Analysis of Cold Blooded Creatures
Elinor Wylie 1885 (Somerville) – 1928
Man, the egregious egoist,
(In mystery the twig is bent,)
Imagines, by some mental twist,
That he alone is sentient
Of the intolerable load
Which on all living creatures lies,
Nor stoops to pity in the toad
The speechless sorrow of its eyes.
He asks no questions of the snake,
Nor plumbs the phosphorescent gloom
Where lidless fishes, broad awake,
Swim staring at a night-mare doom.
Scheme | AAAA ABAB CDCD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 100101 01000111 01011101 110111 10010001 11110101 11110001 01010111 11110101 11011 1110101 11010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 384 |
Words | 75 |
Sentences | 2 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 12 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 101 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 22 |
About this poem
Elinor Wylie, “Cold Blooded Creatures” from Selected Works of Elinor Wylie, edited by Evelyn Helmick Hively (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2005).
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