the grave that is made in my heart.
Your image is ever about me, before me,
Your voice floats abroad on the voice of the wind;
And the spell of your presence, in absence, is o'er me,
And the dead of the past, in the present I find.
I cannot forget you. The one boon ungiven,
The boon of your love, is the cross that I bear.
In the midnight of sorrow I vainly have striven
To crush in my heart the sweet image hid there;
To banish the beautiful dreams that are thronging
The halls of my memory, dreams worse than vain;
For the one drop withheld, I am thirsting and longing,
For the one joy denied, I am weeping in pain.
I would not forget you. I live to remember
The beautiful hopes that bloomed but to decay,
And brighter than June glows the bleakest December,
When peopled with ghosts of the dreams passed away.
Once loving you truly, I love you forever;
I mourn not in weak, idle grief for the past;
But the love in my bosom can never, oh never
Pass out, or another pass in, first or last.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GEGE AGAX AHAH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 111011011110 11111011011 0011111110010 11001111011 110110011011 11101101101 00111100101101 001101001011 1100110111 01111101111 001110110110 11011011011 11001001111 01111001111 101101111010 101101111001 111011111010 01001111101 010111010010 11011101101 110110111010 11101101101 1010110110110 11101010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,139 |
Words | 228 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 149 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 38 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:08 min read
- 125 Views
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"I Shall Not Forget" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10641/i-shall-not-forget>.
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