Analysis of Sonnet To Simplicity

Helen Maria Williams 1761 (London) – 1827



NYMPH of the desert! on this lonely shore,
Simplicity, thy blessings still are mine,
And all thou canst not give I pleas'd resign,
For all beside can soothe my soul no more.
I ask no lavish heaps to swell my store,
And purchase pleasures far remote from thine:
Ye joys, for which the race of Europe pine,
Ah, not for me your studied grandeur pour;
Let me where yon tall cliffs are rudely pil'd,
Where towers the Palm amidst the mountain trees,
Where pendant from the steep, with graces wild,
The blue Liana floats upon the breeze,
Still haunt those bold recesses, Nature's child,
Where thy majestic charms my spirit seize!


Scheme ABBAABBACDCDCD
Poetic Form
Metre 1101011101 0100110111 0111111101 1101111111 1111011111 0101010111 1111011101 1111110011 1111111101 11001010101 1101011101 0101010101 1111100101 1101011101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 617
Words 113
Sentences 4
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 489
Words per stanza (avg) 111
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

34 sec read
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Helen Maria Williams

Helen Maria Williams was a British novelist poet and translator of French-language works A religious dissenter she was a supporter of abolitionism and of the ideals of the French Revolution she was imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror but nonetheless spent much of the rest of her life in France A controversial figure in her own time the young Williams was favorably portrayed in a 1787 poem by William Wordsworth but she was portrayed by other writers as irresponsibly politically radical and even as sexually wanton more…

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