Analysis of The Tendril’s Faith
Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1855 (Janesville) – 1919
Under the snow in the dark and the cold,
A pale little sprout was humming;
Sweetly it sang, ‘neath the frozen mold,
Of the beautiful days that were coming.
“How foolish your songs, ” said a lump of clay,
“What is there, I ask, to prove them?
Just look at the walls between you and the day,
Now, have you the strength to move them? ”
But under the ice and under the snow
The pale little sprout kept singing,
“I cannot tell how, but I know, I know,
I know what the days are bringing.”
“Birds, and blossoms, and buzzing bees,
Blue, blue skies above me,
Bloom on the meadows and buds on the trees,
And the great glad sun to love me.”
A pebble spoke next: “You are quite absurd.”
It said, “with your song’s insistence;
For I never saw a tree or a bird,
So of course there are none in existence.”
“But I know, I know, ” the tendril cried,
In beautiful sweet unreason;
Till lo! from its prison, glorified,
It burst in the glad spring season.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EBEB FGFG HIHI JEJX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 1001001001 01101110 101110101 1010011010 1101110111 11111111 11101011001 11101111 1100101001 01101110 1101111111 11101110 10100101 111011 110101101 00111111 0101111101 11111010 1110101101 1111110010 11111011 010011 11111010 11001110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 978 |
Words | 187 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 117 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 30 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 56 sec read
- 137 Views
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